y nothing to be obtruded upon my friend. It was clear
that he had done a thing which he earnestly wanted and had earnestly
dreaded to do--and that the dread was past.

"I'm pretty happy, Cal--that's all. Of course you'll soon know how it is
yourself." He referred here to the well-known fact that I was much in
the company of Miss Lansdale. But this was a thing to be turned.

"Oh, the game is teaching me resignation to a solitary life," I said
with an affectation of disinterest that must have irritated him, for he
asked bluntly:--

"Say, Calvin, how long do you intend to keep up that damned nonsense
when everybody knows--"

This interesting sentence was cut off by Miss Kate Lansdale, who
appeared around the corner and paused politely before us, with a look of
trained and admirable deafness.

"Ah, Miss Lansdale," said Solon, urbanely, "I was just about to speak of
you."

"Dear me!" said the young woman, simply. I thought she was aghast.

"Yes--but it's not worth repeating--or finishing."

Miss Lansdale seemed to be relieved by this assurance.

"And now I must hurry off," added Solon.

"Good evening!" we both said.

It seemed to be of a stuff from which curtains are sometimes made,
white, with little colored figures in it, but the design would have
required at least a column of the most technical description in a
magazine I had subscribed for that summer. There was lace at the throat,
and I should say that the thing had been constructed with the needs of
Miss Lansdale's slender but completed figure solely and clearly in mind.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN WHICH ALL RULES ARE BROKEN

Swiftly I appraised the cool perfection of her attire, scenting the
spice of the pinks she had thrust at her belt. And I suffered one
heart-quickening look from her eyes before she could lower them to me.
In that instant I was stung with a presentiment that our treaty was in
peril--that it might go fearfully to smash if I did not fortify myself.
It came to me that the creature had regarded my past success in
observing this treaty with a kind of provocative resentment. I cannot
tell how I knew it--certainly through no recognized media of
communication.

Most formally I offered her a chair by the card-table, and resumed my
own chair with what I meant for an air of inhospitable abstraction. She
declined the chair, preferring to stand by the table as was her custom.

"It was on this spot years ago," I said, laying down the second eig