"Dear Miss Frances, will you forgive me? I hadn't quite got on to the
thing. I understand the game better now."

"Now, I don't want to poison your mind. I shouldn't have said
that--about the flat feet, I mean. He goes to the Rectory, you know. I
want to be fair--"

"Please don't worry. We know all about that sort at home," said Sidney,
touching her hand for a moment. "My word, that was a hot one! The
flat-footed Johnnie is obviously bewildered. The last game was sheer
massacre, eh, what?"

If Maitland was not in form there was no sign of it in his work on the
court. There was little of courtesy, less of fun and nothing at all of
mercy in his play. From first to last and without reprieve he drove
his game ruthlessly to a finish. So terrific, so resistless were his
attacks, so coldly relentless the spirit he showed, ignoring utterly all
attempts at friendly exchange of courtesy, that the unhappy and enraged
Stillwell, becoming utterly demoralized, lost his nerve, lost his
control and hopelessly lost every chance he ever possessed of winning a
single game of the set which closed with the score six to nothing.

At the conclusion of the set Stillwell, with no pretense of explanation
or apology, left the courts to his enemy who stood waiting his
appearance in a silence so oppressive that it seemed to rest like a
pall upon the side lines. So overwhelming was Stillwell's defeat, so
humiliating his exhibition of total collapse of morale that the company
received the result with but slight manifestation of feeling. Without
any show of sympathy even his friends slipped away, as if unwilling to