"I'm Feathers," Dakers explained casually. "So-called on account of my hair—which invariably stands up on end. You may have noticed." 

He passed a big hand over his shaggy head, and Marie smiled. 

"Anyway, I don't know what the game of pills is," she said. 

The boy Atkins began to explain. 

"It's billiards. They're rotten players, both of them, and we shall get some fun out of watching them. I'll find you a good seat." 

Chris looked at his wife dubiously. 

"If you're tired—if you'd rather I didn't play," he began diffidently, but the girl shook her head. 

"Oh, no, please! I should love to watch." 22 

22

Whatever he had done, she never for one moment lost sight of the fact that she loved him—that he was everything in the world to her, and though as yet she could not realize the full enormity of what she had just discovered, her one dread was lest she should still further alienate him. She knew that Chris was so easily bored and annoyed; she knew that he hated headachy people. He liked a woman to be a pal to him—that was, when he considered the sex at all. 

It was odd that during the last half-hour the relationship which she had imagined had existed between them since the moment when he asked her to marry him had been utterly wiped out of her mind. He was once again just the Chris whom she had always blindly adored, without hope of reciprocity; the Chris who occasionally condescended to be kind to her—as a man might occasionally be kind to a lost dog which has attached itself to him. 

She went with young Atkins to the billiard room and sat beside him on a high leather couch, and tried to listen while he explained the game, but it all sounded like double Dutch. The smoke of the many cigars and cigarettes of the men around her made her eyes smart, and the subdued light made her feel giddy. She did her best to be interested, but it was difficult. 

Chris had taken off his coat to be more free to play, and he looked a fine figure of a man in his shirt-sleeves, she thought, as he stood chalking his cue and laughing with Feathers. 

He never once glanced at his wife. She supposed he thought that she was quite 

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