In which all rules are broken
Swiftly I appraised the cool perfection of her attire, scenting the spice of the pinks she had thrust at her belt. And I suffered one heart-quickening look from her eyes before she could lower them to me. In that instant I was stung with a presentiment that our treaty was in peril—that it might go fearfully to smash if I did not fortify myself. It came to me that the creature had regarded my past success in observing this treaty with a kind of provocative resentment. I cannot tell how I knew it—certainly through no recognized media of communication.
Most formally I offered her a chair by the card-table, and resumed my own chair with what I meant for an air of inhospitable abstraction. She declined the chair, preferring to stand by the table as was her custom.
"It was on this spot years ago," I said, laying down the second eight cards, "that Solon Denney first told me he was about to marry."
Discursive gossip seemed best, I thought.
"Two long yellow braids," she remarked. It would be too much to say that her words were snapped out
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