"I was wondering," he remarked, "why you raced off like that just now. Of course, there was one explanation,—that you wanted to lose the match, and were sick at having won it,—but I wasn't such a bounder as to think that. I smoked a pipe or two up there,"—Elsie started; she had not realised that her cry had lasted so long,—"and I thought it all over to see if I could come to a satisfactory solution of the mystery, and—"
Elsie unclosed her left hand, and displayed a golf-ball, which she tossed towards him.
"There's the solution, Pip," she said.
Pip picked up the ball and examined it. Then he took another from his pocket and compared the two.
"Ah!" he remarked. "Then you spotted me. I thought you had, but I couldn't see how. It never occurred to me that you had found your ball. I thought perhaps you had seen something wrong with the one I put—took out of the hole, but I see they are both identical. There's not a mark on either. It was a pity you found yours. If you hadn't, all would have ended happily, wouldn't it?"
"For me or for you?"
"For both of us."
"Then you wouldn't have minded losing?" This with a scornful little laugh.
"No, not in this case."
There was another silence. That Pip should not mind losing a match of which she was the prize struck Elsie as uncomplimentary, not to say rude.