"You do us much honor," said the Governor. "Mr. Comly and I shall be pleased, I'm sure."
Archie had often eaten alone in just such pleasant little inns from sheer lack of courage to make acquaintances, but it seemed the most natural thing in the world for the Governor to establish himself on terms of intimacy with perfect strangers. Their party was the merriest in the room, and Archie was aware of envious glances from other tables that were not enlivened by a raconteur so affable and amusing as the Governor.
"It's so nice to stumble into a place like this where every one may speak to every one else and be sure, you know!" said Miss Seebrook.
"It does rather strengthen one's faith in the human race," Archie agreed, reflecting that if she had known that upstairs in the amiable Mr. Saulsbury's room reposed fifty thousand dollars of stolen money her confidence in the exclusiveness of the Cornford Inn would have been somewhat shaken. But the ironic humor of the whole thing overmastered his sense of guilt and he managed to hold the table for a little while without the Governor's assistance as he talked of the French chateaux with honest knowledge. The Seebrooks had motored through the chateau country the year before the war and as Archie had once made the excursion with an architect he was on firm ground.
"There's a thorough man for you!" exclaimed the Governor proudly when Archie supplied some dates in French history for which Miss Seebrook fumbled.
They continued their talk over coffee served in the garden. When the music began Seebrook and Walters recalled a bridge engagement and the Governor announced that he must look up an old friend who lived in Cornford. He produced a piece of paper on which he had scratched one of the diagrams he was eternally sketching as though consulting a memorandum of an address.
"I shall be back shortly," he said as they separated in the office.
Seebrook and Walters found their bridge partners and Archie and Miss Seebrook joined the considerable company that were already dancing. Only a few days earlier nothing could have persuaded Archie to dance, but now that he was plunged into a life of adventure the fear of dropping dead from excessive exercise no longer restrained him. Miss Seebrook undoubtedly enjoyed dancing and after a one-step and a fox-trot she declared that she would just love to dance all night. It had been a long time since Archie had heard a girl make this highly unoriginal remark, and in his own joy of the occasion he found it tinkling pleasantly in remote recesses of his memory. As Miss Seebrook pouted when he suggested that she might like him to introduce some of the other men and said that she was perfectly satisfied, he hastened to assure her that the rôle of monopolist was wholly agreeable to him. In this mad new life a flirtation was only an incident of the day's work, and Miss Seebrook was not at all averse to flirting with him.
She thought it would be fine to take a breath of air, and gathering up her cloak they went into the garden for an ice. This refreshment ordered he was conscious of new and pleasant thrills as he faced her across the table. His youth stirred in him again. It was reassuring to have this proof that one might be a lost sheep dyed to deepest black and yet indulge in philandering under the June stars with a pretty girl—a handsome stately girl she was!—unrestrained by the thought that she would run away screaming for the police if she knew that he was a man who shot people and consorted with thieves and very likely would die on the gallows or be strapped in an electric chair before he got his deserts. His mind had passed through innumerable phases since he left his sister's house in Washington, and now as he shamelessly flirted with Miss Seebrook he knew himself for an unmoral creature, a degenerate who was all the more dangerous for being able to pass muster among decent folk. He had always imagined that citizens of the underworld were limited in their social indulgences to cautious meetings in the back rooms of low saloons, but this he had found to be a serious mistake. It was clear that the élite among the lawless might ride the high crest of social success.
His only nervousness was due to the fear that he might betray himself. It was wholly possible that Miss Seebrook knew some of his friends; in fact she mentioned a family in Lenox that he knew very well. She was expert in all the niceties of flirtation and he responded joyously, as surprised and delighted as a child with a new toy at the ease with which he conveyed to her the idea that his life had been an immeasurable dark waste till she had dawned upon his enraptured vision. Her back was toward the inn and across her shoulders he could see the swaying figures in the ball room. The light from a garden lamp played upon her head and brightened in her fair hair.