Into each life, as the poet says, some rain must fall. So much had recently been falling into Rollo’s that, when Fortune at last sent along a belated sunbeam, it exercised a cheering effect out of all proportion to its size. By this I mean that when, some four days after his conversation with Lettice, Mary Kent asked him to play golf with her, he read into the invitation a significance which only a lover could have seen in it. I will not go so far as to say that Rollo Podmarsh looked on Mary Kent’s suggestion that they should have a round together as actually tantamount to a revelation of undying love; but he certainly regarded it as a most encouraging sign. It seemed to him that things were beginning to move, that Rollo Preferred were on a rising market. Gone was the gloom of the past days. He forgot those sad, solitary wanderings of his in the bushes at the bottom of the garden; he forgot that his mother had bought him a new set of winter woollies which felt like horsehair; he forgot that for the last few evenings his arrowroot had tasted rummy. His whole mind was occupied with the astounding fact that she had voluntarily offered to play golf with him, and he walked out on to the first tee filled with a yeasty exhilaration which nearly caused him to burst into song. “How shall we play?” asked Mary. “I am a twelve. What is your handicap?” Rollo was under the disadvantage of not actually possessing a handicap. He had a sort of private system of book-keeping of his own by which he took strokes over if they did not seem to him to be up to sample, and allowed himself five-foot putts at discretion. So he had never actually handed in the three cards necessary for handicapping purposes. “I don’t exactly know,” he said. “It’s my ambition to get round in under a hundred, but I’ve never managed it yet.” “Never?” “Never! It’s strange, but something always seems to go wrong.” “Perhaps you’ll manage it to-day,” said Mary, encouragingly, so encouragingly that it was all that Rollo could do to refrain from flinging himself at her feet and barking like a dog. “Well, I’ll start you two holes up, and we’ll see how we get on. Shall I take the honour?” She drove off one of those fair-to-medium balls which go with a twelve handicap. Not a great length, but nice and straight. “Splendid!” cried Rollo, devoutly. “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mary. “I wouldn’t call it anything special.” Titanic emotions were surging in Rollo’s bosom as he addressed his ball. He had never felt like this before, especially on the first tee--where as a rule he found himself overcome with a nervous humility. “Oh, Mary! Mary!” he breathed to himself as he swung.