Many cigarettes he smoked while he roosted there, watching until the eyes of him ached with the eternal panorama of faces that were strange. Many times he started eagerly because he glimpsed a fluffy, blond pompadour with blue eyes beneath, and fancied for an instant that it was Mary.
Then, when he was speculating upon the advisability of following the stream of people that flowed out upon the pleasure pier, Mary passed by so close that her skirt brushed his toes; passed him by, and he sat there like a paralytic and let her go. And in the heart of him was a queer, heavy throb that he did not in the least understand.
She was dressed in blue linen with heavy, white lace in patches here and there, and she had a big, white hat tilted back from her face and a long white plume drooping to one shoulder. Another girl was with her, and a man--a man with dented panama hat and pink cheeks and a white waistcoat and tan shoes; a man whom Andy suddenly hated most unreasonably.
When they were all but lost in the crowd, Andy got down, gripped his cane vindictively and followed. After all, the man was walking beside the other girl, and not beside Mary--and the reflection brought much solace. With the nodding, white feather to guide him, he followed them down the walk, lost them for a second, saw them turn in at the wide-open doors of the natatorium, saw them pause there, just inside. Then a huge woman pushed before him, stood there and narrowed his range of vision down to her own generous hat with its huge roses, and when he had edged past her the three were gone.
Andy waited, comforted by the knowledge that they had not come out, until the minutes passed his patience and he went in, searched the gallery unavailingly, came out again and wandered on dispiritedly to the pleasure pier. There, leaning over the rail, he saw her again almost beneath him in the sand, scantily clad in a bathing suit. The man, still more scantily clad, was trying to coax her into the water and she was hanging back and laughing a good deal, with an occasional squeal.
Andy leaned rather heavily upon the railing and watched her gloweringly, incredulously. Custom has much to do with a man's (or a woman's) idea of propriety, and one Andrew Green had for long been unaccustomed to the sight of nice young women disporting themselves thus in so public a place. He could not reconcile it with the girl as he had known her in her father's cabin, and he was not at all sure that he wanted to do so.