He accordingly retired to a retreat that one of his predecessors had built outside the city, which shades off on that side from stone and steel through gradations of frame-houses and rickety shanties into a wilderness of blackened fir-stumps. The Western cities lie open, and though the life in them is more suggestive of that of Paris than the staidness of an English town, they have neither gate nor barrier, and are usually ready to welcome all who care to enter: strong-armed men who limp in, red with dust, in dilapidated shoes, as well as purchasers of land and commercial enterprise directors. They have, it frequently happens, need of the one, and a bonus instead of taxes to offer the other, who may purpose to set up mills and workshops within their borders.
Austerly, however, was not altogether a recluse, and it came about one evening that Jimmy, who had arrived there with a few other guests, sat beside Anthea Merril in the garden of his house. The sunlight still shone upon the struggling grass, to which neither money nor labor could impart much resemblance to an English lawn, but great pines and cedars walled it in, and one caught entrancing vistas of shining water and coldly gleaming snow through the openings between their mighty trunks. The evening was hot and still, the air heavy with the ambrosial odors of the forest, and the dying roar of a great freight train that came throbbing out of its dim recesses emphasized the silence. The little house rose, gay with painted scroll-work and relieved by its trellises and wooden pillars, beneath the dark cedar branches across the lawn. Jimmy had seen Valentine and Miss Austerly sitting on the veranda a few minutes earlier. He was, however, just then looking at his companion, and wondering whether in spite of the pleasure it afforded him he had been wise in coming there at all.
Anthea was dressed richly, in a fashion which it seemed to him became her wonderfully well, and he was quite aware that the few minutes he had now spent in her company would be sufficient to render him restless during the remainder of the week. Jimmy had discovered that while it was difficult to resolve that he would think no more of her, it was considerably harder to carry out the prudent decision.
"It is some little time since I saw you last," she said.
"Four weeks," said Jimmy promptly. "That is, it would be if this were to-morrow."
Anthea smiled, though she naturally noticed that there was a certain significance in this accuracy. Jimmy realized it too, for he added a trifle hastily: "The fact that it was just before the Shasta went to sea fixed it in my mind."
"Of course!" and Anthea laughed. "That would, no doubt, account for it. Are your after-thoughts always as happy, Captain Wheelock?"
Jimmy felt a little uncomfortable. Her good-humor, in which there was nothing incisive, was, he felt, in one way a sufficient rebuff, though he could not tell whether she had meant it as such. It was also disconcerting to discover that she had evidently followed the train of reasoning which had led to the remark, though this was a thing she seemed addicted to doing. After all, there are men who fail to understand that in certain circumstances it is not insuperably difficult for a woman to tell their thoughts before they express them.
"I'm afraid I don't excel at that kind of thing," he said. "It's perhaps fortunate my friends realize it."
Anthea turned and looked at him with reposeful eyes. "Well," she said reflectively, "I almost fancied you were not particularly pleased to see me. You had, at least, very little to say at dinner."