the center of everything
that was going on was Briggs, perfectly at ease, making himself
agreeably at home.

The spectacle of Briggs among the Hamadryads appeared to paralyze Wayne.

Then an immense, intense resentment set every nerve in him tingling.
Briggs, his friend, his confidential business adviser, his indispensable
_alter ego_, had abandoned him to be tormented by this fat, saccharine
poet--abandoned him while he, Briggs, made himself popular with eight of
the most amazingly bewitching maidens mortal man might marvel on! The
meanness stung Wayne till he jumped to his feet and strode out into the
sunshine, menacing eyes fastened on Briggs.

"Now wouldn't that sting you!" he breathed fiercely, turning up his
trousers and stepping gingerly across the brook.

Whether or not Briggs saw him coming and kept sidling away he could not
determine; he did not wish to shout; he kept passing pretty girls and
taking off his hat, and following Briggs about, but he never seemed to
come any nearer to Briggs; Briggs always appeared in the middle
distance, flitting genially from girl to girl; and presently the
absurdity of his performance struck Wayne, and he sat down on the bank
of the brook, too mad to think. There was a pretty girl picking
strawberries near-by; he rose, took off his hat to her, and sat down
again. She was one of those graceful, clean-limbed, creamy-skinned
creatures described by Briggs; her hair was twisted up into a heavy,
glistening knot, showing the back of a white neck; her eyes matched the
sky and her lips the berries she occasionally bit into or dropped to the
bottom of her woven basket.

Once or twice she looked up fearlessly at Wayne as her search for
berries brought her nearer; and Wayne forgot the perfidy of Briggs in
an effort to look politely amiable.

Presently she straightened up where she was kneeling in the long grass
and stretched her arms. Then, still kneeling, she gazed curiously at
Wayne with all the charm of a friendly wild thing unafraid.

"Shall we play tennis?" she asked.

"Certainly," said Wayne, startled.

"Come, then," she said, picking up her basket in one hand and extending
the other to Wayne.

He took the fresh, cool fingers, and turned scarlet. Once his glance
sneaked toward Briggs, but that young man was absorbed in fishing for
brook trout with a net! Oh, ye little fishes! with a _net_!

Wayne's brain seemed to be swarming with glittering pink-winged thoughts
all sin