He looked at her doubtfully, and then laughed. "You are sort of a queer girl, ain't you? I wish though, I could stay and buzz you longer, but I have only time to get my train, so good-by."
"Good-by," said Nattie, betraying all her relief at his departure in the sudden animation of her voice, something so different from her preceding manner that he could but notice it, and he turned, looked at her, as if a suspicion of its true cause penetrated his mind at last, frowned, and then with that former look she did not understand crossing his face, nodded and ran for the depot, coming into violent collision with a fat Dutchman, looking perplexedly for a barber's shop. And thus the red hair, the bear's grease, the sham jewelry, and the obtrusive, fighting teeth disappeared forever from Nattie's sight, leaving her with a bewildered look on her face, as if, indeed, just awakened from that imagined nightmare.
She looked around the office blankly. Everything was there just as usual, the little key and the sounder, over which had come all "C's" pleasant talk. "C!" That creature! The odor of his detestable musk hovered about her even now, but not yet could she realize that her "C" was no more.
CHAPTER VII.
"GOOD-BY."
It was a very long face that Nattie carried to the Hotel Norman that night; so long that Miss Kling at once saw that something was amiss, and while curiously wondering as to the cause, took a grim satisfaction in the fact. For Miss Kling liked not to see cheerful faces; why should others be happy when she had not found her other self?
Nattie's first act on gaining her own room was to drag forth that carefully-preserved pen and ink sketch, and tear it to atoms, annihilating the chubby Cupid with especial care.
"And now," she thought to herself savagely, as she burned up the pieces, "I never will be interested in people again, unless I know all about them. Imagination is too dangerous a guide for me!"
Having thus exterminated the illustrated edition of her romance, Nattie felt the necessity of unburdening her mind, her sorrow not being too deep for words, and with that object sought Cyn; a proceeding much disapproved of by Miss Kling, who, knowing well that weakness of human nature that seeks a friendly bosom wherein to repose its sorrows, rightly surmised her lodger's destination and design, and decidedly objected to any one knowing more than she herself did.
Nattie found her friend at home, but to her vexation, not alone. With her was Quimby, who had called in the untold hope of gleaning tidings of the young lady who had—as he said to himself—floored him. His confusion at the sight of her, remembering as he did the somewhat unusual circumstances of their last meeting, was indescribable; indeed, his knees actually knocked together. Nattie, however, whose latest experience had effaced the effect, and almost the remembrance of that former one, bade him good-evening, without the least trace of consciousness or embarrassment, a composure of manner that astounded but at the same time filled him with admiration.