The Fighting Chance

He ascribed it--desired to ascribe it--to her relations with her husband. He had naturally learned and divined how matters stood with them; he had learned considerable in the last month or two--something of Mortimer's record as a burly brother to the rich; something of his position among those who made no question of his presence anywhere. Something of Leila, too, he had heard, or rather deduced from hinted word or shrug or smiling silence, not meant for him, but indifferent to what he might hear and what he might think of what he heard.

He did listen; he did patiently add two and two in the long solitudes of his Louis XV chamber; and if the results were not always four, at least they came within a fraction of the proper answer. And this did not alter his policy or weaken his faith in his mentors; nor did it impair his real gratitude to them, and his real and simple friendship for them both. He was faithful in friendship once formed, obstinately so, for better or for worse; but he was shrewd enough to ignore opportunities for friendships which he foresaw could do him no good on his plodding pilgrimage toward the temple of his inexorable desire.

Lifting, now, his Delft-coloured eyes furtively, he studied the silk-and-lace swathed figure of the young matron opposite, flung back into the depths of her great chair, profile turned from him, her chin imprisoned in her ringed fingers. The brooding abandon of the attitude contrasted sharply with the grooming of the woman, making both the more effective.

"Turn in, if you want to," she said, her voice indistinct, smothered by her pink palm. "You're to dress in Leroy's quarters."

"I don't want to turn in just yet."

"You said you needed sleep."

"I do. But it's not eleven yet."

She slipped into another posture, reaching for a cigarette, and, setting it afire from the match he offered, exhaled a cloud of smoke and looked dreamily through it at him.

"Who is she?" she asked in a colourless voice. "Tell me, for I don't know. Agatha? Marion Page? Mrs. Vendenning? or the Tassel girl?"

"Nobody--yet," he admitted cheerfully.

"Nobody--yet," she repeated, musing over her cigarette. "That's good politics, if it's true."

"Am I untruthful?" he asked simply.

"I don't know. Are you? You're a man."

"Don't talk that way, Leila."

"No, I won't. What is it that you and Sylvia Landis have to talk about so continuously every time you meet?"

"She's merely civil to me," he explained.

"That's more than she is to a lot of people. What do you talk about?"

"I don't know--nothing in particular; mostly about Shotover, and the people there last summer."