"You've got to hurry," he warned. "I'm going to get out of this house before anything crazy happens to me. Meet me down at the corner of the boulevard."
He left the room with intent to avoid both his mother and Mrs. Joyce. At the moment he wished to remove himself from any further argument, and his longing for the trees and the park was a genuine reaction from his long stress of the supernatural. "My search for a job can go over till to-morrow," he decided.
He was sufficiently recovered from his bewilderment, his pain of the night before, to glow with pleasure as he saw Leonora swinging along toward him. "She carries herself well," he said.
She was dressed in a light-gray skirt and jacket, and her white hat had a long, gray quill which waved back over the rim, giving her the jaunty air of a yacht under reefed sail. Her face was brilliant with color, and her eyes were alight with humor. "Aunt Louise wanted to know where we were going, and I said 'St. Joe, Michigan.'"
He pretended not to see the joke. "St. Joe; why St. Joe?"
As she caught his stride she demurely answered, "If you don't know, it's not for me to explain."
"I suppose people _do_ go to St. Joe for other purposes than marriage?"
"It is possible, but they never get into the newspapers. We only hear of the young things who beat their angry parents by just one boat." She changed her tone. "Where _shall_ we go?"
She pretended to be shocked. "How sudden you are! We've only known each other two days."
"Three. However, we might make it a trial marriage. You could put me on probation."
"After your display of inconstancy last night I wouldn't trust you even for a probationary engagement."
He harked back to the vision of Altair. "She _was_ beautiful, wasn't she? Did she really exist, or was it merely some sort of hallucination?"
"I thought you weren't going to discuss these subjects?"
He assented instantly. "Quite right. Give me a crack on the ear every time I break out. I wish I were a robin. See that chap on the lawn! His clothes grow of themselves, and as for food, all he has to do is to tap on the ground, and out pops a worm."
"I prefer roast beef and asparagus tips; and as for wearing the same feathers all the time--horrible!"