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Page 38
He did not seem to care particularly for women; he never hovered about
them, offering little favors and courtesies; rather, he let them come
to him. Nor did he care for dancing. But he was always ready to make
up a table at bridge; and a shrewd capable player he was, too.
The music in the ballroom stopped.
"Will you be so good, Miss Killigrew, as to tell me why you Americans
call a palace like this--a cottage?" Lord Monckton's voice was
pleasing, with only a slight accent.
"I'm sure I do not know. If it were mine, I'd call it a villa."
"Quite properly."
"Do you like Americans?"
"I have no preference for any people. I prefer individuals. I had
much rather talk to an enlightened Chinaman than to an unenlightened
white man."
"I am afraid you are what they call blas�."
"Perhaps I am not quite at ease yet. I was buffeted about a deal in
the old days."
Lord Monckton dropped back into the wicker chair, in the deep shadow.
Kitty did not move. She wondered what Thomas was doing. (Thomas was
rubbing ointment on his raw knuckles.)
"I am very fond of the sea," remarked Lord Monckton. "I have seen some
odd parts of it. Every man has his Odyssey, his Aeneid."
Aeneid. It seemed to Kitty that her body had turned that instant into
marble as cold as that under her palms.
The coal of the man's cigar glowed intermittently. She could see
nothing else.
Aeneid--Enid.
CHAPTER XVI
Thomas slammed the ball with a force which carried it far over the wire
backstop.
"You must not drive them so hard, Mr. Webb; at least, not up. Drive
them down. Try it again."
Tennis looked so easy from the sidelines that Thomas believed all he
had to do was to hit the ball whenever he saw it within reach; but
after a few experiments he accepted the fact that every game required a
certain talent, quite as distinct as that needed to sell green neckties
(old stock) when the prevailing fashion was polka-dot blue. How he
loathed Thomas Webb. How he loathed the impulse which had catapulted
him into this mad whirligig! Why had not fate left him in peace; if
not satisfied with his lot, at least resigned? And now must come this
confrontation, the inevitable! No poor rat in a trap could have felt
more harassed. Mentally, he went round and round in circles, but he
could find no exit. There is no file to saw the bars of circumstance.
That the lithe young figure on the other side of the net, here, there,
backward and forward, alert, accurate, bubbling with energy . . .
Once, a mad rollicking impulse seized and urged him to vault the net
and take her in his arms and hold her still for a moment. But he knew.
She was using him as an athlete uses a trainer before a real contest.
There was something more behind his stroke than mere awkwardness. It
was downright savagery. Generally when a man is in anger or despair he
longs to smash things; and these inoffensive tennis-balls were to
Thomas a gift of the gods. Each time one sailed away over the
backstop, it was like the pop of a safety-valve; it averted an
explosion.
"That will be enough!" cried Kitty, as the last of a dozen balls sailed
toward the distant stables.
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