ment-store
and this earth as the particular section over which the August Master
had appointed him floor-walker. I had thought of him as my
_Eisenfresser_ and my big blond _Saebierassler_. But my eyes opened with
my last marron and I suddenly sat back and stared at Theobald's handsome
pink face with its Krupp-steel blue eyes and its haughtily upturned
mustache-ends. He must have seen that look of appraisal on my own face,
for, with all his iron-and-blood Prussianism, he clouded up like a hurt
child. But he was too much of a diplomat to show his feelings. He merely
became so unctuously polite that I felt like poking him in his
steel-blue eye with my mint straw.

Remember, Matilda Anne, not a word was said, not one syllable about what
was there in both our souls. Yet it was one of life's biggest moments,
the Great Divide of a whole career--and I went on eating Nesselrode and
Theobald went on pleasantly smoking his cigarette and approvingly
inspecting his well-manicured nails.

It was funny, but it made me feel blue and unattached and terribly alone
in the world. Now, I can see things more clearly. I know that mood of
mine was not the mere child of caprice. Looking back, I can see how
Theobald had been more critical, more silently combative, from the
moment I stepped off the _Baltic_. I realized, all at once, _that he had
secretly been putting me to a strain_. I won't say it was because my
_dot_ had gone with The Nitrate Mines, or that he had discovered that
Duncan had crossed on the same steamer with me, or that he knew I'd soon
hear of the L---- episode. But these prophetic bones of mine told me
there was trouble ahead. And I felt so forsaken and desolate in spirit
that when Duncan whirled me out to Westbury, in a hired motor-car, to
see the Great Neck First defeated by the Meadow Brook Hunters, I went
with the happy-go-lucky glee of a truant who doesn't give a hang what
happens. Dinky-Dunk was interested in polo ponies, which, he explained
to me, are not a particular breed but just come along by accident--for
he'd bred and sold mounts to the Coronado and San Mateo Clubs and the
Philadelphia City Cavalry boys. And he loved the game. He was so genuine
and sincere and _human_, as we sat there side by side, that I wasn't a
bit afraid of him and knew we could be chums and didn't mind his lapses
into silence or his extension-sole English shoes and crazy London
cravat.

And I was happy, until the school-bell rang--which too