"I'm sorry you're disappointed at missing your game," the girl replied
mischievously, "but I expect you will be able to get a game with Horace
or one of the others after tea ..."

Robin kicked the carpet savagely.

"You know perfectly well I don't want to play billiards ..."

He looked up and caught the girl's eye. For a fraction of a second he
saw in it the expression which every man at least once in his life looks
to see in the eyes of one particular woman. In the girl's dark-blue eyes
fringed with long black lashes he saw the dumb appeal, the mute
surrender, which, as surely as the white flag on the battlements in war,
is the signal of capitulation in woman.

But the expression was gone on the instant. It passed so swiftly that,
for a second, Robin, seeing the gently mocking glance that succeeded it,
wondered whether he had been mistaken.

But he was a man of action--a glance at his long, well-moulded head, his
quick, wide-open eye, and his square jaw would have told you that--and
he spoke.

"It's no use beating about the bush," he said. "Mary, I've got so fond
of you that I'm just miserable when you're away from me ..."

"Oh, Robin, please ..."

Mary Trevert stood up and remained standing, her head turned a little