"You must permit me to see you to the door, Miss Van Rossum," I said, "it is the least I can do. I will surely let you know, if I hear anything."
She nodded, very pleasantly, and went down the distressing stair-carpet with the ease of her perfect physical training. At the door there was a big brute of a sixty horsepower runabout and a chauffeur, who swiftly cast aside a half-consumed cigarette and stood at attention. She stopped on the stoop and turned to me.
"I—I don't think I know any more than when I came," she said, rather haltingly. "There—there wasn't anything wrong, was there, Mr. Cole?"
"My dear young lady, I am proud to say that Gordon is incapable of doing anything that would infringe the laws. But he certainly has done an evil thing, for he has treated you very brutally, and I will never forgive him. He has failed to appreciate—to understand. If he has discovered that his heart—that he was incapable of giving you the strongest and most genuine love, it is his misfortune and—I am afraid, perhaps yours, and he did well to go away. But he should have been more considerate, he ought to have explained things in person instead of——"
"But you must remember that I was in Florida, Mr. Cole," she interrupted.
"Then he should have taken the first train and joined you there. A man has no business to shirk a duty," I said indignantly.
"Oh! Mr. Cole! You must remember that Gordon isn't—isn't a man quite like others. He has the quick and impulsive temperament of so many artistic people."
"He always pretends to be so cool and to act only after the most mature deliberation," I objected.
"True enough, but then, you know, that sort of thing is often rather a pose. I suppose that none of us is quite free from a little pretense, under which the true man or woman shows."
"I am glad indeed to hear you take his part," I told her, "and I hope he will do some fine manly things over there and return in his right mind, with his eyes open to—to what he has been so foolish as to——"