Woodside nodded.
"All right!" he agreed. "We'll try it—but what the lady may do to you is quite another question."
"Which we will let the future determine," replied Porshinger, as he clicked up the last point.
There was one thing, at least, about Porshinger that was normal—his love of country life. Incident to this was his fondness for taking long walks in the early morning—a characteristic not at all accordant with his present station. He acquired it in the days when his occupation in the oil fields made it the regular manner of life.
Seven o'clock the following morning saw him on the highway, clad in knickerbockers and stout shoes, a Panama pulled down over his eyes and a light stick in his hand.
It was a glorious early summer day, with just a line of haze along the distant hills; the air was soft with the breath of the open country; the dew was still heavy on grass and shrub. As he swung along, whistling merrily as a school boy on his way to a vacation-day frolic, he did not in the remotest degree suggest the cold, hard man of finance, compared to whom an arctic night is as a torrid afternoon. It was the one occasion on which he permitted himself to relax and be entirely natural.
Presently, away off in front on the macadam road, he noticed a pedestrian—who, as he slowly decreased the distance, was resolved into a woman—and, as he gradually overtook her, into a tall, willowy figure, in a short walking skirt, high tan shoes lacing well up the leg, and a small Continental hat, set at a rakish angle.
"Who is it?" he kept asking himself—and then there came a sharp turn in the road and he recognized her.
It was Stephanie Lorraine.
A momentary smile of satisfaction crossed his lips, and he extended his stride a trifle. Here was an opportunity, better than any of Woodside's devising, for him to make her acquaintance—quite by accident and altogether informally. And for her to snub him, if she were so minded, with no one but themselves to witness it nor to remember.