But however good a soul this man's wife was, Judith caught herself being sorry for him. Yesterday evening, when she went good-naturedly to him, as to her mother's latest discovery, just to say a few words and prevent his getting left out in the cold, he had seemed to her only moderately interesting, and far from handsome. Now she began with a discriminating eye to see that, though he was far from handsome, he was just as far from ugly. Still, she perceived that it did credit to her discriminating eye to find this out. She hadn't noticed it so much when he turned up unexpectedly in the garden in the morning--unexpectedly, because she was really unconscious of having said in his hearing that she was going across the lawn to feed her birds. But now, in a lucky half-light in the red drawing-room, with his eyes dropped on the chess-board, his forehead and eye-framing had a look about them that was certainly interesting, if not a good substitute for beauty. Judith would have preferred the beauty, certainly; but she could look contentedly at the good soul's property, and go on wondering what _she_ was like, while he considered knotty points connected with the game. "You've put your king in check, Miss Arkroyd. You mustn't do that." He looked up suddenly and caught her eyes. Her _rapport_ with the game saved him from his vanity by good luck. "I see you thought you had caught me," was his interpretation of her gaze. It was in token of a supposed triumph, so he thought. Whatever it was, it became disconcerted. "Oh!--mustn't I do that? I think it oughtn't to count, when one does it oneself. Don't you?" Challis said to himself that this woman was rather a goose. Why he felt a little disappointed at her being rather a goose he could not have said off-hand. He apologized for the stupidity of the laws of games generally; said they were clearly wrong all round. But it would make such a lot of fuss to alter them now that he doubted if it was worth it. "You're not in earnest, Mr. Challis?" So the lady spoke, and Challis said to himself that Marianne would never have found that out. "Sharp, by comparison!" was his comment to himself; and then aloud: "But I can't have you bored, Miss Arkroyd. You don't care about this." To which Judith replied: "It's not exciting, so far;" and both laughed. The discovery that each had been thinking the same thing was full of conductivities. It improved their footing. "It can't be, you know, when you come to think of it," said he, pushing his chair expressively three inches back--an expression of renunciation--with a slight boredom-admitting stretch. "Chess requires apprenticeship before it can be enjoyed, like smoking." "I see. And this game has made me sick, like a boy's first cigar. Why didn't you tell me?" "One must begin some time.... Well! I don't know either. Must one?..." "There was nothing else to do."