horses? Must I dodge
for my life--or for hers--without even a civil word or look--just an
order from a flunkey?"

"For some reason or another," I observed, "people who are angry always
call grooms and footmen flunkeys."

He burst into a guffaw of laughter. "Lord, yes, asses all of us, to be
sure! And what, after all, does a flick in the face come to, Mr.
Philosopher? Nothing at all! It hardly even hurts. But a man calls it a
deadly insult--when he's angry; between man and man there must be blood
for it when they're angry."

"There's the police court," I suggested mildly.

"As you say, for sheep there's the police court. I came as near behaving
right as one can with a woman when I broke her whip."

"You really think that?"

"Yes, Austin, I really do--and that shows, as you were going to say,
that I'm utterly hopeless. I don't fit the standards." He was sitting
hunched up over the fire, monopolizing its heat, his great shoulders
nearly up to his ears. He condemned himself with much better humor than
he judged other people. "I don't fit them, I don't agree with them, I
hate them. Left to myself, I'd get out of this."

"Who's stopping you?" I asked, pulling at my pipe and trying to edge
nearer the fire.

He took no notice of my question--which was indeed no more than an
indifferently civil way of suggesting that he was at liberty to please
himself. He took no notice of my futile edging either.

"Now if I had Jenny Driver's gifts for the game," he went on, "I daresay
I should like it. Oh, you were quite right there! She's equal to ruling
the county, and ruling it well. Since she can do it, I don't blame her
for trying. Perhaps I'd try myself in the same case. But, mind you, in
her heart she thinks no more of them than I do. They can give her what
she wants, they can't give me what I want--that's all the difference. So
it's worth her while to fool them--and it's not worth mine. Not that I
could do it half as well as she does!"

His admiration of Jenny was unmistakably affectionate as well as amused.
There is a way a man draws at his pipe--long pulls with smiles in
between. It tells a tale when a woman's name has just passed his lips.

"Then all she's got--the big place and the money--the influence and so
on--wouldn't attract you?"

He turned slowly to me. "It might, if I thought that I could make terms
with the people. But I can't do that. So I should hate it. Why did you
ask me that question, Austin?"

"Why