Thorpe set his lips. He dropped her hand. "You are capricious--and unfair," he said; "I have not seen you alone for two days." "It is not because I love you less," she said, softly. "Promise me." "Very well." "It is now ten. We shall have supper at twelve. At one, go down the corridor behind this line of rooms to the end. Wait there for me. Ask no questions, or I won't be there. This waltz is Captain Hastings'. I am engaged for every dance. _Au revoir._" Thorpe got through the intervening hours. He spent the greater part of them with the four doñas of the dais, and was warmly invited to visit them on their ranchos and in the old towns; and he accepted, although he knew as much of the weather of the coming month as of his future movements. XIII In the supper-room he sat far from Nina; but promptly at one he stole forth to the tryst. The windows looking upon the back corridor were closed. No one was moving among the mass of outbuildings. Not far away he could see the rolling surface and stark outlines of the Mission cemetery. A fine mist was flying before the stars; and a fierce wind, the first of the trades, was screaming in from the ocean. Nina kept him waiting ten or fifteen minutes. Her white figure appeared at the end of the corridor and advanced rapidly. Thorpe met her half way, and she struck him lightly with her fan. "Remember your promise," she said. "And also understand that you are not to move from the place where I put you until I give you permission. Do you take that in?" "Yes," he said, sullenly; "but I am tired of farces and promises." "Shh, don't be cross. This has been a charming evening. I won't have it spoiled." "Are you quite well? Your colour is so high, and your eyes are unnaturally bright." "Don't suggest that I am getting anything," she cried, in mock terror. "Small-pox? How dreadful! That is our little recreation, you know. When a San Franciscan has nothing else to do he goes off to the pest-house and has small-pox. But come, come." He followed her into the room at the end of the corridor, and she lit a taper and conducted him up a steep flight of stairs which was little more than a ladder. At the top was a narrow door. It yielded to the knob, and Thorpe found himself in what was evidently the attic of the Mission. "I was up here a month or two ago with the girls," said Nina. Her voice shook slightly. "I know there are candles somewhere--there were, at least. Stand where you are until I look." She flitted about with the taper, a ghostly figure in the black mass of shadows; and in a few moments had thrust a half-dozen candles into the necks of empty bottles. These she lit and ordered Thorpe to range at intervals about the room. He saw that he was in a long low garret, at one end of which was a pile of boxes, at the other a heap of carpeting. To the latter Nina pointed with her lighted taper. "Sit down there," she said, and disappeared behind the boxes.