than do the first hole at Muirfield in two? Oh, Mary, how I have longed
for this moment! I love you! I love you! Ever since I met you I have
known that you were the one girl in this vast world whom I would die to
win! Mary, will you be mine? Shall we go round together? Will you fix
up a match with me on the links of life which shall end only when the
Grim Reaper lays us both a stymie?'
She drooped towards him.
'Mortimer!' she murmured.
He held out his arms, then drew back. His face had grown suddenly
tense, and there were lines of pain about his mouth.
'Wait!' he said, in a strained voice. 'Mary, I love you dearly, and
because I love you so dearly I cannot let you trust your sweet life to
me blindly. I have a confession to make, I am not--I have not always
been'--he paused--'a good man,' he said, in a low voice.
She started indignantly.
'How can you say that? You are the best, the kindest, the bravest man I
have ever met! Who but a good man would have risked his life to save me
from drowning?'
'Drowning?' Mortimer's voice seemed perplexed. 'You? What do you mean?'
'Have you forgotten the time when I fell in the sea last week, and you
jumped in with all your clothes on----'
'Of course, yes,' said Mortimer. 'I remember now. It was the day I did
the long seventh in five. I got off a good tee-shot straight down the
fairway, took a baffy for my second, and---- But that is not the point.
It is sweet and generous of you to think so highly of what was the
merest commonplace act of ordinary politeness, but I must repeat, that
judged by the standards of your snowy purity, I am not a good man. I do
not come to you clean and spotless as a young girl should expect her
husband to come to her. Once, playing in a foursome, my ball fell in
some long grass. Nobody was near me. We had no caddies, and the others
were on the fairway. God knows----' His voice shook. 'God knows I
struggled against the temptation. But I fell. I kicked the ball on to a
little bare mound, from which it was an easy task with a nice
half-mashie to reach the green for a snappy seven. Mary, there have
been times when, going round by myself, I have allowed myself ten-foot
putts on three holes in succession, simply in order to be able to say I
had done the course in under a hundred. Ah! you shrink from me! You are
disgusted!'
'I'm not disgusted! And I don't shrink! I only shivered because it is
rather cold.'
'Then you can love me in spite of my past?'
'Mortimer!'
She fell into his arms.
'My dearest,' he said presently, 'what a happy life ours will be. That
is, if you do not find that you have made a mistake.'
'A mistake!' she cried, scornfully.
'Well, my handicap is twelve, you know, and not so darned twelve at
that. There are days when I play my second from the fairway of the next
hole but one, days when I couldn't putt into a coal-hole with
'Welcome!' written over it. And you are a Ladies' Open Champion. Still,
