his Galilean display of charity."

"You've not heard me out." Tabs still spoke with friendliness. "While we
were together your telegram arrived and I agreed to be the bearer of her
message. But as for her second request, that I should become engaged to
her, I refused that point-blank."

"You what?" The anger cleared from Braithwaite's face, leaving the
chalky mask of a tragic harlequin. When he spoke again it was humbly.
"You can't blame me for not believing you. You jump about. You say
several things which seem to point to a definite conclusion and then at
the last moment you change it. I don't know whether you do it to amuse
yourself at my expense or whether it's merely the way your mind works.
At any rate, it's cruel--this cat and mouse game. I wish you'd be
direct."

"That's what I wish to be. You could help me if you'd ask questions."

Braithwaite sighed, wearied beyond endurance. He was becoming less like
the General and more like the old dependent Braithwaite every second.
"You wanted to marry her last night, only to find she'd promised herself
to me already. Then she comes to you this morning, offering herself, and
you refuse her. That doesn't make sense. Why did you refuse her?"

"Because if I'd taken her at her word, I shouldn't have been playing
fair."

At the recurrence of that phrase "playing fair," a momentary annoyance
crept into Braithwaite's eyes. "I've always heard," he commenced, "that
in love and war----"

"Everything's fair," Tabs ended his quotation. "Well, in this case, it
isn't. It was because she realized, after she'd promised herself to you,
that in love everything isn't fair, that she asked me to get her promise
back."

"You mean as regards yourself? She'd begun to feel that she wasn't
treating you handsomely?"

"I don't mean as regards myself. You were the cause of her change of
mind."

"I!" Braithwaite's bewilderment made him hostile. "How could I have
caused her to change her mind? I parted with her after midnight; it must
have been shortly after nine that she was seeing you. I held no
communication with her in any shape or form during the eight or nine
hours that elapsed."

"Nevertheless, you were the cause. She realized in the meanwhile that in
love everything isn't fair. It isn't fair to ignore a young girl's
happiness in order to win her hand. You had done that; though she has no
proofs, instinctively she feels it."

Braithwaite shook his head and thrust himself back wit