Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/144

 His unwillingness to look at her roused a demon. "I wonder if you believe that."

"Must one always say all one believes?"

She ignored the question and he continued. "Marriage, to be successful, must be entered into by one leading person and one following person. We were each born to lead. We could never play on the same team, but as captains of opposing teams we can be profoundly chummy . . . If the other element had been allowed in, the chumminess in the crucible would have flared up into a white flame, but the contents of the crucible would have been reduced to ashes."

"Like the Kilkenny cats," she assented, absent-mindedly.

She was now stubbornly determined to regain possession of that dangerous glance. "Isn't it grotesque," she went on, "that contemptible, weak-souled people repeatedly disregard scruples that give pause to the strong?"

Dare held his breath, and his profile showed that he was pressing his teeth against his lip. They had never steered so near the reefs in all their skilfully navigated acquaintanceship. Louise pulled weakly at the grass.

Frankness had been their support up to the present, and each was privately acknowledging that they could no longer depend on it.

Silence. Louise felt that she ought to do something to divert his emotions into more familiar chan-