She had turned pale again, notwithstanding the sunshine and the freshening wind. He laid his hand lightly upon her arm. She suffered his touch without appearing to notice it.
“Ah, you mustn’t talk like that!” he pleaded. “Do you know what you make me feel like?”
She came back from the world of her own unhappy imaginings.
“Really, I forgot myself,” she declared, with a little smile. “Never mind, it does one good sometimes. One up, are you? Henceforth, then, golf—all the rigour of the game, mind.”
He fell in with her mood, and their conversation touched only upon the game. On the last green he suffered defeat and acknowledged it with a little grimace.
“If I might say so, Miss Fentolin,” he protested, “you are a little too good for your handicap. I used to play a very reasonable scratch myself, but I can’t give you the strokes.”
She smiled.
“Doubtless your long absence abroad,” she began slowly, “has affected your game.”
“I was round in eighty-one,” he grumbled.
“You must have travelled in many countries,” she continued, “where golf was an impossibility.”