as though he had dropped in from across the way
for a cigarette and a cup of tea. And I played up to that pose by
having Struthers wheel the tea-wagon out into the _patio_, where we
gathered about it in a semicircle, as decorously as though we were
sitting in a curate's garden to talk over the program for the next
meeting of the Ladies' Auxiliary.

There we sat, Dinky-Dunk, my husband who was in love with another woman;
Peter, my friend, who was in love with me, and myself, who was too busy
bringing up a family to be in love with anybody. There we sat in that
beautiful garden, in that balmy and beautiful afternoon sunlight, with
the bamboos whispering and a mocking-bird singing from its place on the
pepper-tree, stirring our small cups and saying "Lemon, please," or
"Just one lump, thank you." It may not be often, but life _does_
occasionally surprise us by being theatrical. For I could not banish
from my bones an impression of tremendous reservations, of guarded
waiting and watching from every point of that sedate and quiet-mannered
little triangle. Yet for only one moment had I seen it come to the
front. That was during the moment when Dinky-Dunk and Peter first shook
hands. On both faces, for that moment, I caught the look with which two
knights measure each other. Peter, as he lounged back in his wicker
chair and produced his familiar little briar pipe, began to remind me
rather acutely of that pensive old _picador_ in Zuloaga's _The Victim of
The Fete_, the placid and plaintive and only vaguely hopeful knight on
his bony old Rosinante, not quite ignorant of the fact that he must
forage on to other fields and look for better luck in newer ventures,
yet not quite forgetful that life, after all, is rather a blithe
adventure and that the man who refuses to surrender his courage, no
matter what whimsical turns the adventure may take, is still to be
reckoned the conqueror. But later on he was jolly enough and direct
enough, when he got to showing Dinky-Dunk his books and curios. I
suppose, at heart, he was about as interested in those things as an
aquarium angel-fish is in a Sunday afternoon visitor. But if it was
pretense, and nothing more, there was very actual kindliness in it. And
there was nothing left for me but to sit tight, and refill the little
lacquered gold cups when necessary, and smile non-committally when
Dinky-Dunk explained that my idea of Heaven was a place where husbands
were served _en brochette_, and