"I will not. Haven't I done enough? Didn't I buy the book and get the lunch, and make the sandwiches, and pay the car-fare? I think this expedition will cost me pretty near three dollars before we're through with the day. No; the least you can do is to read to me. Here, we'll match for it."Condy drew a dime from his pocket, and Blix a quarter from her purse.
"You're matching me," she said.
Condy tossed the coin and lost, and Blix said, as he picked up the book:
"For a man that has such unvarying bad luck as you, gambling is just ****** madness. You and I have never played a game of poker yet that I've not won every cent of money you had.""Yes; and what are you doing with it all?"
"Spending it," she returned loftily; "gloves and veils and lace pins--all kinds of things."But Condy knew the way she spoke that this was not true.
For the next hour or so he read to her from "The Seven Seas,"while the afternoon passed, the wind stirring the chaparral and blackberry bushes in the hollows of the huge, bare hills, the surf rolling and grumbling on the beach below, the sea-birds wheeling overhead. Blix listened intently, but Condy could not have told of what he was reading. Living was better than reading, life was better than literature, and his new-found love for her was poetry enough for him. He read so that he might not talk to her or look at her, for it seemed to him at times as though some second self in him would speak and betray him in spite of his best efforts.
Never before in all his life had he been so happy; never before had he been so troubled. He began to jumble the lines and words as he read, over-running periods, even turning two pages at once.
"What a splendid line!" Blix exclaimed.
"What line--what--what are you talking about? Blix, let's always remember to-day. Let's make a promise, no matter what happens or where we are, let's always write to each other on the anniversary of to-day. What do you say?""Yes; I'll promise--and you--"
"I'll promise faithfully. Oh, I'll never forget to-day nor--yes, yes, I'll promise--why, to-day--Blix--where's that damn book gone?""Condy!"
"Well, I can't find the book. You're sitting on it again.
Confound the book, anyway! Let's walk some more.""We've a long ways to go if we're to get home in time for supper.
Let's go to Luna's for supper."
"I never saw such a girl as you to think of ways for spending money. What kind of a purse-proud plutocrat do you think I am?
I've only seventy-five cents left. How much have you got?"Blix had fifty-five cents in her purse, and they had a grave council over their finances. They had just enough for car-fare and two "suppers Mexican," with ten cents left over.""That's for Richard's tip," said Blix.
"That's for my CIGAR," he retorted.
"You made ME give him fifty cents. You said it was the least Icould offer him--noblesse oblige."
"Well, then, I COULDN'T offer him a dime, don't you see? I'll tell him we are broke this time."They started home, not as they had come, but climbing the hill and going across a breezy open down, radiant with blue iris, wild heliotrope, yellow poppies, and even a violet here and there. Alittle further on they gained one of the roads of the Reservation, red earth smooth as a billiard table; and just at an angle where the road made a sharp elbow and trended cityward, they paused for a moment and looked down and back at the superb view of the ocean, the vast half-moon of land, and the rolling hills in the foreground tumbling down toward the beach and all spangled with wild flowers.
Some fifteen minutes later they reached the golf-links.
"We can go across the links," said Condy, "and strike any number of car lines on the other side."They left the road and struck across the links, Condy smoking his new-lighted pipe. But as they came around the edge of a long line of eucalyptus trees near the teeing ground, a warning voice suddenly called out:
"Fore!"
Condy and Blix looked up sharply, and there in a group not twenty feet away, in tweeds and "knickers," in smart, short golfing skirts and plaid cloaks, they saw young Sargeant and his sister, two other girls whom they knew as members of the fashionable "set," and Jack Carter in the act of swinging his driving iron.
