He saw now. Blind fool that he had been, month after month! He sank on a bench and went back in his thoughts to the first time he had ever seen Sally Winthrop. She had reminded him that it was luncheon time, and when he had gone out she had been waiting for him. She must have been waiting for him, or he never would have found her. And she had known he was hungry.

“She’d want to be hungry with you,” Frances had said.

How had Sally Winthrop known that he was hungry? She had known, and had shared with him what she had.

Then incident after incident in the office came back to him. It was she who had taught him how to work. It was for her that he had worked.

Frances had used another phrase: “She’d be almost glad you had no money.”

There was only one woman in the world he knew who would care for a man like that––if she cared at all. That brought him to his feet again. He glared about as if searching for her in the dark. Why wasn’t she here now, so that he might ask her if she did care? She had no business to go off and leave him like this! He did not know where she was.

Don struck a match and looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty. Somehow, he must find her. He had her old address, and it was possible that she had left word where she had gone. At any rate, this was the only clue he had.

He made his way back to the Avenue, and, at a pace that at times almost broke into a run, went toward the club and the first taxi he saw. In twenty minutes he was standing on the steps where he had last seen her. She had wished him to say “good-bye”; but he remembered that he had refused to say “good-bye.”

The landlady knew Miss Winthrop’s address, but she was not inclined to give it to him. At first she did not like the expression in his eyes. He was too eager.

“Seems to me,” she argued, “she’d have 257 told parties where she was going if she wanted them to know.”

“This is very important,” he insisted.

“Maybe it’s a lot more important to you than it is to her,” she replied.

“But––”

“You can leave your name and address, and I’ll write to her,” she offered.

“Look here,” Don said desperately. “Do you want to know what my business is with her?”

“It’s none of my business, but––”

“I want to ask her to marry me,” he broke in. “That’s a respectable business, isn’t it?”

He reached in his pocket and drew out a bill. He slipped it into her hand.

“Want to marry her?” exclaimed the woman. “Well, now, I wouldn’t stand in the way of that. Will you step in while I get the address?”

“I’ll wait here. Only hurry. There may be a late train.”

She was back in a few seconds, holding a slip of paper in her hand.

“It’s to Brenton, Maine, she’s gone.”

Don grabbed the paper.

“Thanks.”

He was halfway down the steps when she called after him:––

“Good luck to ye, sir.”

“Thanks again,” he called back.

Then he gave his order to the driver:––

“To the Grand Central.”

Don found that he could take the midnight train to Boston and connect there with a ten-o’clock train next morning. This would get him into Portland in time for a connection that would land him at Brenton at four that afternoon. He went back to the house to pack his bag. As he opened the door and went in, it seemed as if she might already be there––as if she might be waiting for him. Had she stepped forward to greet him and announce that dinner was ready, he would not have been greatly surprised. It was as if she had been here all this last year. But it was only Nora who came to greet him.

“I’m going away to-night for a few days––perhaps for two weeks,” he told Nora.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll wire you what my plans are––either to-morrow or next day.”

“And it is to be soon, sir?”

“I can’t tell you for sure, Nora, until I’ve cleared up one or two little matters; but––you can wish me luck, anyway.”

“I’ll do that, sir.”

“And the house is ready, isn’t it?”

“Everything is ready, sir.”

“That’s fine. Now I’m going to pack.”

His packing finished, Don went downstairs with still an hour or more on his hands before train-time. But he did not care to go anywhere. He was absolutely contented here. He was content merely to wander from room to room. He sat down at the piano in the dark, and for a long while played to her––played to her just the things he knew she would like.

It was half-past eleven before he left the house, and then he went almost reluctantly. She was more here than anywhere in the world except where he was going. He found himself quite calm about her here. The moment he came out on the street again he noticed a difference. 260 His own phrase came back to frighten him:––

“She’d care like that––if she cared at all.”

Supposing that after he found her, she did not care?

At the station he wondered if it were best to wire her, but decided against it. She might run away. It was never possible to tell what a woman might do, and Sally Winthrop was an adept at concealing herself. He remembered that period when, although he had been in the same office with her, she had kept herself as distant as if across the ocean. She had only to say, “Not at home,” and it was as if she said, “I am not anywhere.”

He went to his berth at once, and had, on the whole, a bad night of it. He asked himself a hundred questions that he could not answer––that Sally Winthrop alone could answer. Though it was only lately that he had prided himself on knowing her desires in everything, he was forced to leave all these questions unanswered.

At ten the next morning he took the train for Portland. At two he was on the train for 261 Brenton and hurrying through a strange country to her side.

When he reached Brenton he was disappointed not to find her when he stepped from the train. The station had been so closely identified with her through the long journey that he had lost sight of the fact that it existed for any other purpose. But only a few station loafers were there to greet him, and they revealed but an indifferent interest. He approached one of them.

“Can you tell me where Miss Winthrop is stopping?”

The man looked blank.

“No one of that name in this town,” he finally answered.

“Isn’t this Brenton?”

“It’s Brenton, right enough.”

“Then she’s here,” declared Don.

“Is she visitin’?” inquired the man.

Don nodded.

“A cousin, or something.”

A second man spoke up:––

“Ain’t she the one who’s stopping with Mrs. Halliday?”

“Rather slight, with brown eyes,” volunteered Don.

“Dunno the color of her eyes,” answered the first man, with a wink at the second. “But thar’s some one stoppin’ thar. Been here couple days or so.”

“That’s she,” Don decided.

He drew a dollar bill from his pocket.

“I want one of you to take a note to her from me.”

He wrote on the back of a card:––

I’m at the station. I must see you at once.

DON.

“Take that to her right away and bring me an answer,” he ordered.

The man took both bill and card and disappeared.