After lunch he did not dare go to the bedroom to find out if Ethel had left. Packing her bags had probably been a feminine dodge, he told himself; but in his heart he knew only too well that she had gone or was going. If Ethel was still upstairs, the least he could do was go up and try to stop her, tell her he was sorry, or even say good-­bye. Instead, he went for a walk alone in the direction of Tom Nevershead, the road he should have taken and thought he was taking last night in the fog, all the way.

Though he had no intention of giving it back—indeed, as he had tried to explain to Ethel, what good would it do?—John Grandin realized he had made an incredibly stupid mistake ever to take the cap in the first place. But as he reviewed the situation now, trying to find a way out, his whole dilemma seemed founded on mistakes.

From the very start of the holiday, each time it had been given him to make a decision, select a choice of two actions, or exercise judgment of any kind, he had invariably chosen the wrong one, almost the fatal one—willfully, perhaps, though he didn’t know it at the time. It had been a bitter comedy of errors from the beginning.