One wonderful afternoon in October, when the distances were mist-hung,
and the skies very clear, Samson sat across the table from Adrienne
Lescott at a road-house on the Sound. The sun had set through great
cloud battalions massed against the west, and the horizon was fading
into darkness through a haze like ash of roses. She had picked him up
on the Avenue, and taken him into her car for a short spin, but the
afternoon had beguiled them, luring them on a little further, and still
a little further. When they were a score of miles from Manhattan, the
car had suddenly broken down. It would, the chauffeur told them, be the
matter of an hour to effect repairs, so the girl, explaining to the boy
that this event gave the affair the aspect of adventure, turned and led
the way, on foot, to the nearest road-house.

"We will telephone that we shall be late, and then have dinner," she
laughed. "And for me to have dinner with you alone, unchaperoned at a
country inn, is by New York standards delightfully unconventional. It
borders on wickedness." Then, since their attitude toward each other
was so friendly and innocent, they both laughed. They had dined under
the trees of an old manor house, built a century ago, and now converted
into an inn, and they had enjoyed themselves because it seemed to them
pleasingly paradoxical that they should find in a place seemingly so
shabby-genteel a cuisine and service of such excellence. Neither
of them had ever been there before, and neither of them knew that the
reputation of this establishment was in its own way wide--and unsavory.
They had no way of knowing that, because of several thoroughly bruited
scandals which had had origin here, it was a tabooed spot, except for
persons who preferred a semi-shady retreat; and they passed over
without suspicion the palpable surprise of the head waiter when they
elected to occupy a table on the terrace instead of a cabinet
particulier.