The Literary Sense/The Duel

THE DUEL
"BUT I wasn't doing any harm," she urged piteously. She looked like a child just going to cry.
"He was holding your hand."
"He wasn't—I was holding his. I was telling him his fortune. And, anyhow, it's not your business."
She had remembered this late and phrased it carelessly.
"It is my Master's business," said he.
She repressed the retort that touched her lips. After all, there was something fine about this man, who, in the first month of his ministrations as Parish Priest, could actually dare to call on her, the richest and most popular woman in the district, and accuse her of—well, most people would hardly have gone so far as to call it flirting. Propriety only knew what the Reverend Christopher Cassilis might be disposed to call it.
​They sat in the pleasant fire-lit drawing-room looking at each other.
"He's got a glorious face," she thought. "Like a Greek god—or a Christian martyr! I wonder whether he's ever been in love?"
He thought: "She is abominably pretty. I suppose beauty is a temptation."
"Well," she said impatiently, "you've been very rude indeed, and I've listened to you. Is your sermon quite done? Have you any more to say? Or shall I give you some t

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