“I came sooner,” said Andy, trying to meet her eye.  He wanted to bring the conversation to themselves, so that he might explain and justify himself, and win forgiveness for his sins.

While they walked along the cliffs he tried, and going home he had not given up the attempt.  But afterward, when he could sit down quietly and think, he was forced to admit that he had not succeeded very well.  It seemed to him that, while Mary still liked him and was quite ready to be friends, she had forgotten just why she had so suddenly left Montana.  She was sorry he had broken his leg, but in the same breath, almost, she told him of such a narrow escape that Freddie had last week, when an auto nearly ran him down.  Andy regretted keenly that it had not.

He had mentioned Irish and Jack Bates, meaning to refute the tales they had told of him, and she had asked about the black lamb and the white, and then had told him that he must go out to the whistling buoy and see the real whale they had anchored out there, and related with much detail how Freddie had taken her and Lola out, and how the water was so rough she got seasick, and a wave splashed over and ruined Freddie’s new summer suit, that spotted dreadfully; it wasn’t, she remarked, a durable color.  She hoped Andy would stay a month or two, though the “season” was about over.  She knew he would just love the plunge and the surf-bathing, and there was going to be a boomers’ barbacue up at the Big Trees in two weeks—­and it would seem like home to him, seeing a cow roasted whole!  She did love Montana, and she hoped he brought his chaps and spurs along, for she had told Lola so much about him, and she wanted Lola to see him in his Wild West clothes.

All this should have pleased Andy very much.  She had not grown cold, and her eyes were quite as teasing and her smiles as luring as before.  She did not even lay personal claim to Freddie, that he should be jealous.  When she spoke of Freddie, his name was linked with Lola Parsons, and Andy could not glean that she had ever gone anywhere alone with him.  She had seemed anxious that he should enjoy his vacation to the limit, and had mentioned three or four places that he must surely see, and informed him three times that she was “off” at five every evening, and could show him around.

They had dined together at a cafe, and had gone back to the Casino for the band concert, and they had not been interrupted by meeting Lola Parsons and Freddie, and she had given him a very cordial good-night when they parted on the steps of her boarding house at eleven.

So there was absolutely no reason for the mood Andy was in when he accepted his key from the hotel clerk and went up to his room.  For a man who has traveled more than a thousand miles in search of the girl he had dreamed of o’nights, and who had found her and had been properly welcomed, he was distinctly gloomy.  He sat down by the open window and smoked four cigarettes, said “Damn Freddy!” three times and with added emphasis each time, though he knew very well that Freddie had nothing to do with it, and then went to bed.