Even Oscar was failing him.  “When Flora gets well,” the little man kept telling him, “we are going to do some good with our money.  We have done nothing but think of ourselves——­”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, don’t preach,” George exploded.  It seemed to him that the world had gone mad on the subject of reforms.  Man was no longer master of his fate.  The time would come when the world would be a dry desert, without a cocktail or a highball for a thirsty soul, and all because a lot of people had been feeling for some time as Flora and Oscar felt at this moment.

“I shall take Flora up to the Crossing in a few days,” Oscar was saying; “the doctor thinks the sea air will do her good.  I wish you would come with us.”

George had no idea of going with Oscar and Flora.  He had been marooned long enough with a sick woman and her depressed spouse.  When Flora was better and she and Oscar got over their mood of piety and repentance, he would be glad to join them.  In the meantime he searched his mind for some reasonable excuse.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ll join you later, Oscar.  I’ve promised some friends at Nantucket that I’ll come down for the hunting.”

“I didn’t know that you had friends in Nantucket,” Oscar told him moodily.

“The Merediths,” George remembered in the nick of time the name of Becky’s grandfather.  Oscar would not know the difference.

Having committed himself, his spirits soared.  It had, he felt, been an inspiration to put it over on Oscar like that.  Subconsciously he had known that some day he would follow Becky, and when the moment came, he had spoken out of his thoughts.

In the two or three days that elapsed between his decision and the date that he had set for his departure, he found himself enjoying the city—­its clear skies, its hurrying crowds, its color and glow, the tingle of its rush and hurry, its light-hearted acceptance of the pleasure of the moment.

He telegraphed for a room at a hotel in Nantucket.  Once there, he was confident that he could find Becky.  Everybody would know Admiral Meredith.

He went by boat from New York to New Bedford, and enjoyed the trip.  Later on the little steamer, Sankaty, plying between New Bedford and Nantucket, he was so shining and splendid that he was much observed by the other passengers.  His Jap servant, trotting after him, was perhaps less martial in bearing than the ubiquitous Kemp, but he was none the less an ornament.

Thus George came, at last, to Nantucket, and to his hotel.  Having dined, he asked the way to the Admiral’s house.  He did not of course plan to storm the citadel after dark, but a walk would not hurt him, and he could view from the outside the cage which held his white dove.  For he had come to that, sentimentally, that Becky was the white dove that he would shelter against his heart.

The clerk at the hotel desk, directing him, thought that the Admiral was not in his house on Main Street.  He was apt at this season to spend his time in Siasconset.