"Certainly, you might--but you have to risk something in the game; and you're a good gambler, Sheldon--or you used to be. Have you lost your nerve?"
"Three years!" she smiled. "Moreover, I understood that the race is on."
"Not exactly--I'm just trailing--keeping the field in view."
"Well, I don't require a glass," he admitted.
"You're lying back until you're sure what you want, and see a chance to get it?" she said.
"That is too comprehensive," he replied. "At present I'm simply looking on--and being entertained."
"There is no possible doubt that you're being entertained!" she laughed. "How does Dev like it--is he being entertained also?"
"Sure--anything entertains him until he tires of it."
"He has not tired of Miss Emerson yet--and it has been a long time _for him_. In the normal run, he should have butter-flied away to half-a-dozen girls."
"He has never before had a Marcia Emerson to keep him on the jump," said Burgoyne. "He is used to having the girls go down before his money and birth like scuttle-pins. She is a new experience for him--and he's half tempted to become serious. If I press him too close he may become serious, and I don't want that to happen--just yet."
"Till you know if you want it to happen ever?" she laughed. "Do you fancy that Marcia Emerson doesn't know--or at least suspect?"
"I haven't thought," he admitted,--"except that she hasn't yet made up her mind about Devereux. If she concludes that she wants him she'll get him without the least difficulty, I'm sure."
"And if she concludes that she wants--someone else?"
"If I'm too close she'll get _me_ easy--hence I'm riding far aback. Good term that--far aback!"
"Perfectly good term, Sheldon--but not true in point of fact. If Miss Emerson wants you she has only to beckon, and you'll burst a girth to come up. All you nice men are alike--at the mercy of a beautiful woman when she calls."
"The vampire!" he reflected. "'A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair!'"
"Maybe"--she reflected. "At any rate, I shall not dispute it. But men like vampires--_beautiful_ vampires."
"'Down to Gehenna and up to the Throne; He travels the fastest who travels alone.'"
"Again there is no possible doubt of that," she replied. "The difficulty is that he rarely travels _alone_. The vampire usually gets him, and he carries her too. We women are all more or less vampires--just as you men are more or less rogues."