He hesitated, uncertain whether she was just countering his own remark or telling him that he was her reason for being here.
"Will you have breakfast with me?" he invited.
"Yes," she answered, and gave him a sidelong glance, "if it's in my room."
He laughed, rich and full-throated. She took his arm and they went back to the elevators together. His heart was lighter now that Piquette was in Memphis with him....
There were eleven Southern governors at the meeting. Governor LeBlanc of Louisiana, like Governor Gentry of Tennessee, had sent a representative in his stead. As representative of the host state, Beauregard opened the meeting, welcomed the visitors and turned over the chairmanship to Governor Dortch of Georgia.
"Gentlemen, there is no point in delaying our principal discussion," said Dortch. "Within the past week, federal troops have moved into a Mississippi city to enforce the Supreme Court's infamous integration decree. For the first time since Reconstruction Days, hostile soldiers are on the soil of a sovereign Southern state. The question before us is, shall we bow to this invasion of states' rights and continue our hopeless fight in the courts, or shall we join hands in resisting force with force?"
Chubby Governor Marsh of Alabama rose to his feet.
"There wouldn't have been any federal troops if it hadn't been for this extremist segregation organization, the Konfederate Klan," he said heavily. "I belong to a segregationist organization myself: I suppose most of you do, because you got elected. But lynching and rioting and burning homes and schools is no way to resist integration. Mississippi's national guard should have been in Meridian."
"If I'd mobilized the guard, I'd have had a revolt on my hands," said Governor Ahlgren of Mississippi mildly. "Two-thirds of the guardsmen belong to the Klan."
"I'll go along with the majority, of course," said Marsh, "but I think this proposed Pact of Resistance can lead only to full-fledged military occupation of the South."