"I'm pretty happy, Cal--that's all. Of course you'll soon know how it is yourself." He referred here to the well-known fact that I was much in the company of Miss Lansdale. But this was a thing to be turned.

"Oh, the game is teaching me resignation to a solitary life," I said with an affectation of disinterest that must have irritated him, for he asked bluntly:--

"Say, Calvin, how long do you intend to keep up that d.a.m.ned nonsense when everybody knows--"

This interesting sentence was cut off by Miss Kate Lansdale, who appeared around the corner and paused politely before us, with a look of trained and admirable deafness.

"Ah, Miss Lansdale," said Solon, urbanely, "I was just about to speak of you."

"Dear me!" said the young woman, simply. I thought she was aghast.

"Yes--but it's not worth repeating--or finishing."

Miss Lansdale seemed to be relieved by this a.s.surance.

"And now I must hurry off," added Solon.

"Good evening!" we both said.

It seemed to be of a stuff from which curtains are sometimes made, white, with little colored figures in it, but the design would have required at least a column of the most technical description in a magazine I had subscribed for that summer. There was lace at the throat, and I should say that the thing had been constructed with the needs of Miss Lansdale's slender but completed figure solely and clearly in mind.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN WHICH ALL RULES ARE BROKEN

Swiftly I appraised the cool perfection of her attire, scenting the spice of the pinks she had thrust at her belt. And I suffered one heart-quickening look from her eyes before she could lower them to me.

In that instant I was stung with a presentiment that our treaty was in peril--that it might go fearfully to smash if I did not fortify myself.

It came to me that the creature had regarded my past success in observing this treaty with a kind of provocative resentment. I cannot tell how I knew it--certainly through no recognized media of communication.

Most formally I offered her a chair by the card-table, and resumed my own chair with what I meant for an air of inhospitable abstraction. She declined the chair, preferring to stand by the table as was her custom.

"It was on this spot years ago," I said, laying down the second eight cards, "that Solon Denney first told me he was about to marry."

Discursive gossip seemed best, I thought.

"Two long yellow braids," she remarked. It would be too much to say that her words were snapped out.

"And now he has told me again--I mean that he's going to marry again."

"What did you do?" she asked more cordially, studying the cards.

"The first time I went to war," I answered absently, having to play up the ace and deuce of diamonds.

"I have never been able to care much for yellow hair," she observed, also studying the cards; "of course, it's _effective_, in a way, but--may I ask what you're going to do this time?"

"This time I'm going to play the game."

Again she studied the cards.

"It's refining," I insisted. "It teaches. I'm learning to be a Sannyasin."

Eight other cards were down, and I engrossed myself with them.

"Is a Sannyasin rather dull?"

"In the Bhagavad-gita," I answered, "he is to be known as a Sannyasin who does not hate and does not love anything."

"How are you progressing?" I felt her troubling eyes full upon me, and I suspected there was mockery in their depths.

"Oh, well, fairishly--but of course I haven't studied as faithfully as I might."

"I should think you couldn't afford to be negligent."

I played up the four of spades and put a king of hearts in the s.p.a.ce thus happily secured.

"I have read," I answered absently, "that a benevolent man should allow himself a few faults to keep his friends in countenance. I mustn't be everything perfect, you know."

"Don't restrain yourself in the least on my account."

"You are my sole trouble," I said, playing a black seven on a red eight.

She looked off the table as I glanced up at her.

I am a patient enough man, I believe, and I hope meek and lowly, but I saw suddenly that not all the beat.i.tudes should be taken without reservation.

"I repeat," I said, for she had not spoken, "your presence is the most troubling thing I know. It keeps me back in my studies."

"There's a red five for that black six," she observed.

"Thank you!" and I made the play.

"Then you're not a Sannyasin yet?"

"I've nearly taken the first degree. Sometimes after hard practice I can succeed in not hating anything for as much as an hour."

I dealt eight more cards and became, to outward seeming, I hope, absorbed in the new aspect of the game.

"Perseverance will be rewarded," she said kindly. "You can't expect to learn it all at once."

"You might try not to make it harder for me."

Again had I been a third person of fair discernment, I believe I should have sworn that I caught in her eyes a gleam of hardened, relentless determination; but she only pointed to a four of hearts which I was neglecting to play up.

"Why not play the game to win?" she asked, and there was that in her voice which was like to undo me--a tone and the merest fanning of my face by her loose sleeve as she pointed to the card.

Suddenly I knew that honor was not in me. She walked within my lines in imminent peril of the deadliest character. But there was no sign of fear in the look she held me with, and I knew she had not sensed her danger.