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E stood in the hot, stuffy booth and was wrenched by what he had done. To do this to Alice, after the rest! He wanted to go to her; he was shaken by a need to comfort her, such as had seized him so inconsistently on that night he left her to go out on the ice for Fidelia. Many times, when he thought of Alice, he had had pangs of this need but never with such sharpness as now when it was doubled by the need within him to check up the account to tally the total of his days which had passed since he had made the decision, against his father, with Alice.

He could not tally them over with Fidelia; she had not shared with him the making of the decision; she had come in only afterwards; she had never known the David Herrick who had followed the ideas of his father and, above all, she had no need to make a tally at all. But Alice had; she and he could go over everything together with complete understanding of all that was involved.

Arriving at the hotel, at his home, Fidelia met him with the announcement that the Vredicks had asked them to a supper-sail. The Vredick's sloop, the I'll Show You, lay with canvas flapping near the hotel; a bit of a breeze was blowing.

"Can't we get out of the party?" David asked.