Of the hours that followed it is unnecessary to speak in detail. It was one long rhapsody, and rhapsodies are apt to be a little tiresome to those other than the rhapsodists. Everybody has known such hours for themselves--or if they have not they are unfortunate. They breakfasted frugally--there is a delicious intimacy in breakfast no other meal knows, and then decided on Staten Island. Half an hour later they were voyaging down the bay, and in an hour were in the woods.
Corinna was inexorable on the question of eleven o'clock, and to Evan it seemed as if they had no sooner got there than they had to turn back again. Evan got sore, and the pleasure of the return journey was a little dimmed, though there is a kind of sweetness in these little tiffs too. Anybody seeing their eyes on each other, Corinna's as well as Evan's, would have known they were no brother and sister, but they still kept up the fiction.
As they neared home she said: "Do you mind if I go in alone?"
"Are you ashamed to be seen with me?" demanded Evan scowling.
"Silly! Didn't I propose this trip? The reason is very simple. Your ridiculous landlady looks on every man in the house as her property. I don't want to excite her ill-will, that's all."
Evan could not deny the truth of this characterisation of Carmen. "Go on ahead," he said. "I'll hang around in the Park for a while. See you to-night."
She stopped, and gave him an inscrutable look. "Oh, I'm sorry, I shan't be home to-night."
With this the ugly head of Corinna's mystery popped up again. It had been tormenting Evan all morning, but with a lover's pride he would not question her, and she volunteered no information.
"Oh!" said Evan flatly, and waited for her to say more.
But she seemed not to be aware that anything more was required and his brow darkened. "If it was me," he thought, "how eager I would be to explain what was taking me away from her, but she is mum!"
She hesitated a moment as if about to explain, then thought better of it, and hurried away, leaving Evan inwardly fuming.
He plumped down on a bench across the square from 45A, and thrusting his hands deep in his pockets, stretched out his legs and scowled at the pavement. A "platonic friendship" had no charms for him then. "I'm a fool!" he said to himself. "Her brother!"--a bitter note of laughter escaped him, "when I'm out of my mind with wanting her! What a fool I was to stand for it! She's just playing the regular girl's game--no blame to her of course, it's their instinct to keep a man at arm's length as long as they can. It pleases them to have us on the grill. And I fell for it! I'm on my way to make a precious fool of myself. If I can't find out where she's going to-night, I'll be clean off my nut before morning. But I wouldn't ask her! And if she's going out with another man--! Lord! which is worse, to know or not to know?"