"He's taken Alder and some of the others up to the golf club." "And Picard?" "He's off somewhere, too." "How stupid. Well, I'll take you down myself. Let's see. Oh, we can make it easily. It's only a quarter past now. I'll have the electric around in a moment." While she waited for the car to be brought around, she found herself responding perfunctorily to Mr. Faxon's running comment on all sorts of things in general, conscious that for the first time he was rather tiresome. She had never taken his attentions to herself seriously. She knew that he had a certain interest in pretty Della Baker rather warmer than was permissible in the case of a married woman, and she shut her eyes to the fact that her house gave them opportunities to meet that they would not otherwise have had. Yet she believed there was no real harm in Della, and as for Faxon,--well, he had flirted with so many women in his time that she could not take him altogether seriously either with herself or with others. And he usually succeeded in being amusing. But to-day she had no desire to be amused. She was thinking earnestly for perhaps the first time in her life ... wondering what she really did think about things in general. As she seated herself in the car and Faxon climbed in beside her, she grew more silent, and her thoughts strayed very far away from Braeburn. In spite of a very considerable reluctance on her part, they persisted in wandering to an ugly little collection of shanties, piled helter-skelter in the midst of lowering hills, where men went down into the earth and came up--something less than men--where twenty-two ... over and over again that wretched phrase persisted in repeating itself, until she wanted to scream. Why had she ever allowed that disagreeable stranger to spoil her day? Suddenly, as if to punctuate her thoughts, she caught sight of a familiar figure marching jerkily along the dusty road in front of her. He was even more grotesque from behind, but there was something pathetic in the weary droop of his shoulders. She felt acutely conscious of the comfort of her vehicle. Two or three times as she neared the angular pedestrian, she rang her bell. But he either did not hear it or he did not notice it; for he kept on in his uneven stride, with his head bent well forward, and his bedraggled straw almost over his ears. She was almost upon him, and the narrowness of the road showed little clearance between him and the machine, when she rang again. The sound seemed to startle and confuse him. His head rose with a jerk and he stopped short. Then he stepped, with the utmost deliberateness, directly in the path of the approaching car.