iction
and delightful romance; it isn't poetry or precept as it is popularly
inculcated; it's the brutal truth about the average man.... And I'm
going to find Stephanie. Have you any objection?"

"Louis--I'm terribly disappointed in you--"

"I'm disappointed, too. Until you spoke to me so plainly a few minutes
ago I never clearly understood that I couldn't marry Stephanie. When I
thought of it at all it seemed a vague and shadowy something, too far
away to be really impending--threatening--like death--"

[Illustration: "'Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before
luncheon.'"]

"Oh!" cried his sister in revolt. "I shall make it my business to see
that Stephanie understands you thoroughly before this goes any
farther--"

"I wish to heaven you would," he said, so heartily that his sister,
exasperated, turned her back and marched away to the nursery.

When he went out to the tennis court he found Stephanie idly batting the
balls across the net with Cameron, who, being dummy, had strolled down
to gibe at her--a pastime both enjoyed:

"Here comes your Alonzo, fair lady--lightly skipping o'er the
green--yes, yes--wearing the panties of his brother-in-law!" He fell
into an admiring attitude and contemplated Neville with a simper, his
ruddy, prematurely bald head cocked on one side:

"Oh, girls! _Ain't_ he just grand!" he exclaimed. "Honest, Stephanie,
your young man has me in the ditch with two blow-outs and the gas
afire!"

"Get out of this court," said Neville, hurling a ball at him.

"Isn't he the jealous old thing!" cried Cameron, flouncing away with an
affectation of feminine indignation. And presently the tennis balls
began to fly, and the little jets of white dust floated away on the June
breeze.

They were very evenly matched; they always had been, never asking odds
or offering handicaps in anything. It had always been so; at the traps
she could break as many clay birds as he could; she rode as well, drove
as well; their averages usually balanced. From the beginning--even as
children--it had been always give and take and no favour.

And so it was now; sets were even; it was a matter of service.

Luncheon interrupted a drawn game; Stephanie, flushed, smiling, came
around to his side of the net to join him on the way to the house:

"How do you keep up your game, Louis? Or do I never improve? It's
curious, isn't it, that we are always deadlocked."

Bare-armed, bright hair in charming disorder, she s