CHAPTER V.REVENGE.
And full of black rage! Had she only reproached me, or, turning on me in the hour of MY victory, said all that she had now said in the moment of her own, I could have borne it.

She might have shamed me then, and I might have taken the shame to myself and forgiven her.

But, as it was, I stood there in the gathering dusk, between the darkening hedges, baffled, tricked, defeated! And by a woman! She had pitted her wits against mine, her woman's will against my experience, and she had come off the victor.

And then she had reviled me! As I took it all in, and began to comprehend also the more remote results, and how completely her move had made further progress on my part impossible, I hated her.

She had tricked me with her gracious ways and her slow-coming smile.