art surrendered to its more rightful patrons, the chronics and
apostles of the turf, and racing may be only racing as roulette is
roulette. But on Derby Day it is as though the community paid tribute
to the savor of the soil, and honored in memory the traditions of the
ancient regime.

To-day, in the club-house inclosure, the roomy verandahs, the
close-cropped lawn and even the roof-gallery were crowded; not indeed
to the congestion of the grandstand's perspiring swarm, for Fashion's
reservation still allowed some luxury of space, but beyond the numbers
of less important times. In the burgeoning variety of new spring gowns
and hats, the women made bouquets, as though living flowers had been
brought to the shrine of the thoroughbred.

A table at the far end of the verandah seemed to be a little Mecca for
strolling visitors. In the party surrounding it, one might almost have
caught the impression that the prettiness of the feminine display had
been here arranged, and that in scattering attractive types along the
front of the white club-house, some landscape gardener had reserved
the most appealing beauties for a sort of climacteric effect at the
end.

Sarah and Anne Preston were there, and wherever the Preston sisters
appeared there also were usually gathered together men, not to the
number of two and three, but in full quorum. And, besides the Preston
sisters, this group included Miss Buford and a fourth girl.

Indeed, it seemed to be this fourth who held, with entire
unconsciousness, more than an equal share of attention. Duska Filson
was no more cut to the pattern of the ordinary than the Russian name
her romantic young mother had given her was an exponent of the life
about her. She was different, and at every point of her divergence
from a routine type it was the type that suffered by the contrast.
Having preferred being a boy until she reached that age when it became
necessary to bow to the dictate of Fate and accept her sex, she had
retained an understanding for, and a comradeship with, men that made
them hers in bondage. This quality she had combined with all that was
subtly and deliciously feminine, and, though she loved men as she
loved small boys, some of them had discovered that it was always as
men, never as a man.

She had a delightfully refractory way of making her own laws to
govern her own world--a system for which she offered no apology; and
this found its vindication in the fact that her world was