"Ah, my boy," she said sadly, "it is only these we love, that we take trouble about, and there's sterner, deeper stuff in you than poor Carlton; besides, Gay loves you, not him." Chris walked to the window, and stood for a while, looking out. "Dear Laddie," said Lavinia softly, "you are fighting for prizes that when obtained are utterly valueless, for victories more fatal than the most inglorious defeats, and all because you have not the strength of mind to break away, to assert your will-power. Nothing in this world can remain stationary--if you are not improving, you are going back--and don't you suppose that she knows it? For there is no death," she added softly; "she is living, but not here--is listening to us at this moment, for all we know." "She always hated my riding," he said, and in those painful, heart-searching moments, realised that often the real influence of an unselfish life does not begin till it is over. Lavinia said not one word, only looked at him with the dear blue eyes in which life, its sins, its virtues, its passions had been transmuted into a pure and utterly comprehending humanity, and at something in his face, not so much unyielding as unconquerable, because quite beyond his control, she sighed deeply. She had seen the struggle so often, and it had always ended in the one way. There rang in her ears Gay's cry the day before, "Oh! why is it that we love best those who have never done _anything_ for us--have even cost us much sorrow--and are cruel and ungrateful to those who have sacrificed themselves for us--as Carlton has for me?" Lavinia knew that Gay was in a dangerous mood, and in a moment of impulse and anger against Chris's selfishness, might wreck her own, and two men's lives. She had a temper, and a will of her own, and a generous heart also, that could not fail to appreciate a delicacy that with Carlton was as great as his devotion. Yet Chris did not look the sort of lover that any girl would turn her back on, when he kissed Lavinia and departed. "When the Horse Show is over," he said to himself, with a sense of relief at the postponement of the struggle, then he would fight out the burning question of which he could best live without--steeplechasing or Gay. CHAPTER XXVIII THE EPIC OF THE HORSE Rensslaer had taken half-a-dozen tickets for the Royal day, and any special shows that he thought would appeal to Gay. Tom Bulteel had liberally provided for the Harness classes, Carlton had concentrated on the Trotting, Chris on the jumping, which came last in the evening, so that the united tickets practically covered everything worth seeing at Olympia.