be reformed," said Gay. "No drunkard
and gambler ever does."

Her voice was hard, but there was a pain in her heart like the twist of
a knife there. She pressed her hand among the laces of her dress, and
all the little paste jewels twinkled. Druro noticed them. They
engaged his attention, even while he was swallowing down her words like
a bitter dose of poison. He was deeply offended. She spoke to him as
if he were some kind of a pariah, and it was unpardonable. If she had
been a man, he would have known what to do, and have done it quick.
But what could be done with a slip of a girl who stood there with a
folded lace butterfly around her and looked like a passionate tea-rose
twinkling with dewdrops? Nothing, except just smile. But only the
self-control gained in many a hard-won and ably bluffed game of life
(and poker) enabled him to do it, and to say, with great gentleness:

"I'm afraid that I am as I am. You must take me or leave me at that."

"I'll leave you, then," she said burningly, and slipped past him. At
the door of the ballroom she looked back and flung him a last word,
"Until you are a different man from the present Lundi Druro."

Druro, entirely taken aback by her decisive retort and action, stood
staring long after she had disappeared.

"Well, by the living something or other!" he muttered at last, and
walked away from the hotel, filled with wholesale rage and indignation.
"The little shrew! Who asked her to take me, I wonder? Or for her
opinions on my ways of living? Of all the cheeky monkeys! Pitching
into me like that--just because she missed her blessed waltz!
_Certainly_ it was rotten of me--I don't say it wasn't. _But I
forgot_. I _told_ her I forgot. Didn't I come straight down here and
tell her? Left those fellows--left a jack-pot! O my aunt! And that's
all I get for it--a decent and reasonable fellow like me to be called
such names just because I distract myself with the only one or two
things that can delude one into believing that life is worth living in
this rotten country! Drunkard and gambler--fine words to fling at a
man like bomb-shells!"

Thus it was with Druro, whom all men hailed as "well-met," and all
women liked, and all Rhodesia called "Lundi," though his Christian
names were really Francis Everard. No one had ever called him anything
but Lundi since the day he jumped into the Lundi River to save his
dog's life. He was on a shoot with half a dozen other m