"No, he doesn't," said Eugene, still white and shaking. "Don't stand talking. I'm sick."
"Of course," returned Joe. "But there's one thing I would like to ask you—"
"Your father's health is perfect, I believe."
"It—it—it was something else," Joe stammered, pitifully. "Are they all—are they all—all right at—at Judge Pike's?"
"Quite!" Eugene replied, sharply. "Are you going to get me away from here? I'm sick, I tell you!"
"This street," said Joe, and cheerfully led the way.
Five minutes later the two had parted, and Joe leaned against a cheap restaurant sign-board, drearily staring after the lamps of the gypsy night-cab he had found for his step-brother. Eugene had not offered to share the vehicle with him, had not even replied to his good-night.
And Joe himself had neglected to do something he might well have done: he had not asked Eugene for news of Ariel Tabor. It will not justify him entirely to suppose that he assumed that her grandfather and she had left Canaan never to return, and therefore Eugene knew nothing of her; no such explanation serves Joe for his neglect, for the fair truth is that he had not thought of her. She had been a sort of playmate, before his flight, a friend taken for granted, about whom he had consciously thought little more than he thought about himself—and easily forgotten. Not forgotten in the sense that she had passed out of his memory, but forgotten none the less; she had never had a place in his imaginings, and so it befell that when he no longer saw her from day to day, she had gone from his thoughts altogether.