The girl, carried away with the triumph of the afternoon, said gaily: “I’ll sing for you whenever you like. Could you never come up to our cottage on Pine Street and meet my mother? I know she would like to see you.” The slightest possible look of surprise passed over his face, gone almost as soon as it had come. Mariposa saw it, however, and felt embarrassed. She evidently had been too forward, and looked down, blushing and uncomfortable. He recovered himself immediately, and said: “Not now, much as I should like to, Miss Moreau. I am living at Menlo Park, and all my spare time when business is over is spent in catching trains. But give your mother my compliments on the possession of such a daughter.” Mariposa and Essex stayed chatting with Mrs. Willers for some time after Shackleton’s departure. The clock had chimed more than once, when finally they left, and their hostess, exhausted, but exultant, threw herself back in a chair and watched Edna gather up the remains of the lunch. “Put the cakes in the tin, dearie. They’ll do for to-morrow, and be sure and cork the bottle tight. There’s enough for another time.” “Several other times,” said Edna, holding the bottle of port wine up to the light and squinting at it with her head on one side. “It was a cheap party--they hardly drank anything.” Mariposa and her companion walked up Sutter Street with the lagging step of people who find each other excellent company. It was the end of a warm afternoon in September, one of those still, deeply flushed evenings when the air is tepid and smells of distant fires, and the winged ants come out of the rotting sidewalks by the thousand. The west was a clear, thin red smudged with brown smoke. The houses grew dark and ever darker, and seemed to loom more solidly black every moment. They looked dreamlike and mysterious against the fiery background. “How did you like it?” said Mariposa, as they loitered on, “my singing, I mean?” “It was excellent, of course. You’ve got a voice. But the room was too small--and such a room to sing in, all crowded with ridiculous things.” Mariposa felt hurt. She thought Essex was the finest, the most elegant and finished person she had ever met. He seemed to her to breathe the atmosphere of those great sophisticated cities she had never seen. In his talks with her he now and then chilled her by his suggestion of belonging to another and a wiser world, to which she was a provincial outsider. This quality was in his manner now, and she began to feel how raw her poor performance must have seemed to the man who had heard the great prima donnas of London and Paris. “It was a small room, of course,” she assented, “but I had to sing somewhere, and I couldn’t hire a place.” “Shackleton wanted to hear you, as I understand it. Mrs. Willers said something about his knowing your father.” There was no question about the coldness of his voice now. Had Mariposa known more about men she would have seen he was irritated.