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The C. , M. & St. P. gate was down at the other end and I raced for it and made it. I had forgotten one thing, though, and that was enough to keep me awake and worried half the night. This train got into Chicago ten minutes after the other. Ellen had that much time to disappear into one of the largest cities in the world.

I gave the porter a wire to my family to send from Milwaukee, and at eight o’clock next morning I pushed violently by a whole line of passengers, clamoring over their bags parked in the vestibule, and shot out of the door with a sort of scramble over the porter’s back. For a moment the confusion of a great station, the voluminous sounds and echoes and cross-currents of bells and smoke struck me helpless. Then I dashed for the exit and toward the only chance I knew of finding her.

I had guessed right. She was standing at the telegraph counter, sending off heaven knows what black lie to her mother, and her expression when she saw me had a sort of terror mixed up with its surprise. There was cunning in it too. She was thinking quickly–she would have liked to walk away from me as if I weren’t there, and go about her own business, but she couldn’t. I was too matter-of-fact a thing in her life. So we stood silently watching each other and each thinking hard.

“The Brokaws are in Florida,” I said after a minute.

“It was nice of you to take such a long trip to tell me that.”

“Since you’ve found it out, don’t you think you’d better go on to school?”

“Please let me alone, Eddie,” she said.

“I’ll go as far as New York with you. I’ve decided to go back early myself.”

“You’d better let me alone.” Her lovely eyes narrowed and her face took on a look of dumb-animal-like resistance. She made a visible effort, the cunning flickered back into it, then both were gone, and in their stead was a cheerful reassuring smile that all but convinced me.

“Eddie, you silly child, don’t you think I’m old enough to take care of myself?” I didn’t answer.”I’m going to meet a man, you understand. I just want to see him today. I’ve got my ticket East on the five o’clock train. If you don’t believe it, here it is in my bag.”

“I believe you.”

“The man isn’t anybody that you know and–frankly, I think you’re being awfully fresh and impossible.”

“I know who the man is.”

Again she lost control of her face. That terrible expression came back into it and she spoke with almost a snarl:

“You’d better let me alone.”

I took the blank out of her hand and wrote out an explanatory telegram to her mother. Then I turned to Ellen and said a little roughly:

“We’ll take the five o’clock train East together. Meanwhile you’re going to spend the day with me.”

The mere sound of my own voice saying this so emphatically encouraged me, and I think it impressed her too; at any rate, she submitted–at least temporarily–and came along without protest while I bought my ticket.

When I start to piece together the fragments of that day a sort of confusion begins, as if my memory didn’t want to yield up any of it, or my consciousness let any of it pass through. There was a bright, fierce morning during which we rode about in a taxicab and went to a department store where Ellen said she wanted to buy something and then tried to slip away from me by a back way. I had the feeling, for an hour, that someone was following us along Lake Shore Drive in a taxicab, and I would try to catch them by turning quickly or looking suddenly into the chauffeur’s mirror; but I could find no one, and when I turned back I could see that Ellen’s face was contorted with mirthless, unnatural laughter.

All morning there was a raw, bleak wind off the lake, but when we went to the Blackstone for lunch a light snow came down past the windows and we talked almost naturally about our friends, and about casual things. Suddenly her tone changed; she grew serious and looked me in the eye, straight and sincere.