“She is, and you know it. Well, she'll be happy--not! If I'd go to her to-night and tell her what I know, she'd never see him again.” The idea, thus born in his overwrought brain, obsessed him. He returned to it again and again. Le Moyne was uneasy. He was not certain that the boy's statement had any basis in fact. His single determination was to save Sidney from any pain. When Joe suddenly announced his inclination to go out into the country after all, he suspected a ruse to get rid of him, and insisted on going along. Joe consented grudgingly. “Car's at Bailey's garage,” he said sullenly. “I don't know when I'll get back.” “That won't matter.” K.'s tone was cheerful. “I'm not sleeping, anyhow.” That passed unnoticed until they were on the highroad, with the car running smoothly between yellowing fields of wheat. Then:-- “So you've got it too!” he said. “We're a fine pair of fools. We'd both be better off if I sent the car over a bank.” He gave the wheel a reckless twist, and Le Moyne called him to time sternly. They had supper at the White Springs Hotel--not on the terrace, but in the little room where Carlotta and Wilson had taken their first meal together. K. ordered beer for them both, and Joe submitted with bad grace. But the meal cheered and steadied him. K. found him more amenable to reason, and, gaining his confidence, learned of his desire to leave the city. “I'm stuck here,” he said. “I'm the only one, and mother yells blue murder when I talk about it. I want to go to Cuba. My uncle owns a farm down there.” “Perhaps I can talk your mother over. I've been there.” Joe was all interest. His dilated pupils became more normal, his restless hands grew quiet. K.'s even voice, the picture he drew of 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.