Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/339

 Street without conscious choice of destination, except that he was avoiding the direction of Number 4689 and he forgot the taxi he had left waiting until the man drove after him and called.

"Oh, yes," Hale recollected. "Thanks." And he got in.

"Where to, sir?"

Where to? That was it; where to, this Sunday morning? Not to Sybil Russell; the plan of spending this day with her had set him swearing hardly an hour ago and that was before the newspaper had come. Now the idea made him sick as if with hollowness and heaviness—contradictory, how could that be, hollow heaviness—but here he had it within him. He had other contradictions, too; he was hungry; at least, the habit of eating, before he went about in the morning, was on him; but he could not feel himself stomaching food. Where to? He had to answer that or pay off the man and walk; and then, where to? That was only putting the question back to himself.

"Just drive me about a while," Hale said.

"North?" suggested the man; he meant nothing by it, nothing more than that north along the lake lie the most attractive roads on a summer Sunday morning. But north lay Evanston.

"No," said Hale. "The west side parks; just drive me through those."

He lit a cigarette as the cab turned from Clearedge; Sunday, quiet and calm; a few more bathers, in bathrobes, coats or mackintoshes over bathing suits and barefooted or in slippers, bound for the beaches; except for the cabs and street cars and here and there an opening refreshment place, no business activity. But the newspapers to-day would be busy; what had happened