ene at nightfall as I was driving
that last ball."

"It's a good thing for your friend Powers that it was not up to me to
drive that last ball," declared Harding. "That story is all right,
Robinson, and the picture proves it."

As we were leaving the table Mrs. Chilvers called me aside.

"Have you made up a game for this afternoon?" she asked, and I thought I
discerned a mischievous glance in her eyes.

"Why--why, yes," I hesitated, wondering if I were to be dragged into
some wretched foursome. "I have arranged to play with Miss Harding."

"What, again?" she asked.

"This is only my third game with her," I declared.

"Ah, Mr. Smith, do you remember how I warned you several weeks ago?"

I remembered but did not admit it.

"I told you then that some time you would meet a golfing Venus," she
said triumphantly, and without waiting for me to make a defense left and
joined Miss Dangerfield.

Miss Harding and I waited until we had a clear field ahead of us before
we began our game. It was one of the perfect early summer afternoons
when it is a delight to live. Oak Cliff is famous for its scenery and
for its velvet-like greens.

"I'm going to play my best game this afternoon," announced Miss Harding
when I had teed her ball.

"I always play my best game; don't you?" I asked.

"You shall judge of that when we finish this round," she declared.

It was my first game with her since the day she won the touring car
from her father, on which occasion she made Woodvale in 116. This was so
marked an improvement over her former exhibition that I was at a loss to
account for it. Since then Miss Harding had confined her golf to the
practising of approach shots and putting, following the instructions
given by Wallace. I have been so busy with Wall Street and other affairs
that I have paid little attention to golf, and smiled at her enthusiasm.

"How shall we play?" I asked. "You have improved so much and are so
confident that I dare not offer you more than a stroke a hole."

"I shall beat you at those odds," she said. "This is a short course, you
know."

"You will have to make it in a hundred to beat me," I replied.

"Fore!" she called, and drove a beautiful ball with a true swing which
was the perfection of grace. I made one which did not beat it enough to
give me any advantage, and we started down the field together.

"Mr. Wallace must be a wonderfully clever teacher," I said, "or else he
has a most remarkably apt p