STEPPING on to the veranda, Florence found herself in a projected atmosphere of breakfast—the fine aroma of coffee, the strident gaiety of people not too well known to one another and denied the solace of breakfast in their rooms.

Mrs. Budd’s country house was thrown together with the directness, the inconsequence, and the charming frankness of the lady herself. There were no corners, no intricacies of passage, no glooms. One step from the veranda and you were in the midst of it. You were entirely surrounded by the open stairs to the chambers, the double drawing-rooms on the left, the dining-room and library on the right, with the “glass room” giving on the garden behind it. You saw them all at a glance, and saw them in an even flood of light from the lightly curtained, large, plain windows.

From the living-hall Florence saw, through the double doors, a triangular vista of the breakfast-room. The table, drawn squarely in front of the open French windows, was dappled with sun. She got an impression of colors and motions, and the automatic movement to and fro of the starched white blouse of the Chinese butler.

She distinguished but two faces, Julia’s and Longacre’s. They were fronting the door, back to the full flood of sun, and again she saw them together, as though detached from the people around them. Julia was talking, but more aware of whom she talked to than what she said. Longacre seemed hardly to listen. He kept looking at her.

Florence felt again a tightening throat. She got a long breath. She realized that Mrs. Budd had suspended her flow of conversation with Holden, and had fixed on her a smile of absent welcome. She indicated the vacant place at Holden’s right, and hurried an inquiry of how her guest had slept into a breathless demand as to how she preferred her coffee.

Florence found herself fronting Longacre, who was pent between Cissy Fitz Hugh’s pettish prettiness and Julia’s accented gaiety. He looked up at Florence as if he had come out of a dream. His eyes met hers across the table, whimsically asking: Wasn’t it, after all, just the jolliest, stupidest possible lark? But she did not answer the look. She wouldn’t. The smile that she did give him was a mere good morning, the same as she had given Holden when he drew back her chair for her. Her whole attention seemed for Thair, who had immediately turned on her the genial impudence of his odd, light eyes that seemed to see consummately through half-closed lids.

“You are truly the most extraordinary person,” he was saying. “One sees you in the first flush of day half a mile on the road to the sea. And presently you come in, straight from the fountain of youth, and remember immediately how many lumps you take in your coffee.”

“And you—” She just hesitated. She saw Longacre still looking at her—“are too delightfully naÏve!” Her eyes returned to Thair’s mocking face. “It’s not a medicine one permits one’s self before breakfast.”

He laughed with whetted interest.

“What will you have? I am all at your commands.”

“Mercy, Charlie,” Cissy cut in, “I should think you’d know all any one expects of you is to be amusing!” She glanced maliciously at Mrs. Budd.

“Can you prove your reputation for wit?” Florence asked him.

Thair leaned back, chin up, eyes down. He was enjoying himself.

“The reputation for wit,” he proclaimed, “hangs on the things a man has said, and the things you hope he’ll presently say. He’s like the ‘white queen’ in what’s-its-name—jam yesterday, jam to-morrow, but never jam to-day.”

“Speaking of jam,” Julia plumped in nonchalantly, “will you please pass me the marmalade, Mr. Thair? (Never mind, Wong!) Mama,” she called across the table, “has it been decided whether we are to ride or drive over to the links?”

The question caught an undercurrent of attention through the talk. Not that the method of progression so much mattered to the breakfasters, as the company in which they traveled. They hung upon Mrs. Budd as the arbiter of their fate.

“Why, both, pet.” The hostess’s glance flashed upon her guests at large, though her reply, obviously, was limited to her daughter. “I have ordered the surrey. That and Mr. Thair’s machine take half of us, but you young people will, of course, prefer your saddles.”

“You’ll ride?” Holden murmured to Florence.

She looked down at his big, blunt hand, resting on the table.

“Did you say your horses were here?”

“Why, yes, the span are. Drove ’em down from Palo Alto.” He was eager “Would you rather—”

The tail of his sentence was lost in Julia’s clear voice.

“Bess and I are going in the ‘red devil,’” she announced. Thus a queen might proclaim her progression.

The blooming, blonde creature included in this edict threw a nervous glance at Thair. But he was all amiable irony.

“You are the leading conspirator for my happiness.” He bowed across to Julia.

Florence divined who might be expected to fill the fourth place in the automobile. It might have been that possibility which ruffled Cissy Fitz Hugh’s forehead. But Cissy’s endeavors never failed from lack of confidence.

“Well, really,” she observed pathetically, “it’s such a magnificent morning, I think I shall make one effort to ride over. Don’t you think it’s an ideal morning for a gallop?” She appealed to Longacre.

“Well, you make it seem so,” he said, with one of his gentle, misleading looks. It misled both Cissy and Julia. It left one complaisant, the other a little more like a princess than usual. But Florence knew just what that look signified. When he was going to escape he was always like that. Unconcerned about the little arrangements of life, he habitually took them as they were offered, but Florence knew he had no idea of riding over as Cissy’s escort.

She suspected he had lost the chance of a fourth place in Julia’s arrangement. How he intended to escape Cissy she guessed from his look at herself, questioning her.

She gave him a vague, inquiring smile, and turned to answer Thair. She knew Longacre would speak to her after breakfast. He did. In the general exodus to the veranda she found him at her elbow, a little quizzical, a little puzzled.

“Are we going to gallop over together?” he asked, as if he were stating a certainty.

“Why, aren’t you with Mrs. Fitz Hugh?” she said, with light surprise.

“I?” He was puzzled to know if she were serious. “Lord, I’m going to dodge her!”

“With me? But, Tony—I’m so sorry—I’ve promised Mr. Holden to drive over with him.”

“Holden!” Longacre looked, as he felt, outraged. “But I thought, of course—”

“Why?” Florence wondered. “Did you speak of it?”

“No—but I thought, of course, that we would—oh, well!” he flung out, sulky as a boy.

“Oh, here he is!” Cissy Fitz Hugh, compressed into her habit like jelly into a mold, was upon them. Her hand was lightly on Longacre’s sleeve.

“Mr. Colton wants to put me up,” she complained, “but I said no one shall—but my cavalier!”

“Now, really, Mr. Longacre,” Mrs. Budd’s voice burst forth from the other side, “I don’t know what sort of a mount you prefer.”

She indicated the group of horses crowding away from the gibbering road-machine that ground into the porte-cochÈre with Thair’s hand on the throttle. Thair’s humorous regard was for Longacre’s predicament. Too late, it seemed to say, to escape from such a veteran as Cissy.

When the riders headed the procession down the steep dip of the drive, Cissy’s blonde head was nodding and ducking to Longacre’s passive profile with such calm assurance of how cleverly she had managed it, that Florence Essington could not repress a smile.

Holden, who, at the instant, had pulled up his horses at the steps, took the expression to himself with simplicity. The concentration with which he took in what was immediately before him, without regard to things behind or beyond, was a relief to her. Now his hands were so full of his horses that he had hardly a glance for her. The impatient sorrels were making preliminary attempts to run over the groom at their bits.

“Can you make it?” Holden said, as he brought the runabout to momentary quiet.

She was in with the dart of a swallow.

The groom sprang aside, and Florence felt herself precipitated, as in one plunge, toward the sea.

“Hey, hey!” Holden growled under his breath. The reins were taut, and his arm, brushing her shoulder, was as stiff as steel. The animals, curbed and quivering, danced down the slope like fine ladies, shaking their heads with a vague threat of another outburst.

“They’re crazy for a run,” Holden murmured caressingly. “We’ll have to head that procession,” and he nodded toward the group stringing through the gate.

“That is what I should like,” said Florence.

“Then we’ll put them clean out of sight,” he answered.

They passed the foremost riders as these were swinging into the coast road, and for a few moments Florence saw oaks and ocean as a blur of olive-green pierced with flashes of bright blue.

“Too fast?” Holden inquired, his eyes on the horses’ ears.

“It couldn’t be!” she answered with excitement.

The rapid motion was what her mood needed to fire it. It lit a spark in her cold, lethargic determination. She was possessed with that feeling of triumph speed creates—a physical elation, a surety that nothing in life could stand still again. A faint color grew in her cheeks. Her eyes had a fire that seldom burned in their somber pupils; a color and a fire that Holden marked in his greater leisure, with the slackened speed of the horses rising the steep hill.

“You look so lit up,” he told her, half wonderingly.

“It’s the driving,” she explained, “or rather flying. We hardly seemed to touch earth.”

“Just driving!” He was amused. “Well, I like it. It’s my play. It’s famous to have a strong, lively pair of brutes under your hand to hurry or pull up as you like.”

Florence looked as though that pleasure were quite within her comprehension.

“But,” he added, with another look at her glowing face, “it would take the biggest deal in the country to make me feel within twenty miles of the way you look.”

“Oh, do I look all that?” She seemed so to comprehend! He warmed under the kindness of her fancy.

“You know I want above all things to please you,” he began.

“Aren’t we friends enough not to have to please each other?” she quickly interposed. She wanted so to keep him off that dangerous ground.

“You people have such a way with words!” he protested, with a head-shake as large and impatient as a bull’s.

“We people?” she demanded with gay asperity.

“Oh, all that crowd!” He jerked his head backward, in the direction of the party following.

“And you insist on classing me?” she persisted.

“You know,” he replied obstinately, “as far as I’m concerned, you’re in a class by yourself. I’ve told you all about that before.” As they began the descent his hands tightened on the reins.

She looked seaward over the low live-oaks.

“You can’t for a moment suppose,” he went on, “that I class you with them. You know their sort. You know how to meet them; but I believe at bottom you’re more like me.”

“That may be, too,” she said gently; “but—”

“Do you know, that’s the way you always answer me!” he struck in. “You won’t put a definite period to a sentence.”

“Because you won’t let me come to the end of it,” she said quickly. She wanted to avert the last appeal. She wished to have all clear between them, but instinctively she dreaded the finality. “The difficulty is that I’m not enough like you; and we two are mature; we won’t change; we can’t adjust ourselves as younger people can.”

“I ought to know by this time how much or how little alike we are,” he determined.

“Is it such a long time?” she doubted.

“Six months.”

“Yes, but what did the months in New York amount to? A porridge of things and people! Did we have time to breathe? We simply rushed from place to place, throwing at each other the last opinion on the latest thing.”

“I knew what I wanted then,” he retorted.

“But you didn’t know me.”

“Don’t you think I know the sort you are?” he demanded.

“Not quite.” And, as he repudiated her words with his large head-shake, she added, “At least, if you will take the consequences of cornering me, I’m not at all sure I know what you are like.”

He seemed to consider this more natural.

“I’ll tell you all you want to know in that quarter, and tell you straight.” He pinned her with his direct look.

She tried to retrieve his misconception of her meaning.

“Oh,” she said, “you can’t. You would have to show me.”

They whirled under the cypresses at the entrance to the golf-links. The club-house, so low, and so widely roofed with tiles that it appeared to crouch under a red umbrella, gave them just the glimmer of the upper row of its windows over the hill-crest.

“And how long a time will it take to show you?” said Holden.

It came to her how unescapable he was; what significance had his direct mind read into her replies? She was grave, with a certain distress and indecision in her face.

“I can’t tell. I mean you must not ask me to—you must not expect—I cannot—”

But he would not have it.

“Oh, well, if time’s what you want!”

“Do you go at your deals as hard as this?” she smiled.

“Worse than this,” he said earnestly. “There’s no consideration there—much worse.”

“Worse!” cried Cissy Fitz Hugh, catching the word as she and Longacre, foremost of the riders, came abreast the runabout.

“Golf—worse than railroad deals,” replied Florence so quickly that Longacre, who had had time to note Holden’s annoyance, gave her a long consideration.

“But you don’t stay out of a game because it’s hard, Holden,” he said. “Suppose we make a foursome.”

Florence felt a quickened heart—a thrill that was more than excitement, too keen for joy. Had he looked at Holden as at a rival? Was he trying, this negligent Longacre, to arrange to speak with her, to be near her? Did he miss her so much? He must miss her more.

He handed her out at the club veranda, both her hands in his, and she could not help giving him one of her old looks. It got away from her. She saw him flush under it. It went to his head.

She kept close to Holden. She walked out to the tee with him, as inconsequently happy, and, she told herself, as silly, as a girl. She knew that Longacre had builded on his knowledge that, while he and she played a fairly fast game, Cissy was a notably wild shot and Holden a duffer. But Florence chose to assume Holden to be her partner, again relegating Cissy to Longacre; and she waived to Cissy the right of the first drive, which, though wild, covered a long space in a forward direction. Longacre’s face, flushed, quivering with irritation, his drive off—a smashing crack that sent the ball a spinning streak—were with her memory over all the course, but she managed her game to keep just from blocking Holden’s, seeing Longacre well away at the second green as the greater party came out to the tee.

Diligently coaching Holden, she managed to keep far enough ahead of all but one, the most hardy, the most headlong player on the links. Florence felt pursued and hurried on by that ringing voice, detaching itself in her ears from all other sounds and voices. “Fore!” it rang out, vibrant, musical, across the brown downs.

Looking back from her advance to where the play was more congested, she could see the tall figure whose vigor and presence seemed to dominate the links. Florence felt herself sunk in the background of Julia Budd’s identity. The girl’s strokes had rhythm; the movements of her body, harmony. Her voice, that was more a call than a shout, had the sound of half-savage music. Beside her the others seemed triflers. She was splendid in her intensity for the thing in hand, the play—the long swing, the flying ball, the quick pursuit. Florence could feel her waiting at their backs, impatient of delay, her warning “Fore!” urging them forward.

With this potent personality pressing her hard, Florence went slowly, warily. Her eye measured the distance as she increased or decreased it between herself and Longacre. Her nerves were tight, but the exercise fostered what color the drive had lent her; and her sense of beginning to handle circumstances, that she had feared were slipping past her, gave her an appearance of serenity.

It was this manner of delicate calm, considered with her bright eyes and hot cheeks, that, when she joined the party at luncheon, instantly got Longacre’s attention and kept him distracted. She guessed he was trying to explain her mood to himself, without success. She determined to give him no opportunity for discoveries until the hour of her choosing.

She quizzed Thair across the luncheon-table with the early invitation to try his automobile he had extended her, and had not made good.

“I’ll take you up on that,” he threatened, “if you’ll honor the ‘red devil’ as far as ‘Del Monte’ to-night.”

“To the dance? Must we be so precipitate?” she asked.

He insisted.

Cissy Fitz Hugh looked sharply from Thair to Florence, from Florence to Longacre. After luncheon, while the horses were being brought around, she cornered her cousin. Florence saw Thair amused, protesting,—Cissy positive, insisting. She must have extracted a promise. She turned away with the smile of a kitten over cream.

That look, and the idea it suggested, of what Cissy had been after, gave Florence a sudden disgust of the whole thing—Cissy, her manoeuver; herself, her own manoeuvers; every one; all scuffling after what they wanted, seeing no further than the next minute. Unprofitable! She would not think.

She drove back to “Miramar,” as she had come, with Holden. She went immediately to her room. To sleep was impossible, and she would not—no, could not—think. She walked about the room, picked up and moved about little articles on the writing-desk, the chiffonnier. She watched from her window the line of surf that incessantly built and broke itself along the glittering coast. The fingers that drummed the pane trembled.

She heard voices passing under her window as the tennis-players and bathers followed the afternoon home for tea on the veranda, since the evening was clear. She did not go down. She stood at the window, watching the violet shadows drawing fold over fold of deepening color across the ocean’s floor. She had lost herself to such finite things as time. When she came back to it with a start, she was dismayed to see only half an hour left for dressing.

But she dressed with consideration, with anxiety. For full five minutes after the maid had fastened the last hook and pinned the last flower, she revolved before the mirror, studying the coils of dark hair that wrapped her head, and the lines of the lace gown that sloped along her shoulders and rippled, with broken glitters of cut steel, to the floor. When she turned from the glass she was smiling.