an extra one, madame. Will you accept it?"

Her small, modishly-gloved hand closed eagerly on it before she lifted
her eyes to his face. Both started convulsively. The man turned very
pale, but the woman's ripe-tinted face coloured darkly.

"You?" she faltered.

His lips parted in the coldly-grave smile she remembered and hated.

"You are not glad to see me," he said calmly, "but that, I suppose,
was not to be expected. I did not come here to annoy you. This meeting
is as unexpected to me as to you. I had no suspicion that for the last
half-hour I had been standing next to my--"

She interrupted him by an imperious gesture. Still clutching the
scorecard she half-turned from him. Again he smiled, this time with a
tinge of scorn, and shifted his eyes to the track.

None of the people around them had noticed the little by-play. All
eyes were on the track, which was being cleared for the first heat of
another race. The free-for-all horses were being led away blanketed.
The crowd cheered "Lu-Lu" as she went past, a shapeless oddity. The
backers of "Mascot", the rival favourite, looked gloomy.

The woman noticed nothing of all this. She was small, very pretty,
still young, and gowned in a quite unmistakable way. She studied the
man's profile furtively. He looked older than when she had seen him
last--there were some silver threads gleaming in his close-clipped
dark hair and short, pointed beard. Otherwise there was little change
in the quiet features and somewhat stern grey eyes. She wondered if he
had cared at all.

They had not met for five years. She shut her eyes and looked in on
her past. It all came back very vividly. She had been eighteen when
they were married--a gay, high-spirited girl and the season's beauty.
He was much older and a quiet, serious student. Her friends had
wondered why she married him--sometimes she wondered herself, but she
had loved him, or thought so.

The marriage had been an unhappy one. She was fond of society and
gaiety, he wanted quiet and seclusion. She Was impulsive and
impatient, he deliberate and grave. The strong wills clashed. After
two years of an unbearable sort of life they had separated--quietly,
and without scandal of any sort. She had wanted a divorce, but he
would not agree to that, so she had taken her own independent fortune
and gone back to her own way of life. In the following five years she
had succeeded in burying all remembrance well out of sight. No one
knew if