"Saturday: Stood all day in front of Martha Putnam hotel, waiting for Candy Girl to come in or out. Small boys a nuisance. Policeman asked me if I'd lost anything in that neighborhood. No luck.
"Sunday: Stood all day in front of Martha Putnam hotel waiting for Candy Girl to come in or out. Boys not so bad. New cop asks questions. Gave new cop a five.
"Monday: Got to Martha Putnam early, and at ten o'clock saw taxi arrive and ducked across street, and——"
He never could have written the rest of it; for from the taxi there descended a young lady who handed a light suit case to the porter, asked him to pay the bill, and would have entered the Martha Putnam had she not discovered a man nearly blocking her path, with an extended hand, and with an ingratiating smile on his face, who said, "How lucky to meet you just as I was about to leave. How are you?"
The policeman on the corner grinned, pulled his mustache, winked at himself, jingled the change in his pocket left from that grateful five, and then swung up his hand to caution the taxi driver as the latter turned into the cross street.
"You're a nice one, I must say," she remarked, half petulantly. "You might at least have dropped me a note to ask how I am getting along, and whether I am industrious, and all that rot! But did you? No! You took me to the horse show, and back to the hotel, and then vanished as if you had withdrawn yourself into your musty old shell!"
It was on the very tip of his tongue to tell her there on the street of his long days and nights of hope and fear, of his terrible remissness of memory, and of his desperation; but he checked himself in time and expostulated, "I did write you!" and then, his moment of honesty passing to the tortuous ways of diplomacy asked, "Didn't you get the letter?" And he inquired as sincerely as if he did not already know that this was an impossibility because he had not addressed it to her real name, whatever that might be.
"No," she said, "I didn't." But he saw by her glance of indignation toward the hotel entrance that she believed someone therein remiss, and credited him with thoughtfulness. His spirits raised and he was himself once more, fencing as best he might for an opening.
"Well, it doesn't matter, now that I've found you," he said with such profound gladness in his voice that it caused her to glance at him, half bewildered, and half curiously, and then to play her own part, as if to prevent him from betraying too much.
"I've been away for three whole days. Went up to visit some friends in Montreal. Had a glorious time. Had my first lesson in skating and——But tell me, how long shall you be here in town?"