"Enough of this nonsense, Monsieur. Let us go in to dinner."
And yet this controversy which had been heard by the others who had followed Zoya Rochal into the room, in spite of its apparent triviality, had done something to clear the atmosphere. Rowland's perfect good humor and air of guilelessness which seemed to see nothing but good humor and guilelessness in all those about him, had the effect of providing a common meeting ground of good-fellowship for those of different camps. And whatever the diversity of their opinions, the darkness of their thoughts and purposes, the dinner table gave no sign of the deeper undercurrents of their various allegiances.
And when they all rose from the table at the conclusion of the meal Rowland and Madame Rochal went to smoke their cigarettes.
"I can't make you out, Monsieur Rowland," she said when they were seated on a bench at the end of the garden. "At times you seem very much like an overgrown boy," she began, "and then--something makes me think that you are not so ingenuous as you look."
"I have traveled the world over, Madame," said Rowland with a laugh, "but I've never managed to learn anything, except that women are very beautiful and that men are born to be slaves."
She laid her fingers along his coat sleeve.
"Don't you know, foolish boy," she muttered with sudden earnestness, "that you have happened upon the very edge of an Inferno?"
"No, you surprise me. It has seemed very much like a sort of pleasant game to me." He laughed. "I kill, quite by accident, the chap that runs your shebang and you all come along and pat me on the back. It's great, I tell you. You haven't been in a German prison pen, Madame. The conversation is hardly worth mentioning, the food is unmentionable and now for the first time in a year I find myself set down in a milieu of beautiful women and clever men with real food to eat and real conversation to listen to, and you, Madame, wish to spoil my evening by speaking of Infernos. It's really not considerate of you."
He lolled lower in his seat and smoked luxuriously, gazing at her through half-closed eyes.
The fingers on his arm tightened.