h a kind of sudden terror at this latest outbreak, this
seeming madness on his part, which she could nowise fathom or
comprehend, retreated ever more and more, away from him.

Then suddenly with a quick effort, she stripped off the splendid,
blazing diamond from her finger, and held it out to him.

"Wally," said she, calm now and quite herself again, "Wally, let's be
friends. Just that and nothing more. Dear, good, companionable friends,
as we used to be, long years ago, before this madness seized us--this
chimera of--of love!"

As a bull charging, is struck to the heart by the sword of the matador,
and stops in his tracks, motionless and dazed before he falls, so
"Tiger" Waldron stopped, wholly stunned by this abrupt and crushing
denouement.

For a moment, man and woman faced each other. Not a word was spoken.
Catherine had no word to say; and Waldron, though his lips worked, could
bring none to utterance. Then their eyes met; and his lowered.

"Good-bye," said she quietly. "Good-bye forever, as my betrothed. When
we meet again, Wally, it will be as friends, and nothing more. And now,
let me go. Don't come with me. I prefer to be alone. I'd rather walk, a
bit, and think--and then go back quietly to the club-house, and so home,
in my car. Don't follow me. Here--take this, and--good-bye."

Mechanically he accepted the gleaming jewel. Mechanically, like a man
without sense or reason, he watched her walk away from him, upright and
strong and lithe, voluptuous and desirable in every motion of that
splendid body, now lost to him forever. Then all at once, entering a
woodland path that led by a short cut back to the club-house, she
vanished from his sight.

Vanished, without having even so much as turned to look at him again, or
wave that firm brown hand.

Then, seeming to waken from his daze, "Tiger" laughed, a terrible and
cruel laugh; and then he flung a frightful blasphemy upon the still June
air; and then he dashed the wondrous diamond to earth, and stamped and
dug it with a perfect frenzy of rage into the soft mold.

And, last of all, with lowered head and lips that moved in fearful
curses, he crashed away into the woods, away from the path where the
girl was, away from the club-house, away, away, thirsting for solitude
and time to quell his passion, salve his wounded pride and ponder
measures of terrible revenge.

The diamond ring, crushed into the earth, and the golf clubs, lying
where they had fallen from