f
life on the island, the stillness of the little hotel in its mid-week
dullness, seemed to quiet the boy's tortured nerves. He was nearer
to peace than he had been for many days. But he smoked incessantly,
lighting one cigarette from another.

At ten o'clock he left K. and went for the car. He paused for a moment,
rather sheepishly, by K.'s chair.

"I'm feeling a lot better," he said. "I haven't got the band around my
head. You talk to mother."

That was the last K. saw of Joe Drummond until the next day.

CHAPTER XXIV

Carlotta dressed herself with unusual care--not in black this time, but
in white. She coiled her yellow hair in a soft knot at the back of her
head, and she resorted to the faintest shading of rouge. She intended to
be gay, cheerful. The ride was to be a bright spot in Wilson's memory.
He expected recriminations; she meant to make him happy. That was the
secret of the charm some women had for men. They went to such women to
forget their troubles. She set the hour of their meeting at nine, when
the late dusk of summer had fallen; and she met him then, smiling, a
faintly perfumed white figure, slim and young, with a thrill in her
voice that was only half assumed.

"It's very late," he complained. "Surely you are not going to be back at
ten."

"I have special permission to be out late."

"Good!" And then, recollecting their new situation: "We have a lot to
talk over. It will take time."

At the White Springs Hotel they stopped to fill the gasolene tank of the
car. Joe Drummond saw Wilson there, in the sheet-iron garage alongside
of the road. The Wilson car was in the shadow. It did not occur to Joe
that the white figure in the car was not Sidney. He went rather white,
and stepped out of the zone of light. The influence of Le Moyne was
still on him, however, and he went on quietly with what he was doing.
But his hands shook as he filled the radiator.

When Wilson's car had gone on, he went automatically about his
preparations for the return trip--lifted a seat cushion to investigate
his own store of gasolene, replacing carefully the revolver he always
carried under the seat and packed in waste to prevent its accidental
discharge, lighted his lamps, examined a loose brake-band.

His coolness gratified him. He had been an ass: Le Moyne was right. He'd
get away--to Cuba if he could--and start over again. He would forget the
Street and let it forget him.

The men in the garage were talki