All the morning long, he smote his brows and his piano by
turns. The new _motif_ he was seeking, refused to be found.
Later, fortified by Eulaly's fried chicken and rhubarb pie, he tried it
again, invitingly playing over the preceding _motif_ in every possible
key and tempo. It was of no use. He slammed down the top of his piano,
tore across a half-finished page, caught up his cap, mounted his bicycle
and rushed away up the road, quite regardless of the clouds lying low in
the western sky.
Fifteen miles of scorching over country roads sufficed to bring him to a
calmer mood, and he turned his wheel towards the Sykes homestead once
more. The _motif_ was still as far beyond his grasp as ever; but there
were other things in life besides elusive _motifs_. The increasing
blackness above his head was one of them; his hunger was another, and he
quickened his pace. His piano might be awaiting him in mute reproach; but
then, so did Eulaly's doughnuts await him, and there was no reproach in
those, at least, not until some time later. He fell to whistling a strain
of his overture, as he rode swiftly along, quite unconscious of the fact
that disaster, in the person of Miss Phebe McAlister, was riding quite as
swiftly to meet him.
Three miles from his boarding-place, the storm overtook him with a rush
which straight-way reduced the roads to the consistency of cream.
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