inished her
strawberry.

"Well done, Kitty!" Ashe, who sat opposite to her, stretched his hand
across, and patted hers.

"Does she love him?" Cliffe asked himself, and could not make up his
mind, closely as he tried to observe their relations. He was more and
more conscious of the exciting effect she produced on himself, doubly
so, indeed, because of that sudden stroke of melancholy wherewith--like
a Rembrandt shadow, she had thrown into relief the gayety and frivolity
of her ordinary mood.

The stimulus, whatever it was, played upon his vanity. He, too, sought
an opening and found it. Soon it was he who was monopolizing the
conversation with an account of two days spent with Bismarck in a
Prussian country-house, during the triumphant days of the winter which
followed on Sadowa. The story was brilliantly told, and of some
political importance. But it was disfigured by arrogance and
affectation, and Ashe's eyes began to dance a little. Cliffe meanwhile
could not forget that he was in the presence of a rival and an official,
could not refrain after a while from a note of challenge here and there.
The conversation diverged from the tale into matters of current foreign
politics. Ashe, lounging and smoking, at first knew nothing, had heard
of nothing, as usual. Then a comment or correction dropped out; Cliffe
repeated himself vehemently--only to provoke another. Presently, no one
knew how, the two men were measured against each other <i>corps a
corps</i>--the wide knowledge and trained experience of the minister
against the originality, the force, the fantastic imagination of the
writer.

The Dean watched it with delight. He was very fond of Ashe, and liked to
see him getting the better of "the newspaper fellow." Kitty's lovely
brown eyes travelled from one to the other. Now it seemed to the Dean
that she was proud of Ashe, now that she sympathized with Cliffe. Soon,
however, like the god at Philippi, she swept upon the poet and bore him
from the field.

"Not a word more politics!" she said, peremptorily, to Ashe, holding up
her hand. "<i>I</i> want to talk to Mr. Cliffe about the ball."

Cliffe was not very ready to obey. He had an angry sense of having been
somehow shown to disadvantage, and would like to have challenged his
host again. But Kitty poured balm into his wounds. She drew him apart a
little, using the play of her beautiful eyes for him only, and talking
to him in a new voice of deference.

"You're goi