The one thing I beg of kind ’eaven to grant Is a mind independent and free.” But she couldn’t stir me out of my melancholy, for she didn’t know its cause. She physicked me for financial disappointments; what I wanted was a love-antidote. As my whole energies had formerly been bent on encountering Vi, so now they were directed towards avoiding her. For hours I would lounge in the bake-house or sit in the shop while Grandmother Cardover did her knitting, served customers, or gossiped with her neighbors. Then, against my better judgment, curiosity and longing for one more glimpse of her would drag me out into the streets. Yet, once in the streets, my chief object was to flee from her. Now when I should have refrained from pestering her, some obstinate fate was always bringing us face to face. I was sorriest for the effect that our attitude was having on Dorrie. At first she would rush forward in a gale of high spirits to greet me, until restrained by Vi. Next time, with a child’s forgetfulness, she would lift to me her pansy-face smiling, and remembering would hang back. At last she grew afraid of my troubled looks, and would hide shyly behind Vi’s skirts when she saw me. For five days I had not met them. A desperate suspicion that they had left town grew upon me. I became reckless in my desire for certainty. I could not bear the suspense. I was half-minded to call at the house where she had been staying, but that did not seem fair to her. I called myself a fool for not having stopped her in the street while I had the chance, when an explanation and an apology might have set everything on a proper footing. On the sixth morning of her absence I rose early and went out before breakfast. The skies were gray and squally. A slow drizzle had been falling all night and, though it now had ceased, the pavements were wet. The wind came in gusts, whistling round corners of streets and houses, whirling scraps of paper high in the air. When I came to the harbor, I saw that the sea was choppy and studded with white horses. Against the piles of the pier waves were dashing and shattering into spray. From up channel, all along the horizon, drove long lines of leaden clouds. I struck out across the denes between the sea-wall and the Beach Road. No one was about. I braced myself against the wind, enjoying its stinging coldness. The tormented loneliness of the scene was in accord with my mood. The old town, hanging red along the cliff, no longer seemed to watch me; it frowned out on the desolate waste of water in impersonal defiance.