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