“Just as in everything that is beautiful,” he whispered eagerly, “I always see something of you, so now in everything wonderful I will read your message.  But,” he persisted, “how shall I be sure?”

The last bag of mail had shot into the hold, the most reluctant of the visitors were being hustled down the last remaining gangplank.  Ainsley’s state was desperate.

“Will it be in symbol, or in cipher?” he demanded.  “Must I read it in the sky, or will you hide it in a letter, or—­where?  Help me!  Give me just a hint!”

The girl shook her head.

“You will read it—­in your heart,” she said.

From the end of the wharf Ainsley watched the funnels of the ship disappear in the haze of the lower bay.  His heart was sore and heavy, but in it there was still room for righteous indignation.  “Read it in my heart!” he protested.  “How the devil can I read it in my heart?  I want to read it printed in a cablegram.”

Because he had always understood that young men in love found solace for their misery in solitude and in communion with nature, he at once drove his car to Lone Lake.  But his misery was quite genuine, and the emptiness of the brick house only served to increase his loneliness.  He had built the house for her, though she had never visited it, and was associated with it only through the somewhat indefinite medium of the telephone box.  But in New York they had been much together.  And Ainsley quickly decided that in revisiting those places where he had been happy in her company he would derive from the recollection some melancholy consolation.  He accordingly raced back through the night to the city; nor did he halt until he was at the door of her house.  She had left it only that morning, and though it was locked in darkness, it still spoke of her.  At least it seemed to bring her nearer to him than when he was listening to the frogs in the lake, and crushing his way through the pines.

He was not hungry, but he went to a restaurant where, when he was host, she had often been the honored guest, and he pretended they were at supper together and without a chaperon.  Either the illusion, or the supper cheered him, for he was encouraged to go on to his club.  There in the library, with the aid of an atlas, he worked out where, after thirteen hours of moving at the rate of twenty-two knots an hour, she should be at that moment.  Having determined that fact to his own satisfaction, he sent a wireless after the ship.  It read:  “It is now midnight and you are in latitude 40 degrees north, longitude 68 degrees west, and I have grown old and gray waiting for the sign.”