er--without disrespect, just as he might look at a sunset or
a wonderful picture." Then, he added half in apology, half in
defiance: "I don't know much about women anyway."

For a moment, the girl stood with her face resolutely set, then she
looked up again, meeting his eyes gravely, though he thought that she
had stifled a mutinous impulse of her pupils to riffle into amusement.

"I must wait here for my uncle," she told him. "Unless you have to
stay, perhaps you had better go."

The tall stranger swung off toward the betting shed without a backward
glance, and engulfed himself in the mob where one had to fight and
shoulder a difficult way in zigzag course.

Back of the forming lines of winners with tickets to cash, he caught
sight of a young man almost as tall as himself and characterized by
the wholesome attractiveness of one who has taken life with zest and
decency. He wore also upon feature and bearing the stamp of an
aristocracy that is not decadent. To the side of this man, the
stranger shouldered his way.

"Since you abandoned me," he accused, "I've been standing out there
like a little boy who has lost his nurse." After a pause, he added:
"And I've seen a wonderful girl--the one woman in your town I want to
meet."

His host took him by the elbow, and began steering him toward the
paddock gate.

"So, you have discovered a divinity, and are ready to be presented.
And you are the scoffer who argues that women may be eliminated. You
are--or were--the man who didn't care to know them."

The guest answered calmly and with brevity:

"I'm not talking about women. I'm talking about a woman--and she's
totally different."

"Who is she, Bob?"

"How should I know?"

"I know a few of them--suppose you describe her."

The stranger halted and looked at his friend and host with
commiserating pity. When he deigned to speak, it was with infinite
scorn.

"Describe her! Why, you fool, I'm no poet laureate, and, if I were, I
couldn't describe her!"

For reply, he received only the disconcerting mockery of ironical
laughter.

"My interest," the young man of the fence calmly deigned to explain,
"is impersonal. I want to meet her, precisely as I'd get up early in
the morning and climb a mountain to see the sun rise over a
particularly lovely valley. It's not as a woman, but as an object of
art."

* * * * *

On other and meaner days, the track at Churchill Downs may be in large
p