"He is so absorbed in getting ready for the game that he has forgotten all about any reputation but that of a polo-player," Mrs. Harbinger returned. "And that reminds me that I haven't seen his new pony. Come, Alice, you appreciate a horse. We must go and examine this new wonder from Canada."
"We are not invited apparently," May said, seating herself in a piazza chair. "It is evidently your duty, Mr. Fairfield, to stay here and entertain me while they are gone."
"I remain to be entertained," he responded, following her example.
Mrs. Harbinger and Alice went off to the stables, and the pair left behind exchanged casual comments upon the day, the carriages driving up, the smart spring gowns of the ladies, and that sort of verbal thistledown which makes up ordinary society chit-chat. A remark which Fairfield made on the attire of a dashing young woman was the means of bringing the talk around again to the subject which had been touched upon between them on the previous afternoon.
"I suppose," Miss Calthorpe observed, "that a man who writes stories has to know about clothes. You do write stories, I am sure, Mr. Fairfield."
He smiled, and traced a crack in the piazza floor with his stick.
"Which means, of course," he said, "that you have never read any of them. That is so far lucky for me."
"But on the other hand I might have liked them very much."
"Well, perhaps there is that chance. I don't know, however, that I should be willing to run the risk. What kind of a story do you like?"
"I told you that yesterday, Mr. Fairfield. If you really cared for my opinion you would remember."
"You said that you liked 'Love in a Cloud.' Is that what you mean?"
"Then you do remember," she remarked with an air of satisfaction. "Perhaps it was only because you liked the book yourself."
"Why not believe that it was because I put so much value on your opinion?"
"Oh, I am not so vain as that, Mr. Fairfield," she cried. "If you remember, it was not on my account."
He laughed without replying, and continued the careful tracing of the crack in the floor as if the occupation were the pleasantest imaginable. May watched him for a moment, and then with the semblance of pique she turned her shoulder toward him. The movement drew his eyes, and he suddenly stopped his occupation to straighten up apologetically.
