HARE AND
TORTOISE
By
PIERRE COALFLEET
Author of “Solo”
McCLELLAND & STEWART
PUBLISHERS TORONTO
Copyright 1925 by
THE FORUM PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyright 1925 by
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
Printed in U. S. A.
To
R. M.
HARE AND TORTOISE
HARE and TORTOISE
CHAPTER I
KEBLE EVELEY’S voice, rising and fallingin graceful patterns, had lulled his wife’smind into a tranquil remoteness. She hadgot more from the sinuosity of the sentences he wasreading than from the thesis they upheld. WalterPater had so little to tell her that she needed to know.This vaguely chagrined her, for Keble thought highlyof Pater; Pater and he had something in common,something impeccable and elusive, something—
She checked her musings in alarm at the menacingword “affected.”
Was it affectation on Keble’s part? Or was thereperhaps a winnowed level of civilization thousandsof miles east of these uncouth hills and beyond thesea where precious phrases like Pater’s and correctmanners like Keble’s were matter of course? In anysuch milieu what sort of figure could she hope tocut?
No doubt a pitiful one. And her thoughts driftedwistfully but resignedly down the stream of consciousness.
It was not the first time she had failed to keepstroke with Keble in the literary excursions he conductedon cool evenings before a log fire that hadbeen burning since their marriage in the autumn, sixmonths before. Only a few evenings past he hadread a poem by Robert Browning, who was to Louisemerely a name that had fallen from the lips of herEnglish teacher at Normal School. She had felt herselfrather pleasantly scratched and pommeled by thelines as Keble had read them, but they had failed tomake continuous sense. And next morning, whe