At the end of the third day Max returned.  He had not seen Morton, nor any of his clerks, nor anybody connected with his office.  Neither had he sent him any message or written him any letter.  Morton might have been dead and buried a century so far as Max or his affairs were concerned.  Nor had he laid his eyes on the beautiful Miss Billeton; nor visited her house; nor written her any letters; nor inquired for her.  What he did do was to run out to Walnut Hill, have a word with his manager, and slip back to town again and bury himself in his club.  Most of the time he read the magazines, some pages two or three times over.  Once he thought he would look up one or two of his women friends at their homes—­those who might still be in town—­and then gave it up as not being worth the trouble.  At the end of the third day he started for Barnegat.  The air was bad in the city, he said to himself, and everybody he met was uninteresting.  He would go back, hitch up the grays, and he and Lucy have a spin down the beach.  Sea air always did agree with him, and he was a fool to leave it.

Lucy met him at the station in answer to his telegram sent over from Warehold.  She was dressed in her very best:  a double-breasted jacket and straw turban, a gossamer veil wound about it.  Her cheeks were like two red peonies and her eyes bright as diamonds.  She was perched up in the driver’s seat of the drag, and handled the reins and whip with the skill of a turfman.  This time Bones, the tiger, did not spring into his perch as they whirled from the station in the direction of the beach.  His company was not wanted.

They talked of Max’s trip, of the mortgage, and of Morton; of how hot it was in town and how cool it was on her portico; of Mrs. Coates and of pater-familias Coates, who held a mortgage on Beach Haven; of the dance the night before—­Max leading in the conversation and she answering either in mono-syllables or not at all, until Max hazarded the statement that he had been bored to death waiting for Morton, who never put in an appearance, and that the only human being, male or female, he had seen in town outside the members of the club, was Sue.

They had arrived off the Life-Saving Station now, and Archie had called the captain to the door, and both stood looking at them, the boy waving his hand and the captain following them with his eyes.  Had either of them caught the captain’s remark they, perhaps, would have drawn rein and asked for an explanation: 

“Gay lookin’ hose-carriage, ain’t it?  Looks as if they was runnin’ to a fire!”

But they didn’t hear it; would not, probably have heard it, had the captain shouted it in their ears.  Lucy was intent on opening up a subject which had lain dormant in her mind since the morning of Max’s departure, and the gentleman himself was trying to cipher out what new “kink,” as he expressed it to himself, had “got it into her head.”