“Oh, Miss Robson isn’t with us any more.  She hasn’t been here for over a week—­not since her mother was taken sick.  Oh, I thought you knew.  You’re Mr. Stillman, aren’t you?  I’ve heard my cousin, Mrs. Richards, speak of you.  Miss Robson went over to Mr. Flint’s on that night of the storm and she missed the boat or something—­you know!  And when she got home next morning she found that her mother had worried herself into a stroke.  They say she is quite helpless....  I’m sure I don’t know what she intends doing.  We mailed her check yesterday.  It’s always hard to land another position when one is dismissed.”

Stillman escaped quickly.  Miss Munch’s venom was a thing too crude and unconcealed to face with indifference.  Her emphatic “you know” was pregnant with innuendo and malice.  Still, it did not occur to Stillman that he had any part in Claire Robson’s misfortune.  But he did know from Miss Munch’s tone that the unfortunate situation, growing out of the automobile ride from Yolanda to Sausalito, had received due recognition at the hands of those who made a business of blowing out bubbles of scandal from the suds of chance.  It was useless for him to deny that Claire Robson from the first had been of more or less interest.  She seemed to rise in such a detached fashion from her environment.

He had to admit, as later he sat in the cloistered silences of his club library and blew contemplative smoke-rings into the air, that a certain idle curiosity had been the mainspring of his concern for her.  He had been like a boy who captured a strange butterfly and clapped it under a glass tumbler where he could watch how easily it would adapt itself to its new surroundings.  But, having caught the butterfly and held it a brief captive, the dust from its wings still lingered upon the hands that imprisoned it.  He had made the mistake of imagining that one is always master of casual incidents.  To meet a young woman by the most trivial chance, to extend a brief courtesy to her, these were matters which hold scarcely the germs of a menacing situation, not menacing to him, of course—­they never could be menacing to him; he was still thinking of things from the viewpoint of Claire Robson.

To tell the truth, he was annoyed at having been mixed up in Claire’s flight from the Flint household.  Had Flint been a complete stranger he would not have minded so much.  He was still divided by the appeal to his chivalry and the sense of loyalty that a man feels to the masculine friends of his youth.  In her telephone message Claire had put the matter very casually—­the track was washed out and she was wondering whether he contemplated returning to town that evening.  But he guessed at once what lay back of her matter-of-fact boldness.  He had guessed so completely that he had decided not only to return to town, but to start at once.