"You know that if you need me in any way—"
From the steps she turned and, not trusting herself to speak, grasped his hand impulsively. Then she was gone.
As he stood looking down into the dusk after her, he wondered why she turned west, away from her home. He cleared his throat, to call after her.
But, well, she had always done things herself, in her own way. And she was always right.
Augusta did not know that Wardwell a few hours earlier had sauntered just this way that she was hurrying. She did not know as she crossed West street, now silent and deserted as a country road, that Jimmie had walked recklessly through its roaring traffic, weakly half hoping that something would happen to him. She did not know that he had stood just where she came to stand, looking down over the railing into the slip between two docks, asking questions of the lapping water.
A dock watchman who stood within a few feet of her put his lantern out of his hand, merely as a precaution. She did not look like any of the many kinds that he had seen coming to look too curiously at the water. But, she was in trouble. Happy people do not come peering down into rivers. He cautiously moved a little closer to her.
Then she turned and, without so much as a look back, crossed the street again and turned north.
"Whatever she was lookin' for," the watchman grumbled, "it wasn't here."
Augusta was not thinking or reasoning, or consciously searching for Jimmie. She had loosened her mind, as it were, and was letting herself drift in his wake. She understood him now. She knew now what he had been going through. She was following every thought of his as it had worked through his brain and had turned out into action. She was feeling with him and suffering the hurt that he had felt. But she was not following him now because she pitied him. It was not because she wished to care for him, to mother him, to make good her debt to him.
She was following him now because she loved him. Up to now she had needed him, his protection, his kindness, his dear thoughtfulness and his cheer. Now she needed him because she had found out, in this last half hour, that she loved him with a desperation that would have frightened her if she had been able to think of it. She did not care whether he was sick or well. She did not care whether he wanted to stay or go. She would find him. She would hold him. She would not stop walking until she had found him. And then she would put her arms around him. And not any other woman, nor even death itself would get him from her.