epared for a
miserable evening, while the Colonel's face beamed on him from
between two candles.

"Durant," he said, "you are an acquisition. If it wasn't for you we
should have to play with a dummy."

Durant replied mournfully that he was not great at the game, but he
thought he was about as good as a dummy.

"Don't you be too sure of that," said Mrs. Fazakerly. "There's a
great deal to be said for the dummy. He isn't frivolous, he never
revokes, he never loses his little temper, and he plays the game."

"Yes, I think he can show you some very pretty science, Durant." The
Colonel's mustache and eyebrows and all the wrinkles on his face
were agitated, but he made no sound. The owl was pluming all his
little feathers, was fluttering with mysterious mirth. Oh! he took
the lady's humor, he could enter into the thing, he could keep the
ball going.

"You see," Mrs. Fazakerly explained, "he has an intelligence behind
him."

"A dummy inspired by Colonel Tancred would be terrible to
encounter," said Durant.

Miss Tancred lifted her eyes from the cards she was shuffling. Again
he felt her gaze resting upon him for a moment, the same
comprehensive, disconcerting gaze. This time it had something
pathetic and appealing in it, as if she implored him to take no
further notice of her father's fatuity.

"Confound the old fellow," he said to himself; "why does he make me
say these things?"

When they began Durant saw a faint hope of release in his own
stupidity, his obvious unfitness for the game. By a studied
carelessness, an artful exaggeration of his deficiencies, he courted
humiliation, ejection in favor of the dummy. But, as it happened,
either his evil destiny had endowed him with her own detestable
skill, or else his stupidity was supreme. Trying with might and main
to lose, he kept on winning with horrible persistency. He was on the
winning side; he was made one with the terrible Miss Tancred; and
for the first half hour he found a certain painful interest in
watching that impenetrable creature.

Miss Tancred played the game; she played, now with the rhythm and
precision of a calculating machine, now with the blind impetus and
swoop of some undeviating natural force. It was not will, it was not
intelligence; it was something beyond and above them both,
infinitely more detached, more monotonous and cold; something
independent even of her desire. Durant could see that she had as
little love for the game as he had.