"I swear to you, Con," I assured her. "I know Jack Foe inside and out."
She had opened her fan again very deliberately; and as deliberately she closed it.
"No man ever knew that of a man," she said; "nor no woman either. … You're a rotter, Roddy—but you're rather a dear."
NIGHT THE THIRTEENTH.
ESCAPE.
Somewhere in the bustle of landing and scrimmage past the Customs, Miss Denistoun lost sight of the two travellers; and with that, for a time, she goes out of the story.
You may almost put it that for a time they do the same. At all events for the next few weeks the record keeps a very slight hold on them and their doings. Jack knew, you see, that—though not a disapproving sort, as a rule, and in those days (though you children will hardly believe it) inclined to like my friends the better for doing what they jolly well pleased—I barred this vendetta-game of his, and would have called him off if I could. Folk were a bit more squeamish, if you remember, in those dear old pre-War days.
But please note this, for it is a part of his story. Jack wrote seldom, having a sense that I didn't want to hear. When he did write, however, he was liable at any time to break away from the light, half-jesting, half-defiant tone which he had purposely chosen to cover our disagreement, and to give me a sentence or two, or even a page, of cold-blooded confession. It may have been that his purpose, at that point, suddenly absorbed him, sucked him under. It may have been that his fixed idea had begun to spread like a disease over his other sensibilities, hardening and deadening the tissue, so that he did this kind of thing unconsciously. It may have been both. You shall judge before we have finished.
I will give you just one specimen. It occurs in the very first letter addressed from America. He and Farrell had spent five days in New York: