A flicker of annoyance went over Lennart's face. "Why, Sagner," he said, "how stupid you are! Don't you know that Mary is lame and couldn't walk over the golf course now to save her life?"
As Sagner turned back to me, and we passed on out of hearing, I noted two red spots flaming hectically in his cheeks.
"It seems to me," he muttered, "that if I had crippled or incapacitated my wife in any way so that she couldn't play golf any more, I wouldn't exactly take another woman into the tournament. I think that singles would just about fit me under the circumstances."
"But Lennart is such a 'splendid fellow,'" I quoted wryly.
"He's a splendid fool," snapped Sagner.
"Why, you darned old copy-cat," I taunted. "It was Miss Hubert who rated him as a 'splendid fool.'"
"Oh," said Sagner.
"Oh, yourself," said I.
Involuntarily we turned and watched the two bright figures skirting the field. Almost at that instant they stopped, and the girl reached up with all her clinging, cloying coquetry and fastened a great, pink wild rose into the lapel of the man's coat. Sagner groaned. "Why can't she keep her hands off that man?" he muttered; then he shrugged his shoulders with a grim little gesture of helplessness. "If a girl doesn't know," he said, "that it's wrong to chase another woman's man she's too ignorant to be congenial. If she does know it's wrong, she's too—vicious. But never mind," he finished abruptly, "Lennart's foolishness will soon pass. And meanwhile Mary has her boy. Surely no lad was ever so passionately devoted to his mother. They are absolutely inseparable. I never saw anything like it." He began to smile again.
Then, because at a turn of the road he saw a bird that reminded him of a beast that reminded him of a reptile, he left me unceremoniously and went back to the laboratory.