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trying to choose a card from the dummy. He at length carefully lifted the king of spades from it as if it weighed a ton, and then, after looking at it soberly, put it back and scowled at his own hand. Henry, who had his card ready to throw down upon the table, slid it back into his hand with the look of resignation that has tranquillized our memories of the Early Christian Martyrs. The Dean rested his eye on the tempting king in the dummy and pursed his lips. He _would do_ it. Then he leaned over and played it with the air of a man who lays all in the lap of the gods. Mrs. Conover, who had been shuffling her cards around in ill-suppressed excitement, popped out a trump with a cry of triumph just as Henry's Ace of Spades covered the king. A dreadful scene followed. The Dean was all gallantry, Mrs. Conover all self-reproach, Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee all charm, and Henry all exasperation; and when, later in the same hand, his mind torn with the memory of his lost ace, he made a revoke and was quietly brought to account by the Dean, Nancy discreetly withdrew. Tom, who had seen her at the table with three people whom she met constantly and upon whom she hardly needed to make a call, felt decidedly snubbed. Was she, after all, so much a Whitman that she felt no need to obey the ordinary rules of decency? It seemed too bad, for his impression of her earlier in the evening had been decidedly different. Tom had sometimes wondered about love at first sight. What was it anyway? How did one feel? Was it like a blow between the eyes, a ball in the breast? Did one stagger and have to lie down, with a pulse coursing up to one hundred and five? What was it? When Tom first looked at Nancy in the costume closet he wondered if he were to be brought face to face with the answer. Certainly, little hints by the Norrises and Old Mrs. Conover would have put the idea into his head, had it not in the natural course of events found its way there unaided. And now Nancy had made it clear that she did not care to have anything to do with him. It was, he guessed, because of the too tender passage in the charade. He pictured himself arguing with her. "It is ridiculous to object to me because I played the part well. Would you have had me a stick and make the thing even more of a bore?" "No," coldly, "but you didn't have to have that part in it." "Well, it made it more interesting, and, besides, if you think that I put it in just for an excuse to
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