“Oh, he does.  I guess he’s chief medicine-man in his tribe all right.  It’s not only women who kowtow; when old man Merriman wants to know for sure whether to pay a million for a cracked Chinese vase, he always calls in Felix Morrison.  Chief adviser to the predatory rich, that’s one of his jobs!  So you see,” he came back to his first point, “it must be some jolt for the sacred F.M. to have a young lady, just a young lady, refuse to bow at the shrine.  You couldn’t have done a smarter trick, by heck!  I’ve been watching you all those weeks, just too tickled for words.  And I’ve been watching Morrison.  It’s been as good as a play!  He can’t stick it out much longer, unless I miss my guess, and I’ve known him ever since I was a kid.  He’s just waiting for a good chance to turn on the faucet and hand you a full cup of his irresistible fascination.”  He added carelessly, bouncing a ball up and down on the tense catgut of his racquet:  “What all you girls see in that old wolf-hound, to lose your heads over!  It gets me!”

“Why in the world ’wolf-hound’?” asked Sylvia.

“Oh, just as to his looks.  He has that sort of tired, dignified, deep-eyed look a big dog has.  I bet his eyes would be phosphorescent at night too.  They are that kind; don’t you know, when you strike a match in the evening, how a dog’s eyes glow?  It’s what makes ’em look so soft and deep in the daytime.  But as to his innards—­no, Lord no!  Whatever else Morrison is he’s not a bit like any dog that ever lived—­first cousin to a fish, I should say.”

Sylvia laughed.  “Why not make it grizzly bear, to take in the rest of the animal kingdom?”

“No,” persisted Arnold.  “Now I’ve thought of it, I mean fish, a great big, wise old fellow, who lives in a deep pool and won’t rise to any ordinary fly.”  He made a brain-jolting change of metaphor and went on:  “The plain truth, and it’s not so low-down as it seems, is that a big fat check-book is admission to the grandstand with Felix.  It has to be that way!  He hasn’t got much of his own, and his tastes are some—­”

“Molly must be sitting in the front row, then,” commented Sylvia indifferently, as though tired of the subject.  They were now at the tennis-court.  “Run over to the summer-house and get my racquet, will you?  It’s on the bench.”

“Yes, Molly’s got plenty of money,” Arnold admitted as he came back, his accent implying some other lack which he forgot to mention, absorbed as he at once became in coping with his adversary’s strong, swift serve.

The change in him, as he began seriously to play, was startling, miraculous.  His slack loose-jointedness stiffened into quick, flexible accuracy, his lounging, flaccid air disappeared in a glow of concentrated vigorous effort.  The bored good-nature in his eyes vanished, burned out by a stern, purposeful intensity.  He was literally and visibly another person.  Sylvia played her best, which was excellent, far better