At the last I was brought face to face with a most intricately planned defeat; a defeat insured by one spot on a card.  Had the obstructive card been a six-spot of clubs instead of a seven-spot, victory was mine.  I pointed this out to Miss Kate, who had declined a chair at the table and had chosen to stand beside my own.  I showed her the series of plays which, but for that seven-spot, would put the kings in their places at the top and let me win.  And I was beaten for lack of a six.

That she had grasped my explanation was quickly made plain.  Actually with some enthusiasm she showed me that the much-desired six of clubs lay directly under the fatal seven.

“Just lay the seven over here,” she began eagerly, “and there’s your black six ready for that horrid red five that’s in the way—­”

“But there isn’t any ‘over here,’” I exclaimed in some irritation.  “There can only be eight cards in a row—­that would make nine.”

“Yes, but then you could play up all the others so beautifully—­just see!”

“Is this a game,” I asked, “or a child’s crazy play?”

“Then it’s an exceedingly stupid game if you can’t do a little thing like that when it’s absolutely necessary.  What is the sense of it?”

Her eyes actually flashed into mine as she leaned at my side pointing out this simple way to victory.

“What’s the sense of any rules to any game on earth?” I retorted.  “If I hadn’t learned to respect rules—­if I hadn’t learned to be thankful for what the game allows me, however little it may be—­” I paused, for the water was deeper than I had thought.

“Well?”

“Well—­well then—­I shouldn’t be as thankful as I am this instant for—­for many things that I can’t have more of.”

She straightened herself and favored me with a curious look that melted at last into a puzzling smile.

“I don’t understand you,” she said.  With a shade more of encouragement in her voice I had been near to forgetting my honor as a truce-observing enemy.  I was grateful, indeed, afterwards, that her wish to understand me was not sufficiently implied to bring me thus low.

“Neither do I understand the morbid psychology that finds satisfaction in cheating at solitaire,” I succeeded in saying.  “I never can see how they fix it up with themselves.”

“I believe you think and talk a great deal of foolishness,” said Miss Kate, in tones of reproof; and with this she was off the porch before I could rise.

She wore pink, with bits of blue spotting it in no systematic order that I could discern, and a pink rose lay abashed in her hair.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ABDICATION OF THE BOSS