The Fighting Chance

“Child, child,” she murmured, “you do not know how much of a man a man can be!”

“Yes, I do!” said Sylvia hotly.

Leila smiled. “Hush, you little silly! I’ve talked Stephen and praised Stephen to you for days and days, and the moment I dare mention another man you fly at me, hair on end!”

“Oh, Leila, I know it! I’m perfectly mad about him, that’s all. But don’t you think he is looking like himself again? And, Leila, isn’t he strangely attractive?—I don’t mean just because I happen to be in love with him, but give me a perfectly cold and unbiassed opinion, dear, because there is simply no use in a girl’s blinding herself to facts, or in ignoring certain fixed laws of symmetry, which it is perfectly obvious that Mr. Siward fulfils in those well-known and established proportions which—”

“Sylvia!”

“What?” she asked, startled.

“Nothing. Only for two solid weeks—”

“Of course, if you are not interested—”

“But I am, child—I am! desperately interested! He is handsome! I knew him before you did, and I thought so then!”

“Did you?” said Sylvia, troubled.

“Yes, I did. When I wore short skirts I kissed him, too!”

“Did you? W—what did he wear?”

“Knickerbockers, silly! You don’t think he was still in the cradle, do you? I’m not as aged as that!”

“I missed a great deal in my childhood,” said Sylvia naïvely.

“By not knowing Stephen? Pooh! He used to pinch me, and then we’d put out our tongues in mutual derision. Once—”

“Stop!” said Sylvia faintly. “And anyhow, you probably taught him.... Look at him as he saunters across the lawn, Leila—look at him!”

“Well? I see him.”

“Isn’t he almost an ideal?”

“He is. He certainly is, dear.”

“Do you think he walks as though he were perfectly well?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Leila thoughtfully. “Sometimes people whose walk is a gracefully languid saunter develop adipose tissue after forty.”

“Nonsense! Really, Leila, do you think he walks like a perfectly well man?”

“He may be coming down with whooping-cough—”

Sylvia rose indignantly, but Leila pulled her back to the sun-warmed marble bench:

“A girl in love loses her sense of humour temporarily. Sit down, you little vixen!”

“Leila, you laugh at everything when I don’t feel like it.”

“I’m not in love, and that’s why.”

“You are in love!”

Leila looked at her, then under her breath: “In love, am I—with the whole young world ringing with the laughter I had forgotten the very sound of? Do you call that love?—with the sea and sky laughing back at me, and the wind in my ears fairly tremulous with laughter? Do you, who look out upon the pretty world so seriously through those sea-blue eyes of yours, think that I can be in love?”

“Oh, Leila, a girl’s happiness is serious enough, isn’t it? Dear, it frightens me! I was so close to losing it—once.”

“I lost mine,” said Leila, closing her eyes for a moment. “I shall not sigh if I find it again.”

They sat there in the sun, Leila’s hand lying idly in Sylvia’s, the soft sea-wind stirring their hair, and in their ears the thunderous undertone of the mounting sea.

“Look at Stephen!” murmured Sylvia, her enraptured eyes following him as he strolled hatless and coatless along the cliff’s edge, the sun glimmering on his short hair, a tall, slim, well-coupled, strongly knit shape against the sky and sea.

But Leila’s quick ear had caught a significant sound from the gravel drive behind her, and she stood up, a delicious colour tinting her face.

“Are you going in?” asked Sylvia. Then she, too, heard the subdued whirring of a motor from the front of the house, and she looked at Leila as she turned and recrossed the terrace, walking slowly but erect, her pretty head held high.

Then Sylvia faced the sea again and presently descended the terrace, crossing the long lawn toward the headland, where Siward stood looking out across the water.

Leila, from the music-room, watched her; then she heard Plank’s voice, and his step on the stair, and she called out to him gaily:

“I am downstairs, thank you. How dared you send me those foolish nurses!”

She was laughing when he came into the room, standing there erect, head high, a brilliant colour in her cheeks; and she offered him both hands which he took between his own, holding them strongly, and looking into her face with steady, questioning eyes.

“Well?” she said, still smiling, but her scarlet under-lip trembled a little; then: “Yes, you may say what you wish—what I—I wish you to say.... There can be no harm in talking about it. But—will you be very gentle with me? Don’t m-make me cry; I h-have—I am t-trying to remember how it feels to laugh once more.”

Sylvia, lying in the hot sand on the tiny crescent beach under the cliffs, listened gravely to Siward’s figures, as, note-book in hand, he went over the real-estate problem, commenting thoughtfully as he discussed the houses offered.

“Twenty by a hundred and two; good rear, north side of the street—next door to the Tommy Barclays, you know, Sylvia; only they’re asking forty-two-five.”

“That is an outrage!” said Sylvia seriously; “besides, I remember there was a wretched cellar, and only a butler’s pantry extension. I’d much rather have that little house in Sixty-fourth Street, where the Fetherbraynes live—next house on the west, you know. Then we can pull it down and build—when we want to.”

“We won’t be able to afford to build for a while, you know,” said Siward doubtfully.

“What do we care, dear? We’ll have millions of things to do, anyway, and what is the use of building?”

“As many things to do as that?” he said, looking over his note-book with a smile.

“More! Are we not just beginning to live, and open our eyes, silly? Listen: Books, books, books, from top to bottom of the house, that is what I want first of all—except my piano.”

“Do let us have a little plumbing, dear,” he said so seriously that for a fraction of a second she was on the verge of taking him seriously.

“Why extravagant plumbing when books furnish sufficient circulation for the flow of soul, dear?” she retorted gravely.

“Nobody we know will ever come to see us, if they think we read books,” said Siward.