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° north, longitude 68° west, and I
have grown old and gray waiting for the sign."

The next morning, and for many days after, he was surprised to find that
the city went on as though she still were in it. With unfeeling
regularity the sun rose out of the East River. On Broadway
electric-light signs flashed, street-cars pursued each other, taxicabs
bumped and skidded, women, and even men, dared to look happy, and had
apparently taken some thought to their attire. They did not respect even
his widowerhood. They smiled upon him, and asked him jocularly about
the farm and his "crops," and what he was doing in New York. He pitied
them, for obviously they were ignorant of the fact that in New York
there were art galleries, shops, restaurants of great interest, owing to
the fact that Polly Kirkland had visited them. They did not know that on
upper Fifth Avenue were houses of which she had deigned to approve, or
which she had destroyed with ridicule, and that to walk that avenue and
halt before each of these houses was an inestimable privilege.