"Yes, I do understand now. A good sportsman couldn't take a forfeit which he won betting on a certainty.... That wasn't a real wager, was it?" "No, it wasn't." "If it had been, I--I don't suppose you'd have let me go." "Indeed not!" They laughed, watching each other, curiously. "Which ought to teach me never again to make any such highly original and sporting wagers," she said. "Anyway, you were perfectly nice about it. Of course you couldn't very well have been otherwise. Tell me, did you really suppose me to be attractive? You couldn't judge. How could you--under that mask?" "Do you think that your mouth could have possibly belonged to any other kind of a face except your own?" he said coolly. "Is my mouth unusual?" "Very." "How is it unusual?" "I haven't analysed the matter, but it is somehow so indescribable that I guessed very easily what the other features must be." "Oh, flattery! Oh, impudence! Do you remember when Falstaff said that the lion could always recognise the true prince? Shame on you, Mr. Quarren. You are not only a very adroit flatterer but a perfectly good sportsman after all--and the most gifted tormentor I ever knew in all my life. And I like you fine!" She laughed, and made a quick little gesture, partly arrested as he met her more than half way, touching the rim of his glass to hers. "To our friendship," he said. "Our friendship," she repeated, gaily, "if the gods speed it." "--And--its consequences," he added. "Don't forget those." "What are they likely to be?" "Who knows? That's the gamble! But let us recognise all kinds of possibilities, and drink to them, too. Shall we?" "What do you mean by the consequences of friendship?" she repeated, hesitating. "That is the interesting thing about a new friendship," he explained. "Nobody can ever predict what the consequences are to be. Are you afraid to drink to the sporting chances, hazards, accidents, and possibilities of our new friendship, Mrs. Leeds? _That_ is a perfectly good sporting proposition." She considered him, interested, her eyes full of smiling curiosity, perfectly conscious of the swift challenge of his lifted glass. [Illustration: "'To our new friendship, Monsieur Harlequin!' she said lightly."] After a few seconds' hesitation she struck the ringing rim of her glass against his: "To our new friendship, Monsieur Harlequin!" she said lightly--"with every sporting chance, worldly hazard, and heavenly possibility in it!" For the first time the smile faded from his face, and something in his altered features arrested her glass at her very lips. "How suddenly serious you seem," she said. "Have I said anything?" He drained his glass; after a second she tasted hers, looked at him, finished it, still watching him. "Really," she said; "you made me feel for a moment as though you and I were performing a solemn rite. That was a new phase of you to me--that exceedingly sudden and youthful gravity."