"We'll leave it to Azalea. Which would you rather do, go down to Ramon's and drink mescal, he's just got some from Mexico, or do the Coast? There's a dancer at Frank's worth seeing."
"I'm afraid I can't do either. The next boat won't get me home till after one, as it is."
"Nonsense. Nobody ever goes home while there's anything else to do. 'We won't go home till morning!'"
The others took it up, and the silence of the empty street echoed to the old song. Jean wondered whether Flop was always singing his wants like this, and glanced at Herrick.
"Let's beat it, if you really want to," he whispered, and almost before she knew it, they had turned down a side street. For a block the voices of The Bunch followed. They did not know that Jean and Herrick had slipped away.
"If there's anything more dull than drinking mescal, it's going to Frank's. I don't see what on earth Flop finds in it."
Jean liked his annoyance. Again she felt that they were linked in understanding against the others. She had meant to ask him about Harcourt and Mathews, but now it seemed unnecessary.
They walked in almost total silence through the dark streets lined with closed warehouses that sent out a mingled odor of fruits and vegetables exotic to Jean in its newness. Often the black bulk of empty crates forced them into the cobble paved road-bed, thick with dust and fruit rinds and withered greens. Once, in common consent they stopped to listen to hundreds of crated pigeons, cooing softly behind closed doors.
"You are like a dove. She was right for once. A big, calm dove," he said, and they went on silent as before.
On the boat they chose the forward deck and watched the dark hills come closer. The great paddle-wheel churned a rhythm to Jean's thoughts, pictures of the day, from the time she had met Herrick and had walked through the crowded streets, to the present cool emptiness of the upper deck with the night wind touching her face and thousands of stars above. To Jean it had been the fullest day she had ever lived.