"Yes, I did," answered Lydia. "He wanted the money and I wanted the freedom. It was nice for both of us." She glanced at O'Bannon, who was talking to Mrs. Piers as if Lydia didn't exist. She felt no hesitation in interrupting.
"You couldn't put me in prison for that, could you, Mr. O'Bannon?"
"No, I'm afraid not," said O'Bannon, and turned back to Fanny Piers.
After dinner she told Eleanor in strict confidence the story of the bicycle policeman, and made her promise not to tell O'Bannon.
"I shouldn't dream of telling anyone," said Eleanor with her humorous lift of the eyebrows. "I think it's a perfectly disgusting story and represents you at your worst."
When they sat down to bridge Lydia drew O'Bannon, and whatever antagonism had flashed out between them at dinner disappeared in a perfectly adjusted partnership. They found they played very much the same sort of game; they understood one another's makes and leads, and knew as if by magic the cards that the other held. It seemed as if they could not mistake each other. They were both courageous players, ready to take a chance, without overbidding. They knew when to be silent, and, with an occasional bad hand, to wait. But the bad hands were few. They had the luck not only of holding high cards but of holding cards which invariably supported each other. Their eyes met when they had triumphantly doubled their opponents' bids; they smiled at each other when they had won a slam by a subtle finesse or by patiently forcing discards. Their winnings were large. Lydia seemed as steady as a rock—not a trace of excitement in her look.
O'Bannon thought, after midnight when he was totaling the score, "I could make a terrible fool of myself about this girl."
When they were leaving he found himself standing on the steps beside her. The footman had run down the drive to see why her chauffeur, after a wait of more than an hour, wasn't bringing her car round. O'Bannon, who was driving himself in an open car, came out, turning up the collar of his overcoat, and found himself alone with her in the pale light of the waning moon, which gave, as the waning moon always does, the effect of being a strange, unfamiliar celestial visitor.
O'Bannon, like so many strict supporters of law, was subject to invasions of lawless impulses. He thought now how easy it would be to run off with a girl like this one and teach her that civilization was not such a complete protection as she thought it. What an outcry she would make, and yet perhaps she wouldn't really object! He had a theory that men and women were more susceptible to emotion in the first minutes of their meeting than at any subsequent time—at least in such first meetings as this.
She was standing wrapping her black-and-silver cloak about her with that straight-armed Indian pose.