CHAPTER XI.
THE END OF TWO GAMES.
Trivial events sometimes precipitate catastrophies.

It has been said that had James MacDonald not left the farm gate open, at Hugomont, Waterloo might have ended otherwise.

So now, the rupture between Catherine Flint and Maxim Waldron was precipitated by a single unguarded oath.
It was at the ninth hole, down back of the Terrace Woods bunker.
Waldron, heated by exercise and the whiskey he had drunk, had already dismissed the caddies and had undertaken to carry the clubs, himself, hoping--man-fashion--to steal a kiss or two from Catherine, along the edge of the close-growing oaks and maples.

But all his plans went agley, for Catherine really made good and beat him, there, by half a dozen strokes; and as her little sphere, deftly driven by the putting-iron gripped in her brown, firm hands, rolled precisely over the cropped turf and fell into the tinned hole, the man ejaculated a perfectly audible "_Hell!_" She stood erect and faced him, with a singular expression in those level gray eyes--eyes the look of which could allure or wither, could entice or command.
"Wally," said she, "did you swear ?" "I--er--why, yes," he stammered, taken aback and realizing, despite his chagrin, how very poor and unsportsmanlike a figure he was cutting.
"I don't like it," she returned.

"Not a little bit, Wally.