ughed."

He thought, "Why should she love that sort of tripe--gossip?"

He thought, "Damn it, why shouldn't she? Why should I mind? Why should I
rustle the newspaper? She can't enter into things that interest me; but
I can, I could enter into things that interest her. Why don't I? Of
course I can see perfectly clearly how she looks at things. It's just as
rotten for her that I can't talk with her about her ideas as it is
rotten for me that she doesn't see my ideas. And it isn't rotten for me.
I don't mind it. I don't expect it. I don't expect it...."

And at that precise moment of his thoughts, the garrulous Hapgood,
seeing his face, could have said to another, as he said before, "There!
See what I mean? Looks as though he'd lost something and was wondering
where it was. Ha!"

III

A genial shouting and the clatter of agitated hoofs jerked Sabre from
his thoughts.

"Hullo! Hi! Help! Out collision-mats! Stop the cab! Look out, Sabre!
_Sabre!_"

He suddenly became aware--and he jammed on his brakes and dismounted by
straddling a leg to the ground--that in the narrow lane he was between
two plunging horses. Their riders had divided to make way for his
bemused approach. They had violently sundered, expecting him to stop,
until he was almost on top of them, and one of the pair was now engaged
in placating his horse, which resented this sudden snatching at bit and
prick of spur, and persuading it to return to the level road.

On one side the lane was banked steeply up in a cutting. The horse of
the rider on this side stood on its hind legs and appeared to be
performing a series of postman's double knocks on the bank with its
forelegs. Lord Tybar, who bestrode it, and who did not seem to be at all
concerned by his horse copying a postman, looked over his shoulder at
Sabre, showing an amused grin, and said, "Thanks, Sabre. This is jolly.
I like this. Come on, old girl. This way down. Keep passing on, please."

The old girl, an extraordinarily big and handsome chestnut mare, dropped
her forelegs to the level of the road, where she exchanged the postman's
knocking for a complicated and exceedingly nimble dance, largely on two
legs.

Lord Tybar, against her evident intentions, skilfully directed the steps
of this dance into a turning movement so that she and her rider now
faced Sabre; and while she bounded through the concluding movements of
the _pas seul_ he continued in the same whimsical tone and with the same
en