Part 41 (2/2)

She took the card. Even to the end he was good--good and four-square.

He was so good that her throat ached. She could not endure this very much longer. He extended his hand.

”S'long and good luck,” he said.

”I--I hope your golf will be better than you think.”

Then he said a peculiar thing. He seldom swore, and seldom lost his head as completely as he did that second. But, looking her full in the eyes, he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed below his breath:--

”d.a.m.n golf!”

The observation was utterly irrelevant. Turning, he clicked his heels together like a soldier and went out. The door closed behind him. For a second her face was illumined as with a great joy. In a sort of ecstasy, she repeated his words.

”He said,” she whispered--”he said, 'd.a.m.n golf.'” Then she threw herself into a wicker chair and began to sob.

”Oh!” she choked. ”If--if--”

CHAPTER XXII

A CONFESSION

Monte left Nice on the twentieth of July, to join--as Peter supposed--Madame Covington in Paris. Monte himself had been extremely ambiguous about his destination, being sure of only one fact: that he should not return inside of a year, if he did then. Peter had asked for his address, and Monte had given him the same address that he gave Marjory.

”I want to keep in touch with you,” Peter said.

Peter missed the man. On the ride with Marjory that he enjoyed the next day after Monte's departure, he talked a great deal of him.

”I 'd like to have seen into his eyes,” he told her. ”I kept feeling I 'd find something there more than I got hold of in his voice and the grip of his hand.”

”He has blue eyes,” she told him, ”and they are clean as a child's.”

”They are a bit sad?”

”Monte's eyes sad?” she exclaimed. ”What made you think so?”

”Perhaps because, from what he let drop the other night, I gathered he was n't altogether happy with Mrs. Covington.”

”He told you that?”

”No; not directly,” he a.s.sured her. ”He's too loyal. I may be utterly mistaken; only he was rather vague as to why she was not here with him.”

”She was not with him,” Marjory answered slowly. ”She was not with him because she was n't big enough to deserve him.”

”Then it's a fact there's a tragedy in his life?”

”Not in his--in hers,” she answered pa.s.sionately.

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