lay,
too, you old fox!" his smile widened as he looked round at Rodney, and
his voice turned to a crow. "Trust this solemn old bird not to miss a
bet. She was some lady, all right! Why," he went on to Jimmy, "she has
some sort of a row with her lover; big brute that used to lie in wait
for her in the alley. You ought to hear the ponies go on about it. So
she gets scared and goes to Goldsmith and gets herself sent out with the
Number Two. And Goldsmith--believe me--crazy! He had his eye on it,
too."

Jimmy finished his drink with a jerk. "Come along," he said to Rodney.
"I don't like this place. Let's get out."

Rodney has never managed to forget little Alec McEwen. For weeks after
that bar-room encounter he was haunted by the vision of the small bright
prying eyes, the fatuously cynical smile, and by the sound of the high
crowing voice. Little Alec became monstrous to him; impersonal, a symbol
of the way the world looked at Rose, and he dreamed sometimes,
half-waking dreams, of choking the life out of him. Not out of little
Alec personally. He, obviously, wasn't worth it; but out of all the
weakly venomous slander that he typified.

He managed a nod that seemed unconcerned enough, in response to Jimmy's
suggestion, and followed him out to the sidewalk. The sort of florid
rococo chivalry that would have "vindicated his wife's honor" by
knocking little Alec down was an inconceivable thing to him. But the
thing cut deep. He felt bemired. He wouldn't have minded that, of
course, except that the miry way he'd trodden since he'd first gone to
the stage door for Rose was the way she's taken ahead of him. He must
overtake her and bring her back!

"I'm a thousand times obliged," he said in an even enough tone to Jimmy.
"I'll find her at Dubuque, then, to-morrow."

"That's Wednesday," said Jimmy. "They may be playing a matinee, you
know. She'll be there, right enough."

Then, to make the separation they both wanted come a little easier, he
invented an errand over on State Street and nodded Rodney farewell. For
the next half-hour he cursed himself with vicious heartfelt fluency for
a fool. Mightn't he have known what little Alec McEwen would say?

CHAPTER XV

IN FLIGHT

Analyzing what little Alec McEwen actually said, disregarding the tone
of his voice and the look in his eye; disregarding, indeed, the meaning
he attached to his own words, and sticking simply to the words
themselves, it would be difficult to b