“You got out all right, Varnum.  You won’t be locked up,” said Mr. Plimpton, banteringly.

“So did you,” retorted Varnum.

“So did Ferguson, so did Constable.”

“So did Eldon Parr,” remarked another man, amidst a climax of laughter.

“Langmaid handled that pretty well.”

Hodder felt Everett Constable fidget.

“Bedloe’s all right, but he’s a dreamer,” Mr. Plimpton volunteered.

“Then I wish he’d stop dreaming,” said Mr. Ferguson, and there was more laughter, although he had spoken savagely.

“That’s what he is, a dreamer,” Varnum ejaculated.  “Say, he told George Carter the other day that prostitution wasn’t necessary, that in fifty years we’d have largely done away with it.  Think of that, and it’s as old as Sodom and Gomorrah!”

“If Hubbell had his way, he’d make this town look like a Connecticut hill village—­he’d drive all the prosperity out of it.  All the railroads would have to abandon their terminals—­there’d be no more traffic, and you’d have to walk across the bridge to get a drink.”

“Well,” said Mr. Plimpton, “Tom Beatty’s good enough for me, for a while.”

Beatty, Hodder knew, was the “boss,” of the city, with headquarters in a downtown saloon.

“Beatty’s been maligned,” Mr. Varnum declared.  “I don’t say he’s a saint, but he’s run the town pretty well, on the whole, and kept the vice where it belongs, out of sight.  He’s made his pile, but he’s entitled to something we all are.  You always know where you stand with Beatty.  But say, if Hubbell and his crowd—­”

“Don’t worry about Bedloe,—­he’ll get called in, he’ll come home to roost like the rest of them,” said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully.  “The people can’t govern themselves,—­only Bedloe doesn’t know it.  Some day he’ll find it out.” . . .

The French window beside him was open, and Hodder slipped out, unnoticed, into the warm night and stood staring at the darkness.  His one desire had been to get away, out of hearing, and he pressed forward over the tiled pavement until he stumbled against a stone balustrade that guarded a drop of five feet or so to the lawn below.  At the same time he heard his name called.

“Is that you, Mr. Hodder?”

He started.  The voice had a wistful tremulousness, and might almost have been the echo of the leaves stirring in the night air.  Then he perceived, in a shaft of light from one of the drawing-room windows near by, a girl standing beside the balustrade; and as she came towards him, with tentative steps, the light played conjurer, catching the silvery gauze of her dress and striking an aura through the film of her hair.

“It’s Nan Ferguson,” she said.

“Of course,” he exclaimed, collecting himself.  “How stupid of me not to have recognized you!”

“I’m so glad you came out,” she went on impulsively, yet shyly, “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was that that thing happened at the table.”