IN WHICH ALL RULES ARE BROKEN Swiftly I appraised the cool perfection of her attire, scenting the spice of the pinks she had thrust at her belt.

And I suffered one heart-quickening look from her eyes before she could lower them to me.
In that instant I was stung with a presentiment that our treaty was in peril--that it might go fearfully to smash if I did not fortify myself.
It came to me that the creature had regarded my past success in observing this treaty with a kind of provocative resentment.

I cannot tell how I knew it--certainly through no recognized media of communication.
Most formally I offered her a chair by the card-table, and resumed my own chair with what I meant for an air of inhospitable abstraction.

She declined the chair, preferring to stand by the table as was her custom.
"It was on this spot years ago," I said, laying down the second eight cards, "that Solon Denney first told me he was about to marry." Discursive gossip seemed best, I thought.
"Two long yellow braids," she remarked.

It would be too much to say that her words were snapped out.
"And now he has told me again--I mean that he's going to marry again." "What did you do ?" she asked more cordially, studying the cards.
"The first time I went to war," I answered absently, having to play up the ace and deuce of diamonds.
"I have never been able to care much for yellow hair," she observed, also studying the cards; "of course, it's _effective_, in a way, but--may I ask what you're going to do this time ?" "This time I'm going to play the game." Again she studied the cards.
"It's refining," I insisted.