-and to find
that I couldn't get down. That might easily happen."

"And what would you do?"

James fixed her with his eyeglass. "That's where the neck-breaking
might intervene," he said. "Jimmy would rather risk his neck any day."

"Than his heart!"

"Heart!" said Vera. "No such thing. Quite another organ. It's a case
of dinner. He'd risk his neck for a dinner, and so would any man."

"I believe you are right," said James.

Lucy with very bright eyes looked from one to the other of her lovers.
Each wore a mask. She determined to ask James to give up the
Folgefond, discerning trouble in the air.

They went home by water, and Lancelot added his unconscious testimony.
He was between Urquhart's knees, his hand upon the tiller, his mood
confidential.

"I say--" he began, and Urquhart encouraged him to say on.

--"It's slightly important, but I suppose I couldn't do the Folgefond
by any chance?"

"You are saying a good deal," said Urquhart. "I'll put it like this,
that by some chance you might, but by no chance in the world could
Patrick."

"Hoo!" said Lancelot, "and why not, pray?"

"His mother would put her foot on it. Splosh! it would go like a
cockroach."

"I know," said dreamy Lancelot. "That's what would happen to me, I
expect." Then he added, "That's what will happen to my father."

"Good cockroach," said Urquhart, looking ahead of him. "You think she
won't want him to go."

Lancelot snorted. "_Won't_ want him! Why, she doesn't already. And
he'll do what she wants, I'll bet you."

"Does he always?"

"He always does now. It's the air, I fancy."

CHAPTER XXI

THE DEPARTURE

But pout as she might, she could not prevail with James, whose vanity
had been scratched.

"My dear girl, I'd sooner perish," he said. "Give up a jolly walk
because Jimmy Urquhart talks about my heart and his own
neck--preposterous! Besides, there's nothing in it."

"But, James," she said, "if I ask you--"

He kissed the back of her neck. She was before the glass, busy with
her hair. "You don't ask me. You wouldn't ask me. No woman wants to
make a fool of a man. If she does, she's a vampire."

"Mr. Urquhart is very impulsive," she dared to say.

"I've known that for a long time," said James. "Longer than you have,
I fancy. But it takes more than impulse to break another man's neck.
Besides, I really have no reason to suppose that he wants to break my
neck. Why should he?"

Here they were up against the wall