“It dropped to twenty-five below zero before morning, and when daybreak came I went down to the beach.  The water still flowed swift and black directly across, but when I looked to the north I found that the ice extended from the shore to the upper end of the island.  I put several sandwiches in my pocket and carefully walked across.  Powers was trying to cook some freshwater clams when I came upon his bonfire.”

“That is as much of the story as you will be interested in,” concluded Robinson.  “Powers kept the ball which saved his life, and in return gave me that oil painting depicting the scene at nightfall as I was driving that last ball.”

“It’s a good thing for your friend Powers that it was not up to me to drive that last ball,” declared Harding.  “That story is all right, Robinson, and the picture proves it.”

As we were leaving the table Mrs. Chilvers called me aside.

“Have you made up a game for this afternoon?” she asked, and I thought I discerned a mischievous glance in her eyes.

“Why—­why, yes,” I hesitated, wondering if I were to be dragged into some wretched foursome.  “I have arranged to play with Miss Harding.”

“What, again?” she asked.

“This is only my third game with her,” I declared.

“Ah, Mr. Smith, do you remember how I warned you several weeks ago?”

I remembered but did not admit it.

“I told you then that some time you would meet a golfing Venus,” she said triumphantly, and without waiting for me to make a defense left and joined Miss Dangerfield.

Miss Harding and I waited until we had a clear field ahead of us before we began our game.  It was one of the perfect early summer afternoons when it is a delight to live.  Oak Cliff is famous for its scenery and for its velvet-like greens.

“I’m going to play my best game this afternoon,” announced Miss Harding when I had teed her ball.

“I always play my best game; don’t you?” I asked.

“You shall judge of that when we finish this round,” she declared.

It was my first game with her since the day she won the touring car from her father, on which occasion she made Woodvale in 116.  This was so marked an improvement over her former exhibition that I was at a loss to account for it.  Since then Miss Harding had confined her golf to the practising of approach shots and putting, following the instructions given by Wallace.  I have been so busy with Wall Street and other affairs that I have paid little attention to golf, and smiled at her enthusiasm.

“How shall we play?” I asked.  “You have improved so much and are so confident that I dare not offer you more than a stroke a hole.”

“I shall beat you at those odds,” she said.  “This is a short course, you know.”

“You will have to make it in a hundred to beat me,” I replied.

“Fore!” she called, and drove a beautiful ball with a true swing which was the perfection of grace.  I made one which did not beat it enough to give me any advantage, and we started down the field together.