“Um—you sing?”
“Yes—a little.”
“If you will sing for me afterward?”
“Certainly. With pleasure.”
“All right, then. What’s the story about?”
Ellinor gave him her eyes. “Did you rob the post-office at Escondido—really?”
Now it might well be embarrassing to be asked if you had committed a felony; but there was that behind the words of this naïve query—in look, in tone, in mental attitude—an unflinching and implicit faith that, since he had seen fit to do this thing, it must needs have been the right and wise thing to do, which stirred the felon’s pulses to a pleasant flutter and caused a certain tough and powerful muscle to thump foolishly at his ribs. The delicious intimacy, the baseless faith, was sweet to him.
“Sure, I did!” he answered lightly. “Lake is one talkative little man, isn’t he? Fie, fie! But, shucks! What can you expect? ‘The beast will do after his kind.’”
“And you’ll tell me about it?”
“After I smoke. Got to study up some plausible excuses, you know.”