(he had removed the red lantern from the barrier about a street excavation and hung it above the door of the girls’ dormitory) against Horace and the girl. Horace was an exceptional player, electric and brilliant. One who knew tennis and who had patience and a cool head could have defeated him out of hand by letting him beat himself . But not these. The points see-sawed back and forth, but usually Horace managed to retrieve the advantage with stroking or strategy so audacious as to obscure the faultiness of his tactics.
Meanwhile he could watch her; her taut earnestness, her unflagging determination not to let him down, her awkward virginal grace. From the back line he outguessed their opponents with detached and impersonal skill, keeping the point in abeyance and playing the ball so as to bring her young intentbody into motion as he might pull a puppet’s strings. Hers was an awkward speed that cost them points, but from the base line Horace retrieved her errors when he could, pleasuring in the skimpy ballooning of her little dress moulded and dragged by her arms and legs, watching the taut revelations of her speeding body in a sort of ecstasy. Girl white and all thy little Oh. Notpink, no. For amoment I thought she’d no. Disgraceful, her mamma would call it. Or any other older woman. Belle’s are pink. O muchly “Oaten reed above the lyre,” Horace chanted, catching the ball at his shoe-tops with a full swing, watching it duck viciouslybeyondthe net. Oaten reed above the lyre. And Belle like a harped gesture, not sonorous. Piano, perhaps. Blended chords, any way. Unchaste —? Knowledgeable better. Knowingly wearied. Weariedly knowing. Yes, piano. Fugue. Fugue of discontent. O moon rotting waxed overlong too long.
Last point. Game and set. She made it with savage awkwardness; and turned at the net and stood with lowered racket as he approached. Beneath the simple molasses of her hair the was perspiring a little; “I kept on letting ‘em get my alley,” she explained. “You never bawled me out a single time. What ought I to do, to break myself of that?”
“You ought to run in a cheese-cloth shimmy on hills under a new moon,” Horace told her. “With chained ankles, of course. But a slack chain. No, not the moon; but in a dawn like pipes. Green and gold, and maybe a little pink. Would you risk a little pink?” She watched him with grave curious eyes as he stood before her lean in his flannels and with his sick brilliant face and his wild hair. “No,” he corrected himself again. “On sand. Blanched sand, with dead ripples. Ghosts of dead motion waved into the sand. Do you know how cold the sea can be just before dawn, with a falling tide? like lying in a dead world, upon the dead respirations of the earth. She’s too big to the all at once. Like elephants... How old are you?” Now all at once her eyes became secretive, and she looked away. “Now what?” he demanded. “What didyou start to say then?”
“There’s Mr. Mitchell,” she-said. Harry Mitchellhad come out, in tight flannels and a white silk shirtand new ornate sport shoes that cost twenty dollarsper pair. With a new racket in a patent case andpress, standing with his squat legs, and his bald bullethead and his undershot jaw of rotting teeth besidethe studied picture of his wife. Presently, when hehad been made to drink a cup of tea, he wouldgather up all the men present and lead them through the house to his bathroomand give them whisky, pouring out a glass and fetching it down to Rachel. He would give you the shirt off his back. He was a cotton speculator and a good one; he was ugly as sin and kindhearted and dogmatic and talkative, and he called Belle “little mother” until she broke him of it. Belle lay yet in her chair; she was watching them as they turned together from the court.
“What was it?” Horace persisted.
“Sir?”
“What you started to say just then.”
“Nothing,” she answered. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Oh, that’s too feminine,” Horace said. “I didn’t expect that of you, after the way you play tennis.”They moved on under the veiled contemplation of Belle’s gaze.
“Feminine?” Then she added: “I hope I can get another set soon. I’m not a bit tired, are you?”
“Yes. Any woman might have said that. But maybe you’re not old enough to be a woman.”
“Horace,” Belle said.
I’m seventeen,” the girl answered. “Miss Belle likes you, don’t she?”
Belle spoke his name again, mellifluously, lazily peremptory. Airs Marders sat now with her slack chins in a raised teacup. The girl turned to him with polite finality. “Thanks for playing with me,” she said. “I’ll be better someday, I hope. We beat ‘em,” she said generally.
“You and the little lady gave ‘em the works, hey, big boy?” Harry Mitchell said, showing his discolored, teeth. His heavy prognathous jaw narrowed delicately down, then nipped abruptly off into pugnacious bewilderment.
“Mr. Benbow did,” the girl corrected in her clear voice, and she took the chair next Belle. “I kept on letting’em get my alley.”
“Horace,” Belle repeated, “your tea is getting cold.”
It had been fetched bythe combination gardener-stableman-chauffeur, temporarily impressed and smelling of vulcanized rubber and ammonia. Mrs. Marders removedher chins from her cup. “Horace plays too well,” she said, “really too well. The other men can’t compete with him. You were lucky to have him for a partner, child,”
“Yessum,” the girl agreed. “I guess he won’t risk me again.”
“Nonsense,”Mrs. Marders rejoined, “Horace enjoyed playing with you. Didn’t you notice it, Belle?”
Belle made no reply. She poured Horace’s tea, andat this moment Belle’s daughter came across the lawn in her crocus-yellow dress. Her eyes were like stars, more soft and melting than any deer’s and she gave Horace a swiftshining glance.
“Well, Titania?” he said.
Belle half turned her head, still with the teapot raised, and Harry set his cup on the table and went and knelt on one knee in her path, as if he were cajoling a puppy. The child came up, still watching Horace with her radiant arid melting diffidence, arid permitted her father to embrace her and fondle her with his short, heavy hands. “Daddy’s gal,” Harry said. She submitted to having her prim little dress mussed, pleasurably but a little restively; her eyes flew shining again.
“Don’t muss your dress, sister,” Belle said, and the child evaded her father’s hands with a prim movement “What is it now?” Belle asked. “Why aren’t you playing?”
“Nothing. I just came home.” She came arid stood diffidently beside her mother’s chair.
“Speak to the company,” Belle said. “Don’t you know better than to come where older people are, without
