oor sports.

He had been at Roselawn a couple of days before he had a chance to do
more than observe Elise Durwent as one of the party. She had been his
partner at tennis and bridge, and a dozen times he had exchanged light
talk with her, but there was always about her the defensive shield of
impersonal cordiality. When he spoke to her it was almost in a drawl,
but no matter to what a lackadaisical level he reduced his voice, her
replies were always punctuated by a retort that had in it the sense of
sting, as Alfio in _Cavalleria Rusticana_ accompanies his song with the
crack of a driving-whip.

He watched her with the men of the party, and wondered at their
good-natured endurance of her sharpness, as reckless as it was
disturbing; and he saw that her inclusion among the women made them
less at ease and disinclined to chatter. No matter what group she
joined, she was never of it; and even when it was obvious that she was
doing everything in her power to reduce her personality to the pitch of
the others, her individuality branded her as something apart.

Studying her, partly subconsciously and partly with the keen
observation prompted by the attraction she held for him, Selwyn began
to feel the loneliness of the girl. Not once did he see the melting of
eyes which comes when one person finds close affinity in the
understanding of a friend. When she spoke at the table her suddenness
always left a silence in its wake. At bridge her moves were so
spasmodic that, when opposite dummy, she seemed to play the two cards
with a simultaneous movement. The same mannerisms were in her outdoor
games, a second service at tennis often following a faulty first so
rapidly that her opponent would sometimes be almost unaware that more
than one ball had been played.

Selwyn's original feeling of exasperation mellowed to one of genuine
pity in contemplation of her solitary life--a life directed by a
restless energy that only grew in intensity with the deepening
realisation of her purposelessness. Yet she was so confident in her
bearing, and so capable of foiling with repartee any approach of his,
that he contented himself with a studied politeness that was no more
personal than the grief of an undertaker at a funeral.

V.

One evening, after dressing for dinner, Selwyn found that he had
half-an-hour to fill in, and as the smell of grass was scenting the
air, he sauntered from the house and strolled across the lawn to a path