The Fighting Chance

He refused to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a rival infant with whom her matchless offspring was coquetting.

Then, without appearing to, she took Plank away from temptation; so skilfully that nobody except Siward understood that the young man had been incontinently removed. He, Plank, never doubting that he was a perfectly free agent, decided that the time had arrived for triumphant retirement. It had; but Leila Mortimer, not he, had rendered the decision, and so cleverly that it appeared even to Plank himself that he had dragged her off with him rather masterfully. Clearly he was becoming a devil of a fellow!

Sylvia turned to Siward, glanced up at him, hesitated, and began to laugh consciously: "What do you think of my latest sentimental acquisition?"

"He'd be an ornament to a stock farm," replied Siward, out of humour.

"How brutal you can be!" she mused, smiling.

"Nonsense! He's a plain bounder, isn't he?"

"I don't know. … Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly--even pathetically; they usually do, that sort. … As though the trouble they took could ever be worth the time they lose! … There are dozens of men I know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of things--like degenerate horses, you know--always pathetic to me; but they're still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. … And if I were a donkey I'd sing and cavort with my own kind, and let horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme of things. … Now I have been brutal. But--I'm easily coloured by my environment."

She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.

"Are you reconciled?" she asked presently.

"To what?"

"To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my poor friend: "'Yon rising moon that looks for us again--How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same mansion--and for one in vain!'"

"That is I--the one, you know. You may be here again; but I--I shall not be I if I ever come to Shotover again."

Her stockinged heels beat the devil's tattoo against the marble sides of the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering branch of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: "I'm accustoming myself to this most significant perfume," she said, looking at him askance. And she deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his sullen face.