The Fighting Chance

"Sylvia!"

"What?" she asked, startled.

"Nothing. Only for two solid weeks--"

"Of course, if you are not interested--"

"But I am, child--I am! desperately interested! He is handsome! I knew him before you did, and I thought so then!"

"Did you?" said Sylvia, troubled.

"Yes, I did. When I wore short skirts I kissed him, too!"

"Did you? W--what did he wear?"

"Knickerbockers, silly! You don't think he was still in the cradle, do you? I'm not as aged as that!"

"I missed a great deal in my childhood," said Sylvia naïvely.

"By not knowing Stephen? Pooh! He used to pinch me, and then we'd put out our tongues in mutual derision. Once--"

"Stop!" said Sylvia faintly. "And anyhow, you probably taught him. … Look at him as he saunters across the lawn, Leila--look at him!"

"Well? I see him."

"Isn't he almost an ideal?"

"He is. He certainly is, dear."

"Do you think he walks as though he were perfectly well?"

"Well, I don't know," said Leila thoughtfully. "Sometimes people whose walk is a gracefully languid saunter develop adipose tissue after forty."

"Nonsense! Really, Leila, do you think he walks like a perfectly well man?"

"He may be coming down with whooping-cough--"

Sylvia rose indignantly, but Leila pulled her back to the sun-warmed marble bench: "A girl in love loses her sense of humour temporarily. Sit down, you little vixen!"

"Leila, you laugh at everything when I don't feel like it."

"I'm not in love, and that's why."

"You are in love!"

Leila looked at her, then under her breath: "In love, am I--with the whole young world ringing with the laughter I had forgotten the very sound of? Do you call that love?--with the sea and sky laughing back at me, and the wind in my ears fairly tremulous with laughter? Do you, who look out upon the pretty world so seriously through those sea-blue eyes of yours, think that I can be in love?"

"Oh, Leila, a girl's happiness is serious enough, isn't it? Dear, it frightens me! I was so close to losing it--once."

"I lost mine," said Leila, closing her eyes for a moment. "I shall not sigh if I find it again."

They sat there in the sun, Leila's hand lying idly in Sylvia's, the soft sea-wind stirring their hair, and in their ears the thunderous undertone of the mounting sea.

"Look at Stephen!" murmured Sylvia, her enraptured eyes following him as he strolled hatless and coatless along the cliff's edge, the sun glimmering on his short hair, a tall, slim, well-coupled, strongly knit shape against the sky and sea.

But Leila's quick ear had caught a significant sound from the gravel drive behind her, and she stood up, a delicious colour tinting her face.