Another day went by, and still there was no news from Barry.  The early autumn weather was exquisite, and Sidney, with the additional work for the Mail that the editor’s absence left for her, found herself very busy.  But life seemed suddenly to taste flat and uninteresting to her.  The sunlight was glaring, the afternoons dusty and windy, and under all the day’s duties and pleasures—­the meeting of neighbors, the children’s confidences, her busy coming and going up and down the village streets—­ran a sick undercurrent of disappointment and heartache.  She went to the post-office twice, in that first long day, for the arriving mail, and Miss Potter, pleased at these glimpses of the lady from the Hall, chatted blithely as she pushed Italian letters, London letters, letters from Washington and New York, through the little wicket.

But there was not a line from Barry.  On the second day Sidney began to think of sending him a note; it might be chanced to the Bohemian Club—­

But no, she wouldn’t do that.  If he did not care enough to write her, she certainly wouldn’t write him.

She began to realize how different Santa Paloma was without his big figure, his laughter, his joyous comment upon people and things.  She had taken his comradeship for granted, taken it as just one more element of the old childish days regained, never thought of its rude interruption or ending.

Now she felt ashamed and sore, she had been playing with fire, she told herself severely; she had perhaps hurt him; she had certainly given herself needless heartache.  No romantic girl of seventeen ever suffered a more unreasoning pang than did Sidney when she came upon Barry’s shabby, tobacco-scented office coat, hanging behind his desk, or found in her own desk one of the careless notes he so frequently used to leave there at night for her to find in the morning.

However, in the curious way that things utterly unrelated sometimes play upon each other in this life, these days of bewilderment and chagrin bore certain good fruit.  Sidney had for some weeks been planning an attack upon the sympathies of the Santa Paloma Women’s Club, but had shrunk from beginning it, because life was running very smoothly and happily, and she was growing too genuinely fond of her new neighbors to risk jeopardizing their affection for her by a move she suspected would be unpopular.

But now she was unhappy, and, with the curious stoicism that is born of unhappiness, she plunged straight into the matter.  On the third day after Barry’s disappearance she appeared at the regular meeting of the club as Mrs. Carew’s guest.

“I hope this means that you are coming to your senses, ye bad girl!” said Mrs. Apostleman, drawing her to the next chair with a fat imperative hand.

“Perhaps it does,” Sidney answered, with a rather nervous smile.  She sat attentive and appreciative, through the reading of a paper entitled “Some Glimpses of the Real Burns,” and seemed immensely to enjoy the four songs—­Burns’s poems set to music—­and the clever recitation of several selections from Burns that followed.