"I'll go with you now," declared the timber buyer.
CHAPTER VI
In a squalid room above stairs, Halloway sat, coatless, with his flannel shirt open on a throat that rose from the swell of his chest as a tower rises from a hill. His hair was rumpled; his whole aspect disheveled; but when he grinned there was the flash of strong teeth as white as a hound's and as even as a professional beauty's.
"Now tell me," he demanded with prompt interest, "who is this barbaric and regal creature in whose train I find you? Do you assert any claim of copyright—or prior discovery, or is it a clear field and no favor?"
When Brent answered, it was with challenging decisiveness. "A clear field, yes—but certainly no favor for either of us. She is primitive enough to hold fast to a wholesome code. I wouldn't advise any philandering."
Halloway bent his head backward and gazed meditatively at the cloud of smoke which he sent ceiling-ward.
"So the faithful and chivalrous friend is giving me the benefit of his experience touching the stern virtue of an almost Druid life," he commented. "Yet I know these people as few outsiders do."
"Nevertheless, you are an outsider, Jack. When we last sat quarreling in your rooms, your windows gave off over the rhododendron of Central Park—and the bronze horseman in the Plaza. Here the rhododendron has other uses than the decorative. She could be only a reckless adventure in your life—and in all likelihood, a fatal one."
With quiet amusement in the eyes that still gazed upward, Halloway received this gratuitous counsel.