It was eleven o’clock when they left the Fiore d’Italia, and Tamea had sung, danced and played her way into the hearts of the patrons to such an extent that Dan felt he could never bear to patronize that restaurant again. Thus he retired with the added conviction that in addition to robbing him of his friends Tamea had now robbed him of his favorite restaurant. Like all bachelors he was a creature of habit and resented the slightest interference with those habits.
The following morning he journeyed to Sacramento to arrange for Tamea’s entrance into the convent there. To his huge disgust small-pox had developed in the school and the convent was under quarantine. So he returned to San Francisco and, feeling a trifle depressed at the manner in which fate was pursuing him, he telephoned to Maisie.
With characteristic feminine ease Maisie elected to forget that she had been fifty per cent responsible for their disagreement at Del Monte. She had thought the matter over, tearfully but at great length, and had come to the conclusion that even if she was not a martyr she could not afford to let Dan Pritchard think so. After a silence of about two weeks Dan had a habit of ringing up and burying the hatchet, and Maisie hadn’t the slightest doubt but that this was his mission now. She resolved to be dignified and enjoy his suit for reëstablishment of the entente cordiale.
“Hello, Dan’l,” she answered, and her clear, cool voice sounded like music in Dan’s ears. “Are you in trouble?”
“I’m up to my eyebrows in it, Maisie!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Dan! But then it’s no more than I expected. I thought you’d send for me when you needed me.”
“I do not need you!” he replied furiously, and hung up.
CHAPTER XXIII
Throughout these late trying experiences Dan had been further distressed to discover that during the hours he was unavoidably separated from Tamea, he thought more about her than he did of his business. He had missed her bright presence far too keenly during her brief sojourn at the convent—so much so, in fact, that when one day he asked himself if it were really possible that he, sober, steady, dependable, sane Dan Pritchard, had fallen in love with this lovely half-caste girl, his common sense assured him that it was even so.
He told himself that this was silly, stupid, unintelligent, that he could not afford to yield to this tremendous temptation, that it would be a terrible mistake, bitterly to be repented. Nevertheless, he lacked the courage or the steadfastness of purpose to take the offensive immediately; he told himself he would take the offensive, but not immediately. . . and following his brief spat with Maisie over the telephone he found Tamea’s society so comforting and stimulating that he shuddered at the thought of hurting her—himself—with the promulgation of a sophisticated argument she could not possibly understand and which she would have rejected even had she possessed the gift of understanding a white man’s reason for discarding her love, even while he yearned for it.