I mind the
'benign' part so very much, but as for my 'surety'--well, now I must
set you right. I have seen men holding four aces sit with faces so sad
and hopeless that they might have earned their fortunes as professional
mourners, could their expressions have been rendered permanent. I've
seen men with straight flushes bow their heads in sorrow over the cards
they held. And I think the one beatific visage it has been my good
luck to behold belonged to Fat Joe, one night when the rest of the
table had raised his very feet out from under him. He sat and beamed;
he radiated good cheer--now and then he chuckled with positively
insulting self-confidence, while he was pushing forward all the chips
he owned . . . and he had two deuces and four spades to back it up!

"You'll find that most men play that way--most men, I mean, who play
for big stakes and play to win. And so--but I've told you already that
I'm going to put all my cards on the table, with you. You're going to
know, always, the hand I hold. Why, I told you I wasn't sure, even a
little bit. I've been smiling just to make it easy for you to
understand that I know how to lose, if it has to come to that. And do
you suppose I'd have let you weep into my handkerchief, if I'd been
half way certain, even? Do you? Because I wouldn't. I have a pair of
arms and two shoulders that have been reserved for that
purpose--reserved, oh, for years and years."

Barbara had lifted the handkerchief again. The explanation which Steve
had begun in half-assumed soberness ended in drawling, unmistakable
gravity.

"Perhaps it wasn't a particularly good parallel to use," he went on,
even more slowly, when she failed to answer. "I only wanted to make
you see--to have you know----"

Her brown head flashed up then, radiantly eloquent of entire
understanding.

"It was a very good parallel," she defended spiritedly. "I liked it
immensely. I was thinking that some day when I get involved with
Miriam in a particularly erudite discussion, I'd employ it myself. But
just now the one point which interests me most is this. Did--did Fat
Joe win?"

His single quick word that checked Ragtime brought her roan mount also
to a standstill. Lightly Steve swung out and took both her gloved
hands in a grip that made her draw back a little.

"If you weren't the _girl_ to whom I'd just told my love," he stated,
"I'd be telling you, right now, that I like you best of all the _men_ I
kno