"Has it ever struck you that I am very selfish?" inquired Gay anxiously.
"Often—about not making me happy. And it would be so easy, and so—er—so pleasant," said Chris, with the lines that meant mischief wrinkling his young eyes.
"You know," said Gay hastily, "somehow my ambitions seem common to me when I look at that dear little lady, who lives entirely for others, and I question my right to waste money as I do on Trotting and otherwise. Oh, I'm not a Socialist"—
"I should hope not," said Chris significantly. "It just means that you make another man work for you while you idle, and then curse him because he does not make enough to give you luxuries."
"Oh, I'm idle enough," said Gay remorsefully, "but I do feel a burning desire to see the rich enjoy less, and the poor and unfortunate suffer less, and I know perfectly well that I ought to sell my horses—
"They wouldn't fetch much," said Chris, chuckling unkindly. "But there's nothing I'd enjoy more than putting 'em up at Tattersall's—if they're good enough for Tat's."
Gay turned very white, and a flash like steel came into her grey eyes—few people had ever seen it, but it meant mischief.
"And I to see you put up yours," she said quietly. "When you drop racing, Chris, you may talk to me about Trotting—not before."
Chris too had turned very pale, he understood now. He was to tear out what was in the very blood and fibre of him—what had been in countless generations of his hard-riding, sporting forefathers...
"You ask me for my very life itself," he said heavily. "Even my mother never asked me that impossibility. She placed my deep happiness in riding before her own peace of mind always."