"So," continued Pip, "I said, 'The only way to make her give in will be to get the better of her in something--to show superiority over her in some way. It will be no use my trying to persuade her by arguments. I'm slow of speech, especially with women, and Elsie would simply talk me downstairs and into the street in about two minutes. A girl like her won't surrender without a struggle. Quite right too. I shall have to try something else. It mustn't be too one-sided either way, for if it's in her favour I shall lose, and if it's in mine she won't accept. It must be a fair match.'" And so he continued, simply, honestly, laying bare to her all the mighty scheme whereby he proposed to overcome her stubborn resistance. He had first thought, he told her, of a single-wicket cricket-match, but had abandoned the project as being too greatly in his favour. "You keep a very straight bat for a girl," he said, "but you can never resist my slow curly one, that looks as if it were going to pitch outside the off stump, and doesn't. I know your weaknesses, you see," he added with a friendly smile. "Yes, Pip," said Elsie, in a rather subdued tone, "some of them." Pip then proceeded to enumerate the other tests of skill that had occurred to him. "I thought of croquet," he said, "but really croquet is such d--Well, anyhow, I don't think croquet would have done. Billiards is too fluky. Chess is piffle. There are lots of other games, but you are so--so weak!" (Elsie's slight frame stiffened indignantly at this.) "Then I thought of the golf-match, and I saw at once that that was the ticket. So I packed up my bag and wired for rooms at the hotel here, and have been waiting for you to arrive ever since the first of August." There was a pause--a long pause. Elsie was thinking--of what, she hardly knew. Pip was watching her, anxious to see how she received his great idea. Presently he continued,-- "Of course the golf-match is all in your favour. The chances are about three to one on your winning." Suddenly Elsie flared up with a curious little spirit of anger. Her mind, highly trained though it was in these matters, could not quite appreciate Pip's Quixotic consideration for an opponent. "Pip," she said, "I don't believe you _want_ to win! The whole thing is simply a joke on your part--your idea of a joke. I don't think it's a very nice one: you know you can't beat me. If you really want to marry me you wouldn't--" "I shall beat you all right," said Pip simply. "Why?" "I know I shall, that's all." "Why?" "Because I _know_." A new idea occurred to Elsie. "You dare to insinuate," she said, "that I would--would purposely let you--" "Should I want to marry a girl of that sort?" asked Pip gravely.