“Not yet,” he said, with a subtle compliment pleasantly implying that she was perilous. Everybody likes to be thought perilous. He went on: “I don’t know Rosslyn, but it can’t be much of a place for size. If you have a friend there, we’ll find her if we have to go to every house in Rosslyn.”
“But it’s getting rather late, isn’t it, to be knocking at all the doors all by myself?”
She had not meant to hint, and it was a mere coincidence that he thought to say:
“Couldn’t I go along?”
“Thank you, but it’s out in the country rather far, I’m afraid.”
“Then I must go along.”
“I couldn’t think of troubling you.”
The end of it was that he had his way, or she hers, or both theirs. He made no nonsense of adventure or escapade about it, and she was too well used to traveling alone to feel ashamed or alarmed. He led her to the taxi, told the driver that Grinden Hall was their objective and must be found. Then he climbed in with her, and they rode in a dark broken with the fitful lightnings of street-lamps and motors.
The taxi glided out M Street. The little shops of Georgetown went sidelong by. The cab turned abruptly to the left and clattered across the old aqueduct bridge. On a broad reach of the Potomac the new-risen moon spread a vast sheet of tin-foil of a crinkled sheen. This was all that was beautiful about the sordid neighborhood, but it was very beautiful, and tender to a strange degree.
Once across, the driver stopped and leaned round to call in at the door: