y best and oldest friends. I have not dealt with you
quite honestly. I confess it, and I ask your pardon." Mr. Charteris held
out his hand to seal the compact.

"Word of honor?" queried Colonel Musgrave, with an odd quizzing sort of
fondness for the little novelist, as the colonel took the proffered
hand. "Why, then, that is settled, and I am glad of it. I told you, you
know, it wouldn't do. See you at supper, I suppose?"

And Rudolph Musgrave glanced at the bath-house, turned on his heel, and
presently plunged into the beech plantation, whistling cheerfully. The
effect of the melody was somewhat impaired by the apparent necessity of
breaking off, at intervals, in order to smile.

The comedy had been admirably enacted, he considered, on both sides; and
he did not object to Jack Charteris's retiring with all the honors of
war.

V

The colonel had not gone far, however, before he paused, thrust both
hands into his trousers' pockets, and stared down at the ground for a
matter of five minutes.

Musgrave shook his head. "After all," said he, "I can't trust them.
Patricia is too erratic and too used to having her own way. Jack will
try to break off with her now, of course; but Jack, where women are
concerned, is as weak as water. It is not a nice thing to do, but--well!
one must fight fire with fire."

Thereupon, he retraced his steps. When he had come to the thin spot in
the thicket, Rudolph Musgrave left the path, and entered the shrubbery.
There he composedly sat down in the shadow of a small cedar. The sight
of his wife upon the beach in converse with Mr. Charteris did not appear
to surprise Colonel Musgrave.

Patricia was speaking quickly. She held a bedraggled parasol in one
hand. Her husband noted, with a faint thrill of wonder, that, at times,
and in a rather unwholesome, elfish way, Patricia was actually
beautiful. Her big eyes glowed; they flashed with changing lights as
deep waters glitter in the sun; her copper-colored hair seemed luminous,
and her cheeks flushed, arbutus-like. The soft, white stuff that gowned
her had the look of foam; against the gray sky she seemed a freakish
spirit in the act of vanishing. For sky and water were all one lambent
gray by this. In the west was a thin smear of orange; but, for the rest,
the world was of a uniform and gleaming gray. She and Charteris stood in
the heart of a great pearl.

"Ah, believe me," she was saying, "Rudolph isn't an ophthalmic bat. But
God