“Yes,” he answered heavily—­perhaps guiltily.  And this time he was gone for good.

“What a neat expression,” thought Winifred.  “Gone for good!”

It sounded like a long time.

CHAPTER VI

THE HANDS WITH THE RINGS

Peter Rolls, Jr., unlike his father, had practically no talent for revenge.  In common with every warm-blooded creature lower than the angels, he could be fiercely vindictive for a minute or two—­long enough, when a small boy, to give a bloody nose and to get one; long enough, at all ages, to want to hit a man, thoroughly smash him, perhaps, or even to kick him into the middle of next week; long enough to feel that he would like to make a woman sorry that she had been rude.

But there was always a spiritual and mental reckoning of a painful description:  a soul’s housecleaning which turned him out of doors a miserable waif; and it invariably came too soon, before he had had time to gloat over the blood on another boy’s nose, or a man’s humiliation, or a woman’s repentant blush.  Instead of heartily disliking people for the spiteful things they sometimes did, he was apt to turn round and wonder if the fault had not been his; if he were not the abysmal beast.

He had not half repaid Winifred Child for her rudeness with his coldness, yet no sooner was he in the huge gray automobile—­which could comfortably have seated eight instead of six—­than he felt a pang of remorse, exactly like a gimlet twisting through his heart from top to bottom.

“I oughtn’t to have left her like that!” he reproached himself.  “I ought to have hung around and seen that everything went all right.  She said she had the address of a good, cheap boarding-house.  But it may have changed.  Or it may be full.  And, anyway, how will she get there?  She ought to take a cab.  But will she?  And if she does, won’t she fall dead at the price?  I ought to have warned the poor child.  There are shoals of tips I might have put her up to if I hadn’t always been talking about myself.  What if she was cross?  There must have been a reason.  I must have done something she didn’t feel like pointing out when I asked.  What I don’t know about women would make three encyclopedias.”

It was too late, however, to act upon second thoughts which might or might not be “best.”  Peter was in the automobile, and it had started.  Even if he went back, it would doubtless be only to find Miss Child gone.  He tried to console himself with the fact that Ena had been nice to the girl, and that Miss Child had said—­or anyhow intimated—­that she would write.  If she didn’t, he could, at worst, find out her whereabouts by going to Nadine.  Superior as Miss Child was to the other dryads, she would surely keep up communication with them.  Miss Devereux was the sort who might lunch with him on the strength of “old friendship.”  He would give her oysters and orchids, and find out how things were going with the girl who had left her dryadhood behind the cabin door.