So far as possible he
even employed the police through the medium of Johnnie. The East Side
water-front and the cheap lodging-houses of that part of the city he
combed with especial care. All the time he knew that in such a maze as
Manhattan it would be a miracle if he found her.
But miracles are made possible by miracle-workers. The Westerner was a
sixty-horse-power dynamo of energy. He felt responsible for Kitty and
he gave himself with single-minded devotion to the job of discovering
her.
His rides and walks with Beatrice were rare events now because he was
so keen on the business of looking for his Colorado protegee. He gave
them up reluctantly. Every time they went out together into the open
Miss Whitford became more discontented with the hothouse existence she
was living. He felt there was just a chance that if he were constant
enough, he might sweep her off her feet into that deeper current of
life that lay beyond the social shallows. But he had to sacrifice this
chance. He was not going to let Kitty's young soul be ship-wrecked if
he could help it, and he had an intuition that she was not wise enough
nor strong enough to keep off the rocks alone.
A part of his distress lay in the coolness of his imperious young
friend who lived on the Drive. Beatrice resented his divided
allegiance, though her own was very much in that condition. Clay and
she had from the first been good comrades. No man had ever so deeply
responded to her need of friendship.
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