When with the crowd he had made his way out of the train, and traversed
the long platform at the Atlantic City station, ignoring the stentorian
solicitations of the 'bus drivers, he started walking toward the ocean
promenade, invited by the glimpse of sea at the far end of the avenue. Thus
he crossed that wide thoroughfare--Atlantic Avenue--with its shops and
trolley-cars; passed picturesque hotels and cottages; crossed Pacific
Avenue where carriages and dog-carts were being driven rapidly between the
rows of pretty summer edifices, and traversed the famously long block that
ends at the boardwalk and the strand.

He succeeded in getting a third-floor room on the ocean side of the first
hotel where he applied. He learned from the clerk that Edith was not at
this house. Sea air having revived his appetite, he decided to dine before
setting out in search of her.

When, after his meal, he reached the boardwalk, the electric lights had
already been turned on and the regular evening crowd of promenaders was
beginning to form. He strolled along now looking at the beach and the sea,
now at the boardwalk crowd where he might perhaps at any moment behold
the face of "the loveliest girl in the world." He beheld instead, as he
approached the Tennessee pier, the face of his friend George Haddon.

"Hello, old boy!" exclaimed Morrow, grasping his friend's hand. "What are
you doing here? I thought your affairs would keep you in New York all
summer."

"So they would," replied Haddon, in a tone and with a look whose distress
he made little effort to conceal. "But something happened."