He read the letter aloud at the breakfast table. “I’m going,” he said, “to talk it over.” “Going where?” his father questioned. “To America.” “Oh, nonsense!” He let the subject drop for the time being; but a few days later he walked out of Ocean House and whistled his way down Cockspur Street to Trafalgar Square. He halted in the drowsy August sun and pulled the ticket from his pocket to examine it. He could scarcely credit the reckless length to which his infatuation had carried him. He seemed to see her again, standing on the threshold in her green-and-gold pageant costume, whispering tauntingly, “Come to America if you really care.” She would have to acknowledge now how much she meant to him. He couldn’t wait to tell her. Crossing the street to Charing Cross Telegraph Office, he cabled her the date of his arrival, the ship on which he was sailing and the one word, “Coming.” Then he turned thoughtfully homeward, to break the news to Eden Row. Her masterly faculty for silence had conquered. CHAPTER V--SUSPENSE Not until the shores of England had faded behind him did he realize the decisiveness of the step he had taken. Divorced from his familiar surroundings, in the No-Man’s-Land of shipboard, he had an opportunity of taking an outsider’s view of his actions. Now that there was no going back, a fatalistic calm settled down on him. During the past weeks he had lived in a tempest of speculations, of wild hopes and unreasonable doubts. He had had to hide his emotions, and yet had dreaded lest they were suspected. The fear of ridicule had been heavy upon him. He had walked on tiptoe, always listening for a voice which never answered. Now at last he regained self-possession. Lying lazily in his steamer-chair, with the sun-dazzled vacancy of ocean before him, the bigness of life came acutely home to him. Looking back over his few years, he saw that the supreme need for great living is charity--to be content to love, as Madame Josephine would put it. He saw something else: that life has amazing recuperative powers and that no single defeat is overwhelming. Disappointment only becomes overwhelming when it is used for bitterness, as it was used by Hal. “Life’s an eternal picking one’s self up and going forward,” he told himself.