main at least another day. It made it possible for him to breathe
deeply once again.

Much could happen in twenty-four hours. She might even change her
mind, he desperately assured himself--women were always doing
something like that, wern't they? But even if she did go it was a
reprieve; it gave him one last opportunity. Now, for the present, all
he wanted was to get away--to get away by himself and think! On
heavily dragging feet he turned to go back down the rotting
boardwalk.

"I--I'll drop in on you tomorrow," he suggested, pausing at the steps.
"I'll stop in on my way 'round--to--to say good-by."

The girl stood in the doorway smiling down at him. He couldn't meet
her eyes. As it was he felt that their gaze went through and through
him. And so he did not see her half lift her arms to him in a sudden
quite wonderful gesture of contrite and remorseful reassurance. He did
not hear the first of the impulsive torrent of words which she barely
smothered behind lips that trembled a little. His head was bowed so
that he did not see her eyes, and if he could but have seen them and
nothing else, he would have understood, without the words or the
gesture.

Instead he stood there, plucking undecidedly at his sleeve.

"Because I--I wouldn't like to hev you go--without seein' you again,"
he went on slowly--"without a chance to tell you something--er--to
tell you good-by."

He didn't wait for her answer. At the far bend in the road, when he
looked back, she was still there in the doorway watching him.

He was not quite certain, but he thought she threw up one thin white
arm to him as he passed out of sight.

CHAPTER XVII

It rained that next day--a dull, steady downpour that slanted in upon
a warm, south wind. Old Jerry was glad of the storm. The leaden
grayness of the low-hanging clouds matched perfectly his own frame of
mind, and the cold touch of the rain soothed his hot head, too, as it
swept in under the buggy hood, and helped him to think a little
better. There was much that needed readjusting.

Throughout the early hours of that morning he drove with a newspaper
spread flat upon his knees--the afternoon edition of the previous day,
which, in the face of other matters, he had had neither the necessary
time nor enthusiasm to examine until it was an entire twelve hours
old. At any other time the contents of that red-headlined sheet would
have set his pulses throbbing in a veritable ecstasy of excitement.