"You don't understand——"
"I don't care to understand. You don't want to see me—that's enough——"
"Camilla, please——"
"I'm not in the habit of pursuing the men of my acquaintance, Cort. I'll save you the trouble of avoiding me." And with that she broke away from him and ran down the path, joining the others at the door of the house. His attitude annoyed her more because she couldn't understand it than because of any other reason. What had come over him? They had parted as friends with the definite assurance that they were to meet the next day. She had been busy writing letters then, but she remembered now that he had not called. There was an unaccountable difference in his manner, and he had spoken with a cold precision which chilled her. She felt it in all the sensitive antennæ which a woman projects to guard the approaches to her heart. All that was feminine and cruel in her was up in arms at once against him. He needed a lesson. She must give it to him.
On the ice they met a merry party, and Billy Haviland pointed them all out to Camilla—Molly Bracknell and her diminutive husband, known in clubdom as the "comic supplement"; Jack Archer, the famous surgeon, and his fiancée, who had lost her appendix and her heart at the same time. Stephen Gillis, the lawyer, who was in love with his pretty client, Mrs. Cheyne, and didn't care who knew it.
"Is he really in love with Mrs. Cheyne?" asked Camilla.
"Oh, yes—threw over a girl he was engaged to. He's got it bad—worse than most of 'em."
"What a pity!"
"Rita's in good form this winter."
"She has a charm for men."