"Delighted to meet you," he said. "I know your old rascal of a husband well, Mrs. Lawless. Many a good time we've had together in the past."

"And shall have in the future," Chris struck in casually. "Don't put it so definitely in the past."

He turned to a boyish-looking youth who had been standing looking on rather sheepishly. "Marie, this is Atkins."

The boy blushed and grinned. He gripped Marie's hand with bearlike fervency.

"Awfully pleased to meet you," he said. "Shall we go and look on?

Chris and Feathers are going to play pills."

Marie raised dazed eyes to him.

"Feathers--who is Feathers?" she asked helplessly.

"I'm Feathers," Dakers explained casually. "So-called on account of my hair--which invariably stands up on end. You may have noticed."

He pa.s.sed a big hand over his s.h.a.ggy head, and Marie smiled.

"Anyway, I don't know what the game of pills is," she said.

The boy Atkins began to explain.

"It's billiards. They're rotten players, both of them, and we shall get some fun out of watching them. I'll find you a good seat."

Chris looked at his wife dubiously.

"If you're tired--if you'd rather I didn't play," he began diffidently, but the girl shook her head.

"Oh, no, please! I should love to watch."

Whatever he had done, she never for one moment lost sight of the fact that she loved him--that he was everything in the world to her, and though as yet she could not realize the full enormity of what she had just discovered, her one dread was lest she should still further alienate him. She knew that Chris was so easily bored and annoyed; she knew that he hated headachy people. He liked a woman to be a pal to him--that was, when he considered the s.e.x at all.

It was odd that during the last half-hour the relationship which she had imagined had existed between them since the moment when he asked her to marry him had been utterly wiped out of her mind. He was once again just the Chris whom she had always blindly adored, without hope of reciprocity; the Chris who occasionally condescended to be kind to her--as a man might occasionally be kind to a lost dog which has attached itself to him.

She went with young Atkins to the billiard room and sat beside him on a high leather couch, and tried to listen while he explained the game, but it all sounded like double Dutch. The smoke of the many cigars and cigarettes of the men around her made her eyes smart, and the subdued light made her feel giddy. She did her best to be interested, but it was difficult.

Chris had taken off his coat to be more free to play, and he looked a fine figure of a man in his shirt-sleeves, she thought, as he stood chalking his cue and laughing with Feathers.

He never once glanced at his wife. She supposed he thought that she was quite happy and entertained by young Atkins.

And this was the first night of her honeymoon? She realized it in a pitying sort of way, as if she were considering the case of some girl other than herself. It seemed dreadfully sad, she thought, and then smiled, realizing that she was the little wife whom she was pitying, and that the tall man over the other side of the room, so engrossed in his game, was her husband.

What other wife in the world had spent the first evening of her married life watching a game of billiards she wondered? And a little helpless laugh escaped her.

Young Atkins looked down quickly.

"I beg your pardon. What did you say?"

"Nothing--I only laughed."

She bit her lip to prevent the laugh from coming again. How stupid she was, because nothing amusing had happened.

Only once Chris came across to her.

"Would you like some coffee?" he asked.

"No, thank you."

"Do your head good." he said, but without looking at her. His eyes were watching the table the whole time, and without waiting for her to speak again he went off back to the game.

"Chris really plays a thumping good game," Atkins confided to her.

"I always tell him he's a rotten player, but he isn't a rotten player at anything, really! Fine sportsman, you know."

Marie nodded. She knew everything there was to know about Chris. At home she had a sc.r.a.pbook, her most treasured possession, carefully pasted up with every little newspaper cutting that had ever been printed about him, from the first long jump he had won at a local school to an account of a wedding a few months back at which he had been best man.

She had whispered to Aunt Madge as they kissed good-by, to be sure to cut the announcement of their wedding from the newspapers so that she could add it to her collection, and Aunt Madge had promised. Somehow it made her feel sick now to think of it! Such a farcical wedding--no real wedding at all! No wonder they had wanted it quiet!

Though she hardly looked at the table before her she seemed to see nothing but those smooth, ivory b.a.l.l.s, and the only sound in the world was their monotonous click, click!

Chris was winning, young Atkins whispered to her. Poor old Feathers was not in the running at all. He bent a little closer to her.

"Have you seen Chris play tennis?" he asked. "Gad! He can serve! As good as any Wimbledon 'pro'! I'll bet my boots ... I say, what's the matter? Here, Chris!"

He called sharply across the room to Chris, but it was too late, for Marie had slipped fainting from the high leather couch.

CHAPTER III

"... the leaves are curled apart.

Still red as from the broken heart, And here's the naked stem of thorns."

THE game stopped abruptly, and between them Chris and Feathers carried Marie from the room. "It was the smoke, and the heat!"

Atkins kept saying in distress. He felt angry with himself for not having noticed how pale she looked. "It was jolly hot! It was the smoke and stuffiness. It's only an ordinary faint, isn't it?"

n.o.body took any notice of him, or answered him, but he kept on talking all the same. He was young and impressionable, and he thought Marie was altogether charming. He was thankful when at last her lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes.

Feathers, who was bending over her, moved away, and Chris came forward.

"Better?" he asked. "It was the hot room; I'll take you upstairs.

It's all right, you only fainted."

Only fainted! Years afterwards he remembered the pa.s.sionate look in her brown eyes as she raised them to his face, and wondered what her thoughts had been. Perhaps he would have understood a great deal of what she was suffering if he had known that the wild words trembling on her lips were: