With a new sense of the importance of his mission he sought a boarding house. He was directed by the watchman at the railroad station, a good-looking freedman, an employee of the Mayor of the town, to the widow Kennedy's. Her house was situated on a quiet street just outside the enclosure of the United States Arsenal.
Cook was a man of pleasing address, twenty-eight years old, blue-eyed, blond, handsome, affable, genial in manner and a good mixer. Within twenty-four hours he had made friends with the widow and every boarder in the house.
They introduced him to their friends and in a week he had won the good opinion of the leading citizens of the place. A few days later the widow's pretty daughter arrived from boarding school and the young adventurer faced the first problem of his mission.
She was a slender, dark-eyed, sensitive creature of eighteen. Shy, romantic, and all eyes for the great adventure of every Southern girl's life—the coming of the Prince Charming who would some day ride up to her door, doff his plumed hat, kiss her hand and kneel at her feet?
Cook read the eagerness in her brown eyes the first hour of their meeting. And what was more serious he felt the first throb of emotion that had ever distressed him in the presence of a woman.
He had never made love. He had tried all other adventures. He had never met the type that appealed to his impulsive mind. He was angry with himself for the almost resistless impulse that came, to flirt with this girl.
It could only be a flirtation at best and, it could only end in bitterness and hatred and tragedy in the end. He had done dark deeds on the Western plains. But they were man deeds. No delicate woman had been involved in their tangled ethics.
There was something serious in his nature that said no to a flirtation of any kind with a lovely girl. He had always intended to take women seriously. He did take them seriously. He wouldn't hesitate to kill a man if he were cornered. But a woman—that was different. He tried to avoid the eyes of Virginia. He couldn't. In spite of all, seated opposite at the table, he found himself looking into their brown liquid depths. They were big, soulful eyes, full of tenderness and faith and wonder and joy. And they kept saying to him:
"Come here, stranger man, and tell me who you are, where you came from, where you're going, and what's your hurry."
There was nothing immodest or forward in them. They just kept calling him.