y's impulse to precipitate
frankness already started any machinery of opposition into action? Had
she told her husband? Knowing her so intimately, I could not make up
my mind, but would have been inclined to take either end of the bet.

Suppose she had told him?

Wouldn't she give me a word of warning so that I could be prepared for
anything he might say to me at our first meeting? I thought so, but
could not be sure.

"If he does know," I thought, "I don't want to see him. Why don't I
want to see him? Am I afraid of him? I am not afraid of him
physically. I am stronger than he and more skillful, and I am not
afraid of him mentally. He has a better mind than I have, but that is
nothing to be afraid of. Well, then, why don't I want to see him? Oh,
because it will be awkward and disagreeable; because he will look sick
to death and irreparably injured. Because he will not do me justice,
because he will think it is all my fault; and because he will require
of me things which I shall not promise him."

I heard the telephone ringing in the distance. My heart bounded and I
knew that Lucy was asking for me. I had risen and half crossed the
room to meet the boy who came to tell me that I was indeed wanted on
the phone. My heart began to thump in my breast, like a trunk falling
downstairs. I glanced guiltily to see if the rumpus it seemed to me to
be making was attracting notice. No. Every man was sunk in his
newspaper. A moment later, I heard her voice in my ear.

"Listen, I'd like to see you. I'll be dressed and downstairs in ten
minutes. Evelyn and John have driven to the golf club to get John's
sticks. He's really going to Palm Beach. They start sometime soon
after lunch. . . . How do I feel? . . . Oh, about the same as
yesterday!"

I cannot describe the thrill or emotion which I managed to abstract
from that last phrase. About the same as yesterday! I, too, felt like
that, only more so.

"Good-by--for ten minutes."

She hung up suddenly. But I could not at once leave the telephone
room. It seemed to me that I must be visibly trembling from head to
foot.

My buggy was at the club door. First I drove home, raced up the stairs
to my room, and from a closet in which I keep all sorts of hunting and
fishing gear, snatched a fine deep-sea rod by Hardy of London, and a
big pigskin box of tackle. I remembered to have heard John Fulton say
that he had none of such things with him in Aiken, and