She smiled at him as she saw his indifferent
interrogation.
"It's better rolled with a pencil first," he said, and then returned to
the contemplation of his own affair.
The result of this was that, soon after, he was seated in the smoking
car of an electric train that, hurtling across a sedgy green expanse of
salt meadow, deposited him in a colorful thronging city built on sand
and the rim of the sea. It was best to avoid if possible even a casual
inquiry, and Bowman had spoken of Atlantic City. The afternoon was hot
and bright, the beach was still dotted with groups of bathers; and
Lemuel Doret found an inconspicuous place in a row of swing chairs
protected by an awning ... where he waited for evening. Below him a
young woman lay contentedly with her head in a youth's lap; a child in
a red scrap of bathing suit dug sturdily with an ineffectual tin spade.
The day declined, the water darkened and the groups vanished from the
beach. An attendant was stacking the swing chairs, and Lemuel Doret
left his place. The boardwalk, elevated above him, was filled with a
gay multitude, subdued by the early twilight and the brightening lemon-
yellow radiance of the strung globes. Drifting, with only his gaze
alert, in the scented mob, he stopped at an unremarkable lunch room for
coffee, and afterward turned down a side avenue to where some
automobiles waited at the curb. A driver moved from his seat as Lemuel
approached, but after a closer inspection the former's interest died.
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