When he awoke in the morning he lay as usual, greeting a shining new day, till he realized that it was not a shining day; it was an ominous day; everything was wrong. That something had happened—really had—was a fact that sternly patrolled his room. His chief reaction was not repentance nor dramatic interest, but a vexed longing to unwish the whole affair. "Hang it!" he groaned.
Already he was eager to make peace. He sympathized with Ruth. "Poor kid! it was rotten to row with her, her completely all in with the grippe."
At three in the afternoon he telephoned to her house. "Miss Ruth," he was informed, "was asleep; she was not very well."
Would the maid please ask Miss Ruth to call Mr. Ericson when she woke?
Certainly the maid would.
But by bedtime Ruth had not telephoned. Self-respect would not let him call again, for days, and Ruth never called him.
He went about alternately resentful at her stubbornness and seeing himself as a lout cast out of heaven. Then he saw her at a distance, on the platform of the subway station at Seventy-second Street. She was with Phil Dunleavy. She looked well, she was talking gaily, oblivious of old sorrows, certainly not in need of Carl Ericson.
That was the end, he knew. He watched them take a train; stood there alone, due at a meeting of the Aeronautical Society, but suddenly not wishing to go, not wishing to go anywhere nor do anything, friendless, bored, driftwood in the city.
So easily had the Hawk swooped down into her life, coming by chance, but glad to remain. So easily had he been driven away.