Now and again they repeated their fencing bout; but never with the
result which followed the first. Beverley soon mastered Alice's
tricks and showed her that, after all, masculine muscle is not to
be discounted at its own game by even the most wonderful womanly
strength and suppleness. She struggled bravely to hold her vantage
ground once gained so easily, but the inevitable was not to be
avoided. At last, one howling winter day, he disarmed her by the
very trick that she had shown him. That ended the play and they
ran shivering into the house.
"Ah," she cried, "it isn't fair. You are so much bigger than I;
you have so much longer arms; so much more weight and power. It
all counts against me! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" She
was rosy with the exhilarating exercise and the biting of the
frosty breeze. Her beauty gave forth a new ray.
Deep in her heart she was pleased to have him master her so
superbly; but as the days passed she never said so, never gave
over trying to make him feel the touch of her foil. She did not
know that her eyes were getting through his guard, that her
dimples were stabbing his heart to its middle.
"You have other advantages," he replied, "which far overbalance my
greater stature and stronger muscles." Then after a pause he
added: "After all a girl must be a girl.
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