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_Title:_ Unforbidden Fruit
_Date of first publication:_ 1928
_Author:_ Warner Fabian (ps of Samuel Hopkins Adams) (1871-1958)
_Date first posted:_ October 18, 2026
_Date last updated:_ October 18, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20261035

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online
Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net





                        [Dustcover Illustration]
                          [Cover Illustration]




                           Unforbidden  Fruit

                                   BY

                            _WARNER FABIAN_

                       AUTHOR OF “FLAMING YOUTH,”
                        “SUMMER BACHELORS,” ETC.



                             [Illustration]

                     INTERNATIONAL FICTION LIBRARY
               CLEVELAND, O.              NEW YORK, N.Y.
                             MADE IN U.S.A.




                         _Copyright, 1928, by_
                       Magus Magazine Corporation
                                  ———
                          _Copyright, 1928 by_
                         Boni & Liveright, Inc.

                                PRESS OF
                     THE COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING CO.
                               CLEVELAND




                             FORESTALLMENT

                         (In Lieu of Foreword)

Objection will be made at once by loyal alumnæ of various institutions
that “Unforbidden Fruit” is not representative of girls’ college life as
a whole. It is not, nor is it meant to be. I have deliberately chosen to
present a special phase through the medium of a special college set;
girls of the modern, restless, experimental-minded, keen, cynical,
adventurous and slightly neurotic type, pleasure-hunting and
knowledge-hunting, as contemptuous of the “greasy grind” among their
fellows, on the one hand, as of the cheap fusser or the “fervent
collegiate” on the other; living in the peculiar atmosphere of
compressed femininity which produces an intellectual and social reaction
not unlike the prison psychosis of our penal institutions. There is no
doubt but that, in this environment, normal tendencies and appetites,
including sex, become at times exaggerated and inflamed.

The “Trumbull House set” does not typify a majority of the
undergraduates of Wellesley, Smith, Vassar, or any other college. But it
does represent a social entity which has come to be the most significant
group in our female institutions, the most interestedly watched and
discussed by the college at large, the most emulously patterned after,
the most dangerous to established standards. Twenty years ago this group
did not exist. Ten years ago it would have been small, almost negligible
as regards influence, secretive through caution of its creeds,
self-consciously daring, and deemed radical and bad form if not actually
immoral. To-day it comprises, with its imitators, fifteen, possibly
twenty per cent of the campus community and sets the pace for all.
To-morrow it may well be “the type” of American undergraduate womanhood.

A novel quite as typical could be made out of the scholastic girl, the
athletic girl, the socially ambitious girl, the sweet, young
marriageable girl, the pushingly collegiate girl, or the religious and
social-serviceable girl. All of these are to be found in large numbers
and more or less cohesive groups in our colleges. Such a story would
have been equally true to latter-day female college life as this one.
But it would be, from my point of view, less interesting.

                                                                  W. F.




                           UNFORBIDDEN FRUIT




                           UNFORBIDDEN  FRUIT


                               CHAPTER I

Suite Twenty, Trumbull House, was in evening session. Feminine apparel,
feminine appurtenances, feminine curves and angles, feminine voices were
everywhere in the overcrowded living-room. The center table was strewn
with a collection of text books, note books, magazines, a bridge manual,
a copy of _Dusty Answer_, another of _Summer Bachelors_, a green
stocking and a tan, a cracked jazz record, a bottle of headache tablets,
five cigarette boxes and a Sophomore all impartially whitened with a new
brand of talcum powder from a box which had inopportunely opened up
while in aërial transit across the apartment. Half a dozen girls in the
abandon of negligée gave to the divan the desperate appearance of a raft
just after the shipwreck. Several others occupied the two chairs and a
trunk, the contents of which were oozing out upon the floor pending a
more orderly disposition.

On one wall a banner with the inspiring words “Sperry; 1928” in mauve
and cerise was draped to form a train for a particularly malignant
goblin-doll. Opposite was a framed legend, in an inexplicable species of
worsted-work chastely conceived, posing the incontrovertible statement
that “Home Is What You Make It.” There were also pictures of the kind
which one might not too optimistically expect.

In the window corner a young gentlewoman stood upon her head.

Question and answer, comment, gossip, rejoicing and lamentation crossed
and recrossed in the buzzing air.

“Have a good vacation?”

“Grand.”

“Lousy.”

“Not so rotten.”

“The old dump isn’t so bad to get back to.”

“Oh, gee! Isn’t it! Sixteen more weeks of slay-ver-ee.”

“With no break in the clouds till the big football games.”

“Given any thought to the Big Hop yet, Gwen?”

               “_The thirteenth man I asked to Prom_
               _Has just gone back on me_,”

chanted a voice a little off key.

“Nixie’s rooming alone, so I——”

“——elected Biology Two, God help me, before I found out——”

“And if any one so much as whispers ‘hockey’ to me, I’ll——”

“What I heard about her not coming back, even the tabloids wouldn’t
print.”

“Who’s that, Celia?”

“——harder than ever this semester, and if it is, I’m sunk; simply
sunk.”

“Well, you won’t go down alone.”

“Kaplan & Boyle may be more expensive, but I will say this for——”

“Maybe they _are_ married.”

“Basket ball? Too much toil. I got a shiner to take to the Yale-Harvard
game, last year.”

“——taste like incense to me. I wouldn’t smoke ’em if you gave——”

“Sure! Parked her nightie at the Bostwick for a bluff and _then_ where
did she go? Ask Mister Foster at the Travel Bureau.”

“Damn the Self-Guv. . . . Anybody here on it?”

“Always beefing about sex complexes. They faire me a mal a l’estomac,
that bunch.”

“Moi aussi; a pain in the ear.”

“——doubled two spades and instead of going back to di——”

“In beige duveteen. Actually!”

“Some stinkin’ swine swiped my lab outfit. I ask you!”

“Roxy Ann! Remember that Sperry College was founded to instill in us the
spirit and demeanor of Christian gentlewomen.”

“Now, _every_body!” (This in a shrill, derisive falsetto.) “Three sweet
chee-ahs for Old Spay-ree!”

“Oh, pipe down. You nauseate me.”

“Me, I never want to see a drink or a man or a night club again in my
life.”

The inverted gentlewoman in the corner grunted abruptly and skeptically,
for the proponent of this self-abnegating proposition was known as the
most indefatigable prom-trotter in college. Pink Delavan’s genius for
getting away to some kind of festivity over every week-end while still
maintaining her standing in class was the wonder and despair of friend
and foe. A slight, quick, homely girl addressed the grunter.

“As you were, Starr. You’ll have apoplexy.”

“Two minutes to go yet.”

“What’s the idea?” inquired Sara La Lond, lithe and stringy and
pantherine, with dead black hair and eyes that burned behind her
studious glasses. She had “made” a key in Junior year and was hot on the
trail of other honors, in addition to which she was a formidable
athlete, possessing a fierce energy of body and mind alike. Neither line
of achievement would of itself have gained her admittance to the close
corporation of free spirits which had made Trumbull House the most
conspicuous dormitory at Sperry, for this particular group sat
boastfully in the seat of the scorner and the “athaletic” girl was as
much anathema to them as the “greasy grind” or the “collegiate soul.”
But the combination of scholastic and physical prowess, together with a
queer spiritual aloofness and independence, gave to Sara a piquancy of
repute and so a standing among her peers.

“Reduction. Latest wrinkle. Night and morning,” the girl called Starr
answered her, adding in frank explanation “’Fraid of getting too hippy!”

“Doesn’t Duke like ’em that way?” gently queried Rosy Ann (née Rosanne)
Merrick, a thick-set and tawny blonde.

The other not deigning to respond, the leading question was answered for
her by an arrival from the inner room. “Don’t get rancid, Rocks,”
advised the newcomer.

The proprietress of half-rights in Suite Twenty was a brisk, brownish
nineteen-year-old with the bearing of self-confidence and
self-competency so characteristic of generously nurtured American
girlhood. To her poised roommate she said: “Come off it, Starr.”

Being incompetent, for good and sufficient reasons, to shake her head,
the other waved her feet negatively. Sylvia Hartnett raised her voice.
“I’ve got some news that I’ll bet’ll bring you down. Our Giff’s grown a
’stash.”

There was a heavy flop. Miss Starr Mowbray lay upon her back, her legs
sprangled out, her empurpled face turned to the ceiling, her deep-drawn
breath filling the lines of her sweater with the ripple of curves. Even
in that sprawly attitude and with her features congested from
blood-pressure she was alluring to look at.

“Say it ain’t true, dee-rie! Say it ain’t true!” she besought, kicking
feebly.

At once the conversation concentrated upon the most popular member of
the faculty.

“Have you seen him?” demanded Gwen Peters, tall, languid and the
mainstay of the crowd in fabricating ingenious excuses and stratagems
for more or less unlawful week-ends.

“No. The biddy in the South corridor told me. She was almost in tears.”

“Ruined!” exclaimed Celia Forsythe hollowly.

“And I elected History Three just for his sweet sake,” groaned Helen
Quigg, the plainest of the crew and one of the most popular.

“One of the most poisonous courses in the currick,” added Pink Delavan
in deep gloom, having been led to do the same by the austere charms of
young Prof. Patterson Gifford.

“I nicked him for an A in Mediæval last semester,” bragged Roxy Ann.

“Because you sweated and swotted and swilled every class he’s given,”
retorted Sylvia. “I b’lieve you’re in love with the man.”

“Ain’t we all?” yawned Gwen.

“I’ll bet the new shrubbery absolutely gums his noble façade,” was the
pessimistic forecast of Miss Quigg, who was taking landscape gardening
and was given to the technicalities thereof.

“Oh, I dunno,” put in Bertha Ruehl, generally known as “Golden” for the
sake of the pun rather than from her coloring, which was that of the
useful though not artistic brick. “Maybe it’ll only make him
sterner-looking and more fascinating. Anyway, it won’t affect his
militaristic voice. I always feel as if I ought to stand and salute when
he calls my name.”

“I wonder how much of that snap-your-head-off stuff is bluff.” This from
Celia.

“Ask Nixie. She tried to make him all last term.”

“Nixie’s got as much chance of making Giff as she has of making Phi
Bete,” was Gwen’s scornful estimate.

“Oh, I d’know. She doesn’t lose so many fish off the hook.”

“If you ask me,” proffered Sara La Lond unflatteringly, “I don’t believe
he even knows we’re alive, except as something to shoot his sarcasms
at.”

“He knows Starr’s alive, and he doesn’t shoot at her,” asserted Roxy
Ann.

“I’m not. I’m dead.” She rolled feebly.

Gwen murmured in Helen Quigg’s ear: “He’s always playing up to Starr in
class, but watch him when he looks at Syl—which isn’t often.”

“How do you two Juniors rate these quarters anyway?” demanded Jessamine
Dahl, a Senior. “They’re the best in the House.”

“Oh, we just happened to get ’em,” was Sylvia’s careless rejoinder. She
was the sort of girl who obviously would “just happen to get” the
desirable things of the world by simply and confidently assuming the
right to them, she being what she was, one of the blessed but by no
means meek inheritors of the earth.

With a single, lithe movement the self-proclaimed corpse came to life
and its feet. “And, Gawds, what a mess they’re in!” she commented. “How
I _loathe_ cleaning up!”

“Got to be done, though,” said her roommate. “Match you for the big
dresser, old bird.”

“Lend me a cent, somebody. All right; I’ll match you. . . . Tails.”

“Heads.”

“Damn!”

“You unpack first, then.”

Upon this broad hint the others made their good nights and drifted out,
yawning, planning, making dates, cursing the resumption of studies,
comparing notes on classes and courses, on house parties and fashions
and the male sex. As soon as the door closed Starr fell upon her
wardrobe with resolute ferocity. Hers was the simple method of transfer
in bulk. She would scoop from the floor an armful of shimmery underwear,
hurl it into a drawer, subject it to the violent compression of a pair
of pile-driving fists, superimpose as many stockings, handkerchiefs,
brassières and other articles of bric-à-brac as represented
capacity-plus, then jam the drawer to and repeat the formula until the
receptacle was full. Her frocks she hung in an insufficient
clothes-press (colleges are always niggardly about storage space) with
the athletic costumes readiest to hand as she would live mainly in these
convenient garments except when she went away or men were down for
week-ends. Starr could afford careless garb. She was an eyeful in
anything.

Her companion’s method was radically different. Sylvia Hartnett, Puritan
by long ancestry and in many of her lesser habits, though few of her
thoughts, was a devotee of neatness. She was inviolably spick-and-span,
and dressed to the cool freshness of her personality, which had its
special allure, dangerous beyond the charms of more obvious beauty, when
she chose to exercise it. Her belongings, down to the smallest ribbon,
she disposed with an exactitude of perfection which might have been
spinsterish in another. Nothing about Sylvia suggested the spinster,
however. Hers was the clear-cut brilliance of the crystal with perhaps a
flame latent at its heart.

When the last wrinkle had been coaxed out of the final blouse and it had
been patted and petted into place, she turned to the other.

“Have a good time?”

“Swell.”

“New York?”

“Mostly.”

“Anything (meaning anybody) new?”

“A couple.”

“Serious?”

“Pleasing.”

“Undies?” This apparently compromising but actually innocent
abbreviation touched upon the point of the subjects’ scholastic status,
indicating any member of an undergraduate body.

“Yep. One was a Dah-diddy and one a swoddy.”

“West Point’s all right in its way, but I sure do admire them Dartmouth
lads.” In the bright lexicon of Sperry youth a West Pointer is a
swoddy—much to his indignation if he hears it.

“You’ll prob’ly see ’em both before the long winter’s over.”

“I’ll betcha.” Miss Mowbray’s swains almost invariably followed through
until she dismissed them in weariness, which usually occurred soon, as
she was of a polyandrous trend of mind. “Neck ’em?”

“Not so much. Except, once, the swoddy. On a party. Club Irriwaddy.
That’s the latest. Champagne from floor to ceiling.”

“Give me Scotch—and darn little of that.”

“That’s your glum New England ancestry. If you try to keep going all
night on H_{2}O you lose the pace. Do you know, Syl,” she pursued with
reflective regret, “I don’t get as much kick out of things as I used to.
And I’m only twenty. What the hell do you suppose is the matter with me?
Even necking is losing its kick.”

“Naturally.”

The other stared. “When did you get so wise? Have you resigned from the
touch-me-not school of thought?”

“No. It’s still theory rather than practice with me. But it stands to
reason it’d be poor stuff unless you go through with it.”

“You’re an immoral woman, my child.”

“Immoral, nothing! I’m logical. I never could see anything in this
halfway stuff that you all pull,” returned the younger girl coolly. “Why
get yourself all stirred up over a false alarm?”

“How do you know it’s going to be false? It might be a real fire.”

“Oh, _well_! It never is with your type and if it was you’d send in a
loud yell for the hose-cart. Me, if I ever come to the Rubicon, I’m not
going to take off my shoes’n stockin’s and just wade. Sink or swim for
mine.”

“All right, Cæsar. Me, I’m for Old Mother Goose, modern version; keep
your clothes on your rickety limbs and don’t go _too_ near the water.
Well, what’s vacation done for you?”

“Oh, I’ve been butterflying, too. Detroit isn’t New York, but it isn’t
so dead slow at that.”

“Any new suitors?”

“Bob’s been playing me pretty hard, and Winsome Walter from Williams
gave me a week’s attention before he got the bum’s rush to make up a
condition. Also that Gale lad of Nixie’s showed enthusiasm at the one
party I met him at. I wouldn’t mind snitching him from Nixie if it
wasn’t too much trouble.”

“How come, trouble?”

“Playing up, the way she does with her men.”

“D’you expect something for nothing?”

“No-o-o. But that type wants too much. You can’t be in a huddle _all_
the time; it isn’t football.”

Starr laughed. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll say this for the lads, though;
they never really get rough unless you give ’em a start.”

“Well, I don’t. I’m not electing Physical X this year. Speaking of
which——”

“Speaking of what?”

“Physical experimentation. I went into the post office at Trenton while
I was visiting there on my way East.”

“Did you? . . . Where’s that other black stocking? What’s that got to do
with your course in Physical X?”

“Not mine; yours. I was looking for a letter for Sarepta Schallenburger.
And there she was.”

Starr whirled violently around. “_What?_ A letter?”

“No. Not a letter. Sarepta, her name. Posted on the advertised list. It
was an old one.”

Starr’s lips were parted, eager, mirthful. But her eyes slid away from
those of her companion. “My poor Fritzie-officier! Who would have
supposed that he could have taken that preposterous alias seriously!”

“I’ve always heard that the Saxons were a serious-minded people.
Probably he wrote to say he was coming over.”

“Oh, God! Well, he’ll never find me.”

“Bet a hat he does. It’d be lover’s luck. Well, chance vs. virtue. You’d
better keep off the public streets. . . . Great Grief! What’s that?”

The whole place shook with the impact of a tremendous thump overhead.
Starr uplifted an indignant demand:

“What the devil are you pulling up there? An earthquake?”

A silence followed. Then there was a shuffling sound on the stair and a
light knock at the door, which opened, at the word of bidding, upon a
penitent but composed apparition. “I’m sorry,” said a clear voice. “Did
it do any harm?”

“Only to our nervous systems. Come in, Freshman.”

“My trunk tipped over.” Verity Clarke stepped into the light, looking in
the loose negligée, which only half concealed her nightgown, like a
tousled and charming little girl. She had entered college from the West
the previous year, but her career had been inconspicuous, except for a
rather marked success in a small part in the Dramatic Club, and she had
dropped out, halfway, because of a death in her family. Now she was
back, taking her freshman year over. She had the calmly questioning eyes
of childhood, a tenderly modeled outline of face, an undersized nose
just a bit tilted, and a pink-and-brown softness of skin, the face being
redeemed from mere characterless prettiness by the firm, shrewd and
humorous mouth. In build she was strong and in stature above the medium,
but so lightly was she poised that she seemed delicate and rather small.
Late in the season she had been admitted to the jealously restricted
table over which Starr, Sylvia, and Gwen Peters held despotic though
unofficial sway. So they knew her well.

“Didn’t know you’d moved in upstairs,” said Sylvia.

“I only just did. And now I’m moving out. It’s revolting.” The big eyes
were humid with resentment.

“What’s the matter?”

“Jinny—she was going to room with me—has been kicked. She hasn’t been
doing any work at all this year; says she hates the place anyway. And
two seniors have put in a bid for the room.”

“Pretty rotten, young Clarkey. Where are you going?”

The girl hesitated. “Olga Tremwich wants me to room with her over in
Blatch.”

Starr looked up quickly. “D’you like her, kid?”

“Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. She’s been awfully nice to me.
But she’s so funny. She looks as if she was—well, _hairy_. You needn’t
laugh at me, Hartnett. I almost feel as if I’d been asked to room with a
man.”

The two older girls exchanged looks. “I wouldn’t be in any hurry about
deciding, kid,” advised Starr carelessly. “It’s easier to get into a
room than to get out of it sometimes, in this-woman’s-college.”

“I’ve got to go somewhere,” said Verity with a touch of petulance. She
sneezed. “Good-night.”

“Know the Tremwich person, Syl?” asked Starr as their visitor left.

“Tall, black girl; scraggly around the neck? Sophomore?”

“That’s the one. Sings second alto on the glee.”

“Oh-h-h-h-h!” Sylvia’s voice carried through the circumflex of
enlightenment.

“What do you say we crab her little game and take the kid in with us?”

“This is no Rescue Mission,” protested Sylvia.

“No. But——”

“At that, she wouldn’t fit in so badly,” admitted the other. “She’s
different enough from our style to make a good third. And maybe,” she
added optimistically, “we could work her to make our beds. Think she’d
come?”

“She’d jump at the chance. Don’t count too much on working her, though.
That’s a stiff little lower jaw of hers.”

“Oh, well, she ought to pay something for rooming with the two most
popular girls in the place,” said Miss Hartnett modestly. “Anyway we can
try it out. Match you to see who goes up to call her.”

“You do. You’ve got your shoes on.”

“Oh, all right,” grumbled Sylvia. “But that’s a breakfast-place hold-out
you owe me, then.”

She left, presently returning with the Freshman.

“Sit down, Vee,” Starr invited. “How’d you like to come in with us?”

“I’d love it.” Verity’s clear eyes sparkled. “But how can I get out of
going with Olga? I haven’t exactly promised but I expect——”

“Leave that to us,” grimly cut in Starr. “When could you move in?”

“Why, ’most any time.”

“Take two or three days to think it over. In the meantime,” Miss
Mowbray’s demeanor became lofty and severe, “we will hold a preliminary
conference on Life in its Higher Meanings as lived within the hallowed
precincts of Old Sperry, for the benefit of our young companion.
Freshman, stand up.”

Verity obeyed, smoothing down her dress and trying to look appropriately
demure.

“Freshman, you are about to enter into intimate association with two
wise guys. According to the sacred traditions of this, our Alma Mater,
which provide that the upperclasswomen shall guide and mold the immature
minds of the lower, we shall endeavor by precept and example to impart
to you a working knowledge of What Every Young Girl Ought Not to Know.”
She rose, pointing with rigid arm to the “Home Is What You Make It”
legend. “Do you see on yonder wall, Freshman, the guiding motto of Suite
Twenty?”

“Yes.”

“You do not! Turn it over, Syl.”

The reverse side showed a large “Verboten” in uncompromising Germanic
script. In the angle of the V nestled a half-smoked cigarette. The B
housed a champagne cork, mumpily swollen. Over the T was draped a notice
of a flunk in Latin affixed with a wad of chewing gum, while the final N
was festooned with a pinkish ribbon, obscure of symbolism, but bearing
evidence of having derived from that prehistoric appliance, the corset.

“Now you do,” pursued the orator of the occasion. “The trimmings are
supposed to indicate the reverse English on the motto. The guiding
principle of this community is that nothing is verboten that you can get
away with. As casual visitors from the Self-Guv or the faculty have no
art in their souls we keep the smooth side out and the hairy side in,
most of the time. Turn it back, Syl, dear.”

“It’s a lovely sign,” said Verity with conviction. “Where did it come
from?”

“Tell you the sad story one of these days. For the present I wish to
direct your attention to the neat initials along the foot. Read ’em and
tremble.”

“H.B.V.,” obediently translated the newcomer.

“The official title of this apartment,” explained the Junior, “is ‘At
the Sign of the Two Hard Boiled Virgins.’ We got the idea from a book
title and filched it for our own. Ain’t it sweet?”

“Swell,” breathed the catechumen admiringly.

“Alterable to Three upon proper and sufficient warranty. Raise your
right hand, Freshman. Now—can you qualify?”

Verity Clarke flushed softly. “Oh, yes!” she asseverated.


                               CHAPTER II

Only three weeks completed of the term and already drab monotony had
descended upon Suite Twenty. The future loomed, hopeless, endless,
riftless beneath the dank clouds of academic routine. The menacing cloud
of exams and the work necessary to pass them were too far distant to get
up any excitement over. There was just simply nothing doing.

The three occupants of Twenty sat, disconsolate, and brooded upon the
boundless opportunities of the past vacation, insufficiently appreciated
at the time, as they now perceived. Outside a soft night wind was
blowing out of clouds that smelled of unshed rain. Windows stood open to
its lure. It carried restlessness like a contagion, dim pulses, uneasy
discontents, fortunately not fully interpretable to the blood wherein
they stirred as leaves thrill when the sap rises. A masculine-toned bell
droned out ten strokes of warning to the campus.

At its behest, oblongs of light on the ground-floors blackened into flat
nullity. Bolts were shot. A few scurrying figures, light leaves borne by
winds of apprehension, flitted toward the buildings in process of
cloture. The super-accented jazz of

                     _Hallelujah! Hallelujah!_
                     _Helps to shoo the blues aw_——

was cut off short of the final syllable. Sperry was composing itself to
a decorous silence, if not to slumber.

Twin windows on the second floor of Trumbull House were discreetly
lowered. The shades descended, leaving only a thin, golden outline. Had
any college mentor been prowling, she might have guessed—it was a fair
hypothesis at any time—that the trio in Twenty were again ignoring the
rules made and provided by the sainted Founder “for the control,
safeguard, and higher education of the Young Maidenhood of America” in
the year of grace and virtue 1845, and since that time unaltered through
the changing generations. Two fine points of radiance within the dimmed
room marked a phase of mutant time, since it is historically as well as
inherently improbable that the virginal Althea Sperry smoked cigarettes.

Though there were but two scofflaws in the room, there was a third
occupant, now apparent merely as a rumpled and tawny head, bowed in the
semicircle of the corner desk light. A pen scratched intermittently.

“Quit it, Starr, and rest thy weary bean,” counseled Sylvia, asprawl on
the divan.

“Can’t. Wimps has sprung one of his poisonous quizzes on us for
to-morrow.”

“Wear your shortest skirt and your pinkest stockings and cross your
knees at him. William Winckler, Ph.D., ain’t no bus driver. Legs are
more of a treat to him than brains.”

Briefly and despondently Miss Mowbray disposed of this encouragement by
stating that she sat in the third row, well beyond the area of display.
“Throw me a Lucky, one of you. And if you want to talk, _talk_. But for
God’s sake don’t whisper.”

“You’re a sour grouch when you get low in your work,” observed her chum
without resentment. “We’ll give you ten minutes’ silence.”

She rearranged the pillows, so disposed at the bottom crack of the door
as to prevent any betraying whiff of smoke from exuding into the hall
and offending the prehensile nostrils of a casually wandering Self-Guv
official. Verity Clarke peered out into the spangled stillness of the
night. She ducked back sharply as a compact, dark body shot downward
from the story above. Plumpff! a soft impact on the path below.

“What’s that?” asked the startled freshman.

“That?” drawled the loller on the divan. “Why that’s prob——” Plop! a
second sound of the same kind. “——ably Nixie,” concluded the
expositor.

Said Starr, absently: “Is Paul up? Or is it the Gallus Gale?”

“Dunno. Can’t keep tabs on Nixie’s court.”

A huge, informulate object flopped and sidled downward. “_Why_ is she
throwing things out of the window?” queried Verity wildly.

“One of her boy-friends is week-ending in town. Look out and you’ll
probably see him.”

Before the gaze of the eavesdropper a dark figure moved from an angle of
the building, gathered up the fallen objects and withdrew, monstrously
swollen.

“If he’s thick and stubby, it’s Paul. If he’s tall and graceful——”

“He is.”

“Then it’s Gale the Gallant.”

“Those things looked like—like bedclothes,” said the shocked neophyte.

“Right. Haven’t you learned about Nixie’s line yet? Two pillows and a
comforter. They’re going thicketing and it’s a chilly night.”

“Thicketing? Where?”

“Well, if it’s Gale he’ll have his car and they’ll park somewhere in
that.”

“Do you mean they’ll _sleep_ there?”

“I don’t know how much sleeping they’ll do. But it’s a good bet that
Nixie doesn’t get back in time to beat the dawn’s early light by many
hours.”

“But isn’t it dangerous? Aren’t they likely—— Don’t they ever——”

“Sure, they ‘ever.’” Starr turned in her chair, winking at Sylvia.

“Though seldom the first time they elect the All-night course,”
qualified Sylvia, who had caught the signal.

“No. And not usually the second, do you think?”

“Hardly. Nor, on the average, the third.”

“A girl might even edge past the fourth and fifth.” (It had become an
antiphony now, following a free formula.)

“I’ve heard of cases where it ran to a dozen times, before——”

“But, sooner or later——”

“Oh, sure! Sooner or later——”

“If you keep on playing that game——”

“Along comes Old Lady Trouble——”

“And knocks you for a row of triplets.”

“_Oh!_” gasped Verity, her face a picture. The counterpoint proceeded:

“So, be warned, Little Vee——”

“And stay in of nights——”

“As a virtuous little Freshman should——”

“And you’ll live safe, if not happy, ever after.”

“You’re joshing me,” accused the subject of this mild and customary form
of hazing, it being considered beneficial to the unformed minds of the
Freshmen to administer salutary shock. “You don’t really mean that Elsie
Nichols would do anything like that, do you?”

Joshing was one thing; blackening the character of a housemate quite
another. Sylvia proceeded to explication while Starr returned to her
toil. “Leave Nixie out of it. Sometimes things do happen. But not so
often. And if they do, it’s generally a mistake—on both sides. Just
because a boy and a girl jaunt out, fitted up like a hall bedroom, it
doesn’t mean that Mr. and Mrs. John Jones are registered at the Inn of
the Silver Moon.” (Verity looked at first bewildered, then enlightened,
then relieved, at this elaborate symbolism.) “Specially Nixie. She knows
her onions. They leave no traces on her pure young breath.”

“But how will she get in?”

“Celia’s window gives on the steps. It’s an easy crawl, even for lazy
Nixie.”

Starr came back again from the dull realms of philology to the living
interest of the moment. “Get this right, Kid. Nine-tenths of the girls
at Sperry are in Class V.” (This esoteric initial the Freshman was able
to interpret by a slight exercise of the imagination.)

“Make it ninety-five per cent, Starr,” came from the divan.

“Maybe that’d be nearer. With the five or more per cent that have gone
the limit, it’s been casual and experimental in the majority of cases.
Then there’s the halfway kind.”

Sylvia made a wry face. “Teasers. They make me greech.”

“If they want to try it out, that’s their business; it’s cowardice, not
virtue that’s the final barrier in their cases.” Again Starr bent over
her papers, then with a wild sweep, sent them flying to the floor.
“Hell! I can’t work to-night,” she wailed.

Penitent, Verity apologized. “We’ll shut up. Honest, Starr.”

“It isn’t you. It’s something in the air.”

“Nixie’s pillows,” sniggered Sylvia.

“Something of the sort, I expect. Gee! I wish I had me a man. Don’t look
scared, Freshman. It’d only be for a whirl in a car and a little
conversation.” She jumped up, strode across the room and with a flourish
turned the framed motto around revealing the “Verboten” sign. This was a
proclamation of emancipation for the session.

Verity’s eyes brightened with curiosity. “When are you going to tell me
where you got that?”

“She got it,” said Sylvia, “from one of those prim little Noah’s ark
wood-lots that the Germans call a forest, and it nearly cost her her
well-known hard-boiled virt——”

“Wait a _minute_,” cut in Starr. “I’m the heroine of this here romance
and I don’t want a wrong slant put on it. It was really a very innocent
and pastoral little one-act play.”

“With an epilogue,” added the other maliciously, “unless you intend to
bowdlerize the story.”

“Not at all. You see, there was this little German cavalry officer who
arrested me for snitching the sign,” Starr explained to Verity.
“Politely but firmly. Then he unarrested me. Then we had lunch together
at a funny little inn in the forest. He was very spick-and-span and
spoke English with an accent that made you want to laugh and purr at the
same time. And he had a mustache that I just naturally _craved_; the
most enticing little mustache! But he didn’t understand our queer
American ways, poor lamb! That’s where the trouble began. His manners
were so correct, too, up to a certain point. Then, because I’d lunched
with him in a private room and let him kiss me a couple of times as a
mark of appreciation of his kindness and hospitality (it isn’t polite to
grunt, Syl) he thought that everything went, and there was one crisis
where I thought I’d have to do a paper hoop through the window. When I
got it into his surprised head that there were Verbotens in our social
system, too, he was too _sweet_. He stood up very straight and clicked
his heels together and begged my pardon so handsomely for having
misunderstood the so-puzzling customs of the American jeune fille. (He’d
taken me for anything but a jeune fille, up to then), and expressed his
hopes that he might see me again if he came to America some time.”

“Oh-h-h-h!” breathed the younger girl, entranced. “Then you are going to
see him again.”

“I hope not.” A faint flush had come up under Starr’s fair skin.

“Don’t you _want_ to?”

“Of course I want to. But there might be complications. You see, just to
make him feel better about it—he was really looking quite sad and
wistful and droopy toward the end—I told him—this was after we’d had
dinner together also and he’d motored me back to my lamenting family and
I’d bidden him a fond farewell—maybe a little fonder than I’d really
intended it to be—well, after all that I told him that if he did come
to America and found me, I’d—well, this time I might turn the Verboten
toward the wall!”

“Starr! You gave him your address? Of course he’ll hunt you up.”

“I gave him _an_ address, all right, Miss Sarepta Schallenburger,
Trenton, N. J. Poor Arnold! I can see him poring over the S’s in the
Trenton directory now. Fancy his taking a name like that seriously!”

“A mean, grudging spirit, you got it,” commented Sylvia.

“I suppose you’d have done better.”

“I dunno.” She contemplated the legend. “It’s an awfully select sign. I
don’t believe I’d cheat an innocent young cavalry officer out of a sign
like that. You know my high and noble principles; never start anything
you aren’t willing to finish.”

“I’m not so sure I’m not willing to finish it,” retorted Starr.

“Oh, you’re a bluff. . . . Listen. Somebody’s coming along the hall.”

“If it’s one of the godhoppers, we’re sunk.”

Inexperienced Verity dashed into her bedroom with her cigarette. The
others threw theirs out of the window and made a fast but futile reach
for their books: If it was a warden, a night wandering but most
improbable faculty member, or one of the elect of the student boards who
would be bound by her office to report them, they were probably sunk
anyway. The room reeked.

There was a hesitant knock. “Who is it?”

“It’s only me,” came the deprecating response.

“Ida McKay,” whispered Starr. This was the House borrower,
curiosity-sniffer, and bore. Having rather more than a suspicion of her
painful repute she always announced herself as “only me” or “only Ida.”
She was a faded wisp of a creature, “about the general color and
consistency of a freckle,” as Gwen Peters had once remarked of her.

“What do you want?” asked Sylvia.

“Can’t I come in for a minute?”

“Starr’s working like a fool.”

“I just wanted to ask you about something,” said the applicant in a hurt
tone.

“Oh, all right.” None too graciously.

Upon this permission the door, which, under the rules could never be
kept locked, opened. To support her mate’s fiction, Starr buried her
nose in her book. Ida insinuated herself in.

“Got a Lucky?” she asked. “Oh, _that_ isn’t what I came to ask,” she
added hurriedly. “Do any of you know whether Nixie’s out?”

“No,” said Starr. “Don’t know anything about it.”

“What’s your interest?” queried Sylvia. “She hasn’t snitched a man of
yours, has she?”

Poor Ida had never been known to have a man, except once, at
Commencement, a brother. And a sad affair was he!

“Weh——well, I heard,” said the intruder almost sniveling at this
brutality, “that Sid Gale was in town, and there’s liable to be fire
drill to-night.”

This was serious. Fire drill meant that all occupants of the House must
turn out for inspection and rollcall, and any one failing to appear,
unless there was a green card record as evidence that she was out of
town by permission, would have explanations to make and grave penalties
to face. Nixie Nichols was no special friend of the Twenty trio. But in
the matter of escapades, particularly with a man in the offing, there is
an impenetrable solidarity among the girls, only the most virulently
self-righteous of the student officials gladly reporting any culprit,
and the others doing anything in reason to shield her. For who knows
when her own turn may come?

“What time?” asked Starr, lifting her nose from her book.

“I wasn’t told. It’s only a rumor. But this is the kind of night they
would have one.”

“It certainly is.” Sylvia and Starr looked at each other. “Any way of
getting word to her?”

“I’ll go,” volunteered Verity.

“You wouldn’t know how to get back in again.”

“I’d do it,” said Ida mournfully, “only I haven’t an idea of where to
find them and the watchman would be sure to catch me and report me. He
doesn’t like me; I’m sure I don’t know why.”

Ida never did “know why” people did not like her. Sylvia had a
comforting thought. “Nixie probably knows all about it if there’s a
drill on. She’s got a way of finding out those things.”

“Well, maybe. I hope so, I’m sure. I just thought I’d tell you.” Ida
shifted and shuffled and changed the subject awkwardly. “Either of you
got any notes on Giff’s Miracle Plays lecture?”

Neither of them (if they were to be believed) had.

“Giff’s got a down on me,” whined the victim of man’s inhumanities. “I
just know he’s going to flunk me out if he can.”

“Then why do you chew gum in his class? You know he hates it.” Prof.
Gifford’s searing sardonicisms upon the subject of “super-induced
prognathism in the adolescent female jaw” had afforded vast delight to
all the class except Miss McKay and a few other unfortunates. Giff was
regarded as being at his fascinating best in impersonal sarcasm.

“You two smoked cigarettes with him in extra class, behind the stage,”
retorted Ida, greatly daring, and, regretting her temerity, added a
palliating; “so I heard.”

“That’s a damn lie,” returned Sylvia calmly. (It wasn’t.)

“And you’re a damn liar if you repeat it,” added Starr.

“Oh, I won’t!” In a failing voice she tried to borrow a type-ribbon and,
foiled in that, compromised on a pad, and bade them “g’night.” But they
were not yet rid of the incubus. With the door half opened she paused,
cocking her head and beckoning the others mysteriously.

“Get out or come in, you simp!” fiercely whispered Sylvia. “Do you want
to fill the house with smoke?”

“Did you hear it?” asked Ida, stepping back.

“Hear what?”

“Steps.” She pointed across the hall.

“What’s the matter with the girl!” said the disgusted Starr. “Have you
got ghosts?”

“It’s Sara La Lond. Lots of nights I’ve heard her. She walks back and
forth, back and forth.”

“What if she does? She’s working for her scholarship. Wouldn’t hurt you
if you did more of your walking in your own room.”

“All night, sometimes,” persisted the other. “I’ve heard her at five in
the morning.”

“Oh, beat it!”

When the visitor had rid them of her drab and unkindly presence Starr
said thoughtfully: “I’ve heard that, too. D’you s’pose she’s in any
trouble? Money or something like that?”

“She isn’t the kind you could go to and ask.”

“Oh, well! I expect it’s just that she’s been working too hard and got
insomnia. She’ll land the Alumnæ Scholarship, and then she’ll be on Easy
Street. Vee gone to bed?”

“Yep,” said the clear voice from the small room.

“Good example, soon followed.” The other two were quickly out of their
clothes. College girls learn to be swift and time-saving in these
matters.

Alone in her tiny room, the freshman was restless. Expectancy of the
alarm gong kept her half awake. She heard midnight strike on the college
bell and long afterward light footsteps outside her window. “Nixie,” she
thought, relieved. Two figures appeared and vanished momentarily into
adjacent shadow. Soon the girl-figure emerged. Verity had a clear view
of her face in the moonlight. It was rapt, drowsy, languorous, heavy
with strange, unsated hungers. Verity vaguely and in spite of herself
wondered whether—— She felt small, warm shudders tingle through her
body.

The brazen clangor of the fire bell recalled her from the dream. She
pushed her window down, seized her bathrobe and towel in accordance with
the regulation, and dashed for the hallway. Nixie was just coming down
the stairs, looking sleepily innocent and resentful.


                              CHAPTER III

Twitching his bulbous-headed club of a cane, Professor Patterson Gifford
strode across the campus. The formidable weapon invariably accompanied
him even when conditions indicated the more protective umbrella, and it
was no rare occurrence for him to be seen surging athletically along
some country road through night and rain, miles from the campus, for he
was an inveterate hiker and contemptuously impervious to weather. It had
served as text and object lesson for one of his most popular lectures,
“The Instinct of Combat as the Germ of Wars.” He was wont to maintain,
with that dry, hard vehemence which gave point to his words, that a cane
was either a practical weapon or a vapid foppery, and that he would as
soon carry a revolver loaded with chocolate creams as a stick with which
he could not fell a man at need. The legend that “Giff” had once killed
a man with that weapon was only one of the alluring traditions which
gathered about his vivid and romantic personality.

Eager girl-eyes watched the swift progress of the rather small, wiry,
compact body, every easy movement of which told of a nervous
muscularity. The head, under the modish cap—all of Giff’s apparel was
of the very best—was firm-set with curly, dark hair, blue eyes under
black brows, a thin-lipped mouth, the sensitive nose of the scholar, and
the chin of a tyrant. He was a distinctly handsome man who gave the
impression of being amusedly cognizant and contemptuous of his good
looks and of their all-too-obvious effect in the super-feminized
atmosphere wherein he lived and moved and had his academic being. For
the rest, he possessed an abrupt manner, a biting voice, a Puritanical
conscience in all matters of scholastic standard, and a fund of infinite
and long-suffering patience with an often absent wife who sniveled
because a Ford wasn’t good enough for her and the world was cursedly
spiteful in other important particulars.

As he passed Trumbull Hall the instructor of youth raised his head
slightly to where Sylvia Hartnett sat in her window. Their eyes met. It
was a daily greeting without overt sign or signal but for the time it
sufficed.

Neither Sylvia nor Patterson Gifford could have told when that mutual
curiosity which dangerously precedes desire first manifested itself.
Each was sharply conscious of it from early in their acquaintance,
clearly confident that the other felt it, also. Opportunities of contact
between an undergraduate and a “faculty” are rare and difficult in an
environment where scandal is an orchid, requiring little more than air
to nourish it. Moreover the youngish professor had built up as defense a
campus tradition for rather ill-tempered reserve which he could not well
abandon in favor of any individual. His college reputation, indeed, was
that of a grouch, but of a grouch with titillating possibilities. The
girls respected him for his undoubted intellectual capacity, and his
unbending taskmastership. Yielding to authority and deriving a thrill
from the yielding, is a peculiarly feminine trait. The more daring
spirits wondered if he could be tempted. Something in his very
reserve—as if it might be a necessary bulwark against unacknowledged
tendencies within himself—inspired that kind of speculation.

Against Sylvia the barriers might have remained inviolate throughout her
college course but for the chance of a train ride just before the
previous vacation, in a crowded car where the other half of her seat was
the only unoccupied space. Not until after he had disposed his package
of books in the rack did she reveal herself from behind her fashion
magazine. Then he made as if to get up, muttering something about the
smoker. But the girl had not spent a whole semester in his class without
suspecting a latent interest on his part. She resolved upon a daring
initiative.

“If I am in your way I’ll move,” she murmured.

“I beg your pardon!” (“The way he said it,” commented Sylvia, narrating
the encounter to her thrilled roommates later, “would have frozen the
side-whiskers off a walrus.”)

“I won’t talk to you,” she promised.

He settled back. After a time she heard a hard, dry chuckle. His first
words almost lifted her out of her seat.

“Ever been drunk?”

“Yes.”

“Like it?”

“No.”

“Neither did I.”

She controlled her voice to casualness in the query, “Do you do it
often?”

“Never have before. Never expect to again.”

She asked shrewdly, “What’s the idea? Experience?”

“How did you guess that?”

“I’m rather strong for experience, myself. But a girl doesn’t get so
much chance.”

“Quite as much as a college professor.”

“Maybe. I wonder why you are telling me about it, Professor Gifford.”

With a certain conviction he answered: “I think you are to be trusted.
If you aren’t, I’d better know about it now than”—a brief
pause—“later.”

So much was implied in the final word of this astonishing speech that
she turned to study his face. (How keenly blue his eyes were, burning
with a cold fire under the black brows!) “What does that mean? What is
there—later?”

Composedly he answered: “I don’t know. Do you? Something.”

He was taking for granted—accepting, rather—an understanding between
them, built up out of a multitude of significant trifles in the past
term; involuntary meeting of their eyes in classroom, a queer sort of
excitement which she tried to repress whenever she asked him questions,
an almost imperceptible emphasis upon his brusque greetings when they
met on the campus; something which she had been nervously impotent to
keep out of her manner toward him on the rare occasions of their social
encounters at formal college functions.

At once he began to talk to her of political events, of a rare-book
auction which he had been attending, of the changing standards and
values of the younger generation (she was surprised at his sympathetic
if somewhat cynical comprehension of girl-psychology), and presently of
the people of their common environment, etching them with acid
incisiveness. She would like to have said, “And what about Sylvia
Hartnett?” her vanity, already stimulated by these confidences from the
reticent professor, craving a more satisfying food. But “Giff” ended
with quite a different person.

“You are a friend of Sara La Lond?”

“Yes. In a way.”

“I am specially interested in that girl.”

“I should hardly think,” she began and stopped because he was smiling at
her with an irritating assumption of understanding more than she meant
him to understand. The smile did not alter his neutral tone as he added:

“Not as I might be interested in you. Is that what you were thinking?”
(She flushed sharply, but made no answer.) “Hers is a fine mind. Most of
you girls are floundering morons or intelligent fussers.” (“Thank you,”
said Sylvia, finding her voice. “You’re welcome. I should place you in
the latter category.”) “La Lond has, I should say, a genuine passion for
learning. Unhappily this does not always exorcise more instinctive
passions. Do I make myself clear?”

“I don’t know. I think—surely you’re mistaken about Sara,” faltered
Sylvia in amazement.

“I fancy not. An eager, hungry mind. And the body strong and vital and
insistent with its own specific hungers. Where the two conflict there is
likely to be trouble.”

Sylvia recalled the all-night pacing in the room opposite. A grim,
remembered phrase—was it from the Bible?—something about “wrestling in
travail of spirit,” took on new significance, new possibilities of
tragedy in her mind. But Sara! With her ascetic standards, her life of
studious devotion, her fierce athleticism. Could Giff be right? How
should he know?

“Are you so well acquainted with her, Professor Gifford?”

“Hardly at all. But I happen to know her antecedents. We came from the
same manufacturing town originally. I fancy she is a lonely soul, here.
It might be for her best interests to be less alone.”

“Speaking in the interests of morality, Professor?” asked Sylvia, very
demure.

“Morality be damned! I am interested in scholarship. If La Lond wins the
Alumnæ Fund as she should, she may go on and do something worth while.
If she could do better work by being immoral—though I don’t admit the
invidious distinction in the realm of mind—then I should advocate
immorality for her. Quite possibly it would be the best course.” Again
his dry chuckle. “What a flutter in our dove-cote if my abominable
sentiments became known. Good-by.” He was gone like a magician’s
evanishment. No further word of that future which he had so calmly
assumed.

Sylvia had told her roommates the whole conversation about Sara, and
part of it about herself, with reservations of the more intimate
approach. They were enchanted. A flirtation between one of their number
and a “faculty” was a real tidbit to their stinted appetites for
sensation, especially when the other party to it was the hitherto
insusceptible Giff.

“We must hope for the worst,” was Starr’s pious comment.

The worst, or, indeed, any further development was slow in coming.
Teacher and pupil met each other thereafter only in the midst of crowds.
He had made no move to see her alone, nor had he communicated with her
when she went home for summer holidays, as she had rather expected. Had
he decided to let it drop, deeming it not worth the risk? Perhaps it
wasn’t. But Sylvia’s irritation at this complete non sequitur became
almost an obsession. It did not help greatly that, when classes were
resumed, she became conscious of his eyes often upon her. Expressing
what? Sardonic amusement, his characteristic attitude toward his pupils?
A message? Rather it seemed to be restlessness. Said Starr firmly:

“_Are_ his intentions dishonorable, or is he deceiving our fondest
hopes? You must go after him, Syl.”

So one day Sylvia fabricated an excuse to stay after class, and found
eight other fabricators, which was below rather than up to the average
of those who derived a surreptitious thrill from a semi-private word
with the sternly picturesque idol. Doggedly Sylvia waited them out. When
she and the pedagogue were alone she put her formal query on some point
of the lesson.

“Is that what you stayed to see me about?” he asked.

She felt herself quaking a little, a discomforting sensation for the
usually self-sufficient Sylvia. “No. I really wanted to speak to you
about Sara La Lond.”

His thin smile appeared. “Why lie? Is it worth it?”

Wrath gleamed in Sylvia’s eyes and glowed beneath her skin. “I’m sorry I
stayed.”

“I’m not. You are quite improved when angry. I must study to rouse you.”

“You don’t need to study to insult me.”

“Nonsense! We’re beyond that already, you and I.”

“We’re not beyond anything.”

He ignored the contradiction. “You’re annoyed because I haven’t made
opportunity to see you. There have been reasons. Are you going to New
York soon?”

“I don’t know when I’m going,” was the pettish reply.

“As you please. . . . Anything else, Miss Hartnett?”

Suddenly her eyes appealed to him. “I didn’t think you’d be—this
way—to me,” she murmured.

“Stop it! I’m not—and you know it.” His tone was quiet, but a dark
flush had risen in his face.

There were footsteps outside. One of the lovelorn, hopefully returning.

“Thank you, Professor Gifford,” said Sylvia as in formal acknowledgment
of information imparted. But her voice was husky, and her nerves were
humming like tautened wires, responsive to the thrill of her
unexpectedly revealed power to stir him. An apothegm of Starr’s got on
her wires and was borne to her brain: “Some people are just made to make
trouble for each other—and there you are!”

There, indeed! But where? Sylvia had not the vaguest idea where she now
was with Gifford. Somewhere, at least. No longer in misty space. So much
had been gained by her venture.

At home, her chum was waiting for her. “Well? Did he explain?”

“Yes. No. Partly.”

“You look rattled. What happened? Did you make him crawl?”

“Giff? Crawl? I should say _not_.”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with you,” said the disgusted Starr. “I
think you’re a perfect smoosh.”

Undisturbed by this withering characterization, Sylvia grinned. “I
didn’t altogether get the worst of it.” With which her friend had to be
content.

Gwen Peters came up to them. “Going to the Junior Costume this evening?”

“Sure.”

“Come around to the room afterward for a little, quiet party.”

“What’s up?”

Gwen explained that she had become possessed of a bottle of
not-too-filthy red wine and already had the remains of a flask of
brandy, donated by the family for medical use only, out of which, with
the addition of lemon, sugar and mineral water she would back herself to
produce a blend of superior potability, definite authority, and
negligible aftermath. Starr and Sylvia held swift wireless consultation
and assented. It wasn’t much in their line, nor in Gwen’s either, for
that matter, but—— In vacation or at week-end house parties the
principle and practice was to swallow anything and everything alcoholic
when, as, and if offered. On the college premises it was different. The
Sperry attitude toward drink in general was “After all, it’s kind of
silly.” But the monotony of term-time was already corrosive upon their
spirits. The “costume” was sure to be dull. Might as well hit it up a
little, afterward.

There was an eleven o’clock late permission for the event. Gwen slipped
away at ten thirty. The two juniors from Twenty with Helen Quigg, the
fourth invited guest, all in the scantiest apparel, for costume revels
are always a contest as to who can come the closest to nudity and still
“get by,” followed a few minutes later. They found themselves in a
devastated area in the midst of which Gwen impotently raged. Somebody
had made away with the materials of the revelry. Now, informal borrowing
is a common practice in all women’s colleges, and stealing is by no
means rare; but to take a housemate’s liquor is the ultimate depravity.
Wrath inspired a furious thirst in the four. Where, a few hours before,
they had languidly accepted the invitation and would have been about as
well satisfied not to, now their spirits craved stimulus and the revenge
of which it was the symbol. Drink they must and would have. They
instituted a canvass. Nobody had, or at least would admit to having any
of the desired contraband.

“What about Balaam?” asked Helen Quigg.

For some reason, lost (perhaps fortunately) in the mists of antiquity,
the head janitor of Sperry is always known as Balaam. The present
incumbent was young, frisky though married, and acted unofficially as
campus bootlegger. Hurling themselves into long coats they went to his
house and cautiously but insistently made their wants known.

“Sorry to disappoint you, girls, but I’m absolutely out.”

They lifted up the voices of lamentation. “But we’ve got to have some.
Positively _got_ to.”

“Oh, well, if you feel that way about it,” said he sympathetically, “I
know where I could get some, I guess.”

“At any price.”

He scrutinized the group, now huddling in their wraps, for it was
raining. They looked safe. There might even be the prospect of a “party”
with himself included. “Any of you want to go along? It ain’t far.”

Wild, but guarded cheers. All of them, it appeared, wanted to go. It
tickled their sense of adventure, of rebellion against the adverse
fates, this excursion to a mysterious bourne in the illicit hours. For
his part, Balaam would rather that only one of them had volunteered. He
had visions of a jaunt of exciting possibilities. Well, he’d asked them
all and now he’d be game. He ran out his rickety old Dodge, buttoned in
all the curtains tight against detection of his precious load, and they
were off, heading out of the village by the shortest route.

Two miles of main road and nearly a mile of muddy country byway were
covered before the car came to a halt in front of a sinister enough
looking house with hair-lines of light forming mathematical angles about
its shaded windows. In a shed at one side were the dim forms of several
lightless cars.

“How about a li’l drink inside?” invited their conductor.

“Is it safe?” asked a doubtful and unsteady voice, with an intonation
suggesting that very little encouragement would be needed. It was bitter
cold in the car.

“Safe for you as for me.”

This was undeniably true. Also it was in the nature of a challenge to
their gameness. Gathering their coats about them the girls followed
Balaam to the door where, after a colloquy carried on in loud whispers
on one side and low growls on the other, all were admitted and seated at
a corner table. There were a dozen men in the lamp-lighted room, all of
whom looked like respectable enough citizens, and half of whom were more
or less drunk; and two women who appeared to be neither drunk nor
respectable. Balaam ordered five Scotches. The girls found them strong,
bitter and comforting.

“Have another round?” he invited promptly. He was feeling very set-up
over having in his charge this bevy of youthful beauty, which the other
men were looking at curiously and with envy. Starr and Gwen declined.
Helen, who had a hickory head, said she’d stay with it, and Sylvia said
she’d stay with Helen. But her head was of a softer material than
hickory and before the second Scotch had more than begun to tingle
through her nerves, she suspected that she had made a mistake, albeit a
not unpleasing one. She felt dizzy and exuberant and songful and was
possessed with a sharp desire for fresh air, a great deal of it, and at
once. She stood up. Her coat flapped open.

“Show-girls, by God!”

A man at the adjoining table had caught a gleam of fancy costume and
bare flesh. He rose and lurched forward, presenting himself with an
elaborate bow. “Commovernaveadrinkwizzus” he proffered in one continuous
performance of hospitable syllables.

Sylvia wavered on her feet. He thrust an arm around her neck and
downward. The shock sobered the girl. She shoved him violently back and
he was prevented from falling only by the interposition of his
companion, who had also risen and come forward, and who now feelingly
rebuked him.

“Mushn’t inshult ladies. ’Tain’t done. On b’half of friend I offer my
apologies. Have drink with _me_.”

“Get out, quick,” muttered Balaam.

The four girls, seriously alarmed now, made for the door. Several male
figures interposed. “No, you don’t!” they exulted.

“Le’m go if they want to,” said the upholder of the proprieties. “Never
int’fere with a lady’s wishes.” In consequence of which noble sentiment
somebody swung on his eye. Instantly the fight became general and
enthusiastic. A side lamp went down with a crash. In the dim light of
the remaining one, Helen Quigg failed to see the advent of a bottle
which took her behind the ear and knocked her over. She at once scuttled
under the table and thence to the doorway. Starr got a flying fist,
presumably intended for some one else, on her chin, and had the
satisfaction of landing a by no means despicable punch on a flushed and
vastly amazed countenance which loomed up over her. Gwen and Sylvia were
already near the outer door which Balaam had yanked open when with a
wild crash the other lamp bracket came down. Total darkness superseded
the twilight interval. Through it sounded thumps and bumps and impacts
of heavy feet on the floor, pantings and gruntings and monosyllabic
expletives. It was a mess and no place for a minister’s child!

Balaam had got clear and, with the triple intention of saving his skin,
his reputation and his job, had made for the car. As he stepped on the
starter a wave of femininity swept out of the night and poured through
the car doors. The driver vaguely thought he counted four; it would have
made no difference; he wanted only to get away from that place.

The feminine figures huddled together in the black rear of the car until
it had reached the outer road, then Starr disentangled herself and
climbed into the front seat beside Balaam. In the rear Gwen and Helen
became gradually aware of a foreign and disturbing element which
presently defined itself as perfumery of a cheap and robust brand.
Nothing of the sort had ever pertained to any of their lot. A paralysis
of horror seized upon them as a voice, equally alien, said with a sigh
of relief:

“Oh, _Cheezis_! I’m glad to be out of there.”

“Who are you?” said Helen wildly.

“Where’s Sylvia?” shrieked Gwen.

“She isn’t here.”

“We’ve got to go back,” barked Starr.

“Not me!” announced Balaam with a passion of sincerity.

“Didja lose one of yer party?” asked the stranger.

“Yes. _Where_ could she have got to? How did we miss her?” Helen began
to cry.

“Cheer up, dearie. She’ll be all right. The fellers we was with are
perfect gents. They’ll look after her. One’s an alderman.”

The car was bumping wildly over the rutted road, but could not make
great speed. Far ahead a lone figure, picked up by the headlights, moved
lightly and swiftly aside. Starr in the front seat sensed something
familiar in its pace. A moment later she was sure. She opened the door
and thrust her head and half her torso out.

“Sylvia!” she yelled. “Back there. . . . The road house. Sylvia
Hartnett.”

Patterson Gifford raised his heavy cane and waved it. Then she saw him
turn and run back along the road.


                               CHAPTER IV

When Gifford reached the road house he found Sylvia standing by a tree
in confidential colloquy with a bulky, mild, and intoxicated man. Within
doors matters were quiet.

“I’ll take you right home,” promised the man.

“But I’d rather walk.”

“You’ll be perfly safe with me.”

“Please let me walk.”

“Go’ my car right here.”

“I don’t want to ride.”

Gifford stepped into view. “Good evening.”

“Oh!” said Sylvia and began to giggle inanely.

Drunk—thought Gifford without surprise or disgust, though perhaps with
a little unconscious disappointment.

The man of bulk stared a little. “Good evenin’,” he said.

“Are you ready to go home?” Gifford asked the girl.

“Home?” repeated the man doubtfully.

“This is Alderman somebody; I don’t know just who,” said Sylvia.

“Spanhover,” supplied the other. “Pleased to make your
uckh-acquaintance.”

“And this,” Sylvia improvised brilliantly, indicating Gifford, “is my
uncle.”

“Thassa good one.”

“Thank you so much for helping me get out.”

“’Sall right. Any time—help a lady.”

“Good-night”—from the girl. “Good-night,” repeated Gifford pleasantly.

“_Wait_ a minute,” said the alderman with stress.

But the pair were already half way to the gate, leaving the third party
to the transaction (which had begun to seem to him peculiar and probably
wrong somewhere) trying to make up his mind as to the next move. The
latch clicked behind them. Simultaneously there was a click in the brain
of the deserted one, waking a sense of deception, betrayal, and outrage.
Mildness dropped from him, as a discarded garment.

“Hey!” he roared in the voice of a bull-elephant. “Wherejeh think yeh’re
goin’ with that girl?”

“Run down the road and keep on running,” Gifford bade her.

Sylvia ran. But when she had covered a hundred yards and found herself
alone, she looked back for her rescuer. He was standing near the gate.
His formidable stick swung gently in his hand. The alderman, who seemed
to be parleying with him, but from a cautious distance, whirled and made
a slightly curving rush for the house. At once Gifford set out up the
road. She heard the door bang open and the bellowing voice:

“Hey, you fellers! Cal! Jim! This guy is runnin’ away with my girl. Come
out and help me catch ’em.”

“Keep going,” ordered Gifford at the girl’s elbow.

He set the pace at a brisk trot. Behind there was apparently some
debate. At least, there was delay. Sylvia, still in good wind from her
vacation’s dancing and with her head now quite cleared, felt her
excitement turn from dread to thrill as she raced along. When she began
to pant he touched her arm, slowing her down to a fast walk. She glanced
at him. His face was set in silence.

“Aren’t you going to speak to me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he returned in the tone of one who calmly enunciates an eternal
and incontrovertible principle. “You are a damned little fool.”

Which seemed to close that topic of conversation. Through the damp,
thick air a faint whirring reached their ears. He interpreted it.

“They’re after us.”

Two angrily staring lights appeared half a mile back of them.

“Can you make that wood-lot over there?”

“Of course.”

They crossed a plowed field, heavy with mud in the low places, now
floundering, again making easier pace. If they could hide among the
trees the pursuit might go past. If not, she wondered what his course
would be. Hers was plain; to take orders. She huddled behind a large
maple. He stood over her, peering out. She heard him curse once under
his breath. The car slowed down, halted opposite them.

A man wallowed out—another—a third. Three to one—no; three to two,
for Sylvia would fight. Exultantly she knew that she would fight without
flinching, by his side. If only she had a weapon, even a hatpin!

Gifford took off his heavy woolen mittens. In her ignorance she supposed
that he intended to fight in his bare hands—and in that chill air!

“Give me a ribbon, a string, anything you have.”

“What for?” she asked, interested.

“Do you think that you would enjoy being manhandled by three drunken
brutes?” His voice was deadly.

“No.”

“Then do what I tell you and hold your tongue.”

She fumbled in her underclothing and drew out a two-foot strip of blue
satin. One upon the other he slipped the mittens over the great wen in
which his cane terminated. “Pull them down,” he directed. She did so. He
bound them neatly in place, now and again glancing up to mark the
progress of the pursuers. They were making heavy passage of it across
the field.

Gifford fumbled in his pocket and slipped an open jack-knife into her
hand. “Stab for their bellies if they get to you,” he said. She nodded.
He looked at her scrutinizingly, patted her once on the shoulder, and
walked out to meet the men. With terror for him she realized that he had
left his only weapon, the club, propped against the tree.

“What do you want?” His quietly peremptory voice came clearly to her.

“Where’s m’ girl? Whad you do with her?” the bulky man asked in return.
He was quite reproachful about it as one who has had his trust in human
nature basely deceived.

She heard Gifford state in an informative tone, “You gentlemen are off
the track. There’s the road.”

“You be damned,” retorted a rancid tenor.

One of the men, a broad, ape-like creature, seemed to be maneuvering to
get in behind the lone figure. Sylvia was just about to cry out to him
when she saw him turn and run, easily outdistancing the pursuers who
staggered on the uneven surface. Having reached the tree where she
sheltered he resumed his cane and stood out a little. Taut and ready in
the open space, he looked, the girl thought, as slender as a snake and
as dangerous.

“Remember,” he said to her in a quick aside. “Low with that knife if you
have to use it.”

“Right!” She felt a devastating excitement in which fear played but a
small part.

The advancing force entered the patch of trees and deployed. “There she
is,” piped the tenor, “hidin’ behind the tree.”

They came on. The ape caught up the dead branch of a tree. Holding it in
both hands he began to weave about in prize-ring fashion, circling the
slight and still figure with the cane. What happened next or how, Sylvia
never could have testified. A quick leap, a pass, a shattering impact of
wood upon wood, followed by a softer impact, and the weaving figure
toppled with a sort of shocking deliberation and lay quiet.

The alderman stood, appalled and helpless, until the padded knob struck
up under his jaw with a “clup!” He crumpled and lay as inert as his
companion.

The piping tenor began to shriek in animal terror of death as its owner
ran zigzagging back toward the road. He had no chance. Sylvia shrieked,
too, in involuntary pity and dread for him. The swift black figure was
after him, was upon him, like a hawk skimming the ground for its prey,
had struck him down, and ignoring the girl’s pleas, beat him
relentlessly into quietude.

She shrank from the victor, as he returned to her, breathing hard.
“Come,” he ordered.

“You’ve killed them,” she whispered. “You—you _beast_!”

It seemed as if her arm would be torn from the shoulder-socket with the
violence of the jerk that plucked her from behind the trunk upon which
she had leaned in an excess of blind sickness. Half dragged, half
running she traversed the field.

“Get into the car.”

“I don’t want——”

“Get into the car!”

She crawled in. He put on speed until they had rounded the first turn.
“Don’t move from where you are.” He jammed on the brakes, jumped out and
ran back along the road. His expression had lost something of its
strained grimness when she saw it again. “Two of them are all right,” he
condescended to report. “They are helping the other across the field. I
hit that hairy abortion a little harder than I intended. He was
dangerous until I broke his arm.” After a moment he asked, “Are you
sober now?”

“I wasn’t drunk.”

“It doesn’t matter. Pay attention to what I am saying. If there should
be any serious results this is our story; you were drugged in the house
and carried into the wood-lot. There you came to enough to scream, and I
heard you as I was walking along the road.” With a change of manner he
snapped: “Whose car were you in?”

She did not answer.

“Do you hear me?”

“Yes. I shan’t tell you.”

“You’d better. Was it a college car?”

Obstinate silence. “Well, I know, anyway.” Unexpectedly his low, dry
chuckle followed. “I expect you’d have used that knife if they’d got
you.”

“I’d have done as you told me.”

“I’ll give you credit on one point; you didn’t cry.”

“I never cry.”

“Stern, old, hard-bitted Puritan stuff, eh? You are Puritan, aren’t
you—by ancestry, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“The name indicates it. And that effect of physical reticence that you
have. Long generations of self-denying, joy-repressing, abnegating New
Englanders and all that sort of thing. And now the chilled blood is
warming into revolt. That’s why you do silly, childish things like this
escapade.”

“I did it because I wanted to.”

“Admirable reason! You fairly coerce one’s respect. Because you ‘wanted
to’ you risk expulsion and involve me in a messy adventure that may cost
me my job.”

“_I_ didn’t ask you to come after me. . . . Oh, I’m sorry I said that.”

“You ought to be. You also expressed the opinion that I was a beast I
believe.”

“It was horrible, the way you beat that man down.”

“Yes? Well, I wasn’t slapping people on the wrist at that particular
moment.” He lapsed into silence for a mile. When he spoke again it was
quite impersonally. “This car I shall leave downtown. It is a garage car
and the men were out-of-town sports who may be content to let well
enough alone. We should know by to-morrow whether they are going to keep
quiet or make a scandal that will furnish a tabloid holiday of print.
You’d better get out here.”

“Good-night,” she said. “It would be silly to thank you.”

He regarded her inscrutably. “A little,” he agreed and left her.

An emotionally relieved trio of depressed desperadoes welcomed the lost
one in through an obliging ground-floor window.

“We were almost maddened,” said Starr. “Giff found you, then.”

“Yes.”

“You needn’t be so filthy monosyllabic about it.”

“I’m tired out.”

“Come up to Gwen’s room. She’s got some hot chocolate. _And_ a little
stranger, quite worth meeting.”

“I’m not coming up yet.”

“Not coming up? What——”

“I’m going to wait.”

“_Oh!_” said Starr. Conjoined in a single comprehension the others
retired.

Sylvia crouched at the window until she saw the slender and stern figure
coming along the path which led past Trumbull to his house. She slipped
out and stood before him. Patterson Gifford stopped. “Well?”

“I’m sorry.”

Her contrition inspired no acknowledgment from him.

“Are you off me for life—Giff?” she whispered, greatly daring.

“Don’t be a fool twice in the same evening.”

Had he moved an imperceptible inch nearer to her, waiting? Were those
strong, nervous hands that had struck so adequately, so brutally in her
defense, yearning toward her? She could not be sure. But of this she was
sure, that at a word, at a breath she would have sprung to him and held
to him. In the penetrating glare of the headlights she had incongruously
noted that his face was dusky with the day’s strong, bluish growth of
beard. With a desire that both astounded and exalted her, she craved to
rub her soft cheek injuriously against the harsh stubble of his tyrant’s
chin.

Puritan blood in revolt, indeed!

                 *        *        *        *        *

Upstairs, amid the steam of a potent perfume, the chance guest of the
evening was gigglingly regaling her new friends with the delights of
life under the bright lights, which, she wanted to tell ’em, was sure
the Queen’s beans! Sylvia, joining the group, was neither repelled nor
convinced. On the first-hand evidence cited, her opinion, in which the
others concurred when they came to discuss it, was that a
demi-professional career of the flesh was a pretty dull sort of life.
She gave them a brief account of the battle in the snow. The guest
resolved her difficulty about the muffled cane, expressing great
admiration of the defender’s strategy.

“Easier to knock a man out and less damage done than with the bare
wood,” she explained expertly. “It’s like the bare fist; no good to
finish a guy with.”

In the morning the lodger, to their surprise, rose betimes, demanding a
cold bath, and looking as fresh as a field flower and about as pretty
after her ablutions. Being thwarted in her wish to pay for her night’s
rest she went her unknown way with warm thanks and optimistic assurances
that they didn’t need to worry; there wasn’t going to be any fuss, as
long as nobody was croaked, and as for Dick (the ape) he had an iron jor
and couldn’t be hurted.

Her forecast proved sound. The enemy of a night withdrew, as it were, to
the remote fastnesses of their own private existences whither none cared
to pursue them.


                               CHAPTER V

Back to Suite Twenty at the close of a hard morning, Starr Mowbray
sniffed the air with surprised nostrils.

“Floral offering,” she observed.

She followed her nose to the window sill. Six heavy-headed and luscious
roses nodded in the pitcher which was doing emergency duty as a vase.

“Syl!” called the sniffer.

A grunt from their bedroom indicated (or was so meant) that Miss
Hartnett was busy with other affairs.

“Who’s the passionate suitor?”

“Huh? Haven’t got one in stock.”

“Explain me then this gay garland, girl.”

“The flowers? They’re Vee’s.”

“Whoops, dearie! Our kitten’s caught a mouse. Who’s the gent?”

“That ain’t no gent.”

“No? She didn’t buy ’em for herself, did she?”

“Olga Tremwich sent them to her.”

Starr frowned. “I thought that was all off.”

“Apparently not.”

“What are we going to do about it?”

“Search me. She doesn’t know what it’s all about.”

“Neither do we. Not for certain.”

Sylvia shrugged. “I don’t like that person,” she stated. “And she
doesn’t like us.”

“What does that prove?”

“Oh, proof! That’s something else again.”

A babble of voices sounded on the stairs and Verity danced in. “’Lo, you
two owls.”

“What are you looking so het-up about?”

“Travers of the Collegiate Caravaners is coming to rehearsal. Maybe if I
make a hit with him, he’ll take me barnstorming.” She danced before them
like a gnat in a sunbeam.

“You’ll have to be on your toes.”

“I think you’ve got a swell chance.”

Sylvia brought in the pitcher of roses and elaborately deposited it at
the amateur’s feet. “On account,” said she. “You’ll be smothered in ’em
on your triumphal tour.”

“More likely to be carrots. They do small-town stuff, on the fall tour.
They say it’s the best training.” She dipped her nose into the blooms.
“Aren’t they lovely! Olga sent them to me.”

“Do you see much of her?” asked Starr bluntly.

“At rehearsals, of course. She’s playing opposite me.”

“’S nice!”

Verity looked up quickly. “What’s the matter?”

“It ill beseems a hard-boiled virgin,” explained Sylvia lightly, “to go
in for schoolgirl crush stuff. You’re in college now, kid.”

“Olga’s always been nice to me,” said the freshman simply. “She wants me
to visit her next vake. They’ve got an awfully star-spangled place on
the Cape. I’ve seen pictures of it.”

“Is she trying for the Caravaners tour?”

“No. She’s only been cast for men’s parts, and of course men play those
in the Caravaners. I’ll tell you who is going, they say. Gallant Gale.”

“The conquering Sid? He’s Nixie’s newest.”

“She can have him.”

“Atta big-hearted kid!” said Sylvia derisively and Starr added: “Didn’t
know you knew the Gallus One.”

“I don’t. And I don’t want to if half what they say about him is true.
I’ll bet he’d be _poisonous_ to act with.”

“What’s inflamed your mind against the lad?” inquired Sylvia curiously.

“Oh, I dunno! They say he expects every girl he looks at to fall for
him. I hate these beauty-boys.”

“Well, you haven’t made the Caravaners yet,” pointed out Starr.

“No, and I don’t know that I’m so crazy to, if he goes along. They say
he’s putting up part of the money for the tour and he wants to play
juveniles and that’d make me play opposite him and I _know_ he’d paw. I
hate being pawed.”

“Our chee-ild is getting blasé!”

“No, I’m not. But this experienced-young-man-of-the-world stuff gives me
a chill. Why don’t they keep it for the night-clubs? I’d rather have a
girl to play opposite. They don’t paw you. I’ve got a class. See you at
dinner.”

The other two looked at each other. “She certainly doesn’t know what
it’s all about,” said Sylvia slowly.

Sylvia, energetically toweling in the communal bath-room at the end of
the hall next morning, heard herself addressed from the wash-basin in
tongue not understanded of the peoples.

“Blobble—booble—blooshle—blish.”

“Meaning me?”

“Yeah,” spluttered the other through a dispersed fog of tooth powder in
which loomed the imperfectly assembled features of Helen Quigg. “Sheen
Nickshee?”

“Finish your teeth and then try it.”

“Nixie,” explained the ablutionist, “has got a swain on the way.”

“I suppose that’s front-page news!”

“He’s coming for the week-end and bringing a blind drag that Pink had
taken on but Pink is back on a history written and can’t make the grade.
I think Nixie wants you to handle him.”

“I guess that makes me an Elk!” was Sylvia’s derisive answer.

“I’d rather take a blind off’n Nixie than any girl in the House except
maybe Starr. I don’t know how she snares the men but she certainly
does.”

“I’ll telegraphic reporter and he’ll tell the public she does.”

The other was attracted by the esoteric phrase. “Is that the newest
gag?” she asked doubtfully. Fresh slang, hot off the vaudeville griddle,
is prized at Sperry. “I don’t think it’s so good, at that,” she
disparaged.

“This week’s show is rotten,” admitted Sylvia. “Maybe I’ll look Nixie’s
proposition over.”

Elsie Nichols was the mystery of her time and the despair of rival
prom-trotters. She was a weedy, blowsy, high-strung, bow-legged, languid
little troll, homely of face and quaintly proportioned, but her eyes,
liquid brown beneath the storm-black brows of temperament, were charged
with witchcraft, and when she spoke, Circe sang and the lure of soft
laughter hung in the air. Intimates she had none. Friends were few;
enemies—whom she regarded with an indifference more wounding than
disdain—not so few. She was not precisely of the inner circle of
Trumbull, so despotically ruled from Suite Twenty, but she played around
with them when she played with any one. Mostly she was a lone wolf and
men were her prey and her hobby. No other girl in Sperry was so much
talked about, guessed about, surmised about.

It was characteristic of Nixie that she seldom went to other people.
They came to her. Having come to her, they usually did what she wished,
for she possessed the cold strategy of manipulation for her own ends.
Sylvia, however, was going to her for ends paralleling but not identical
with Nixie’s. And first she returned to consult with Starr.

“Where’s young Vee?”

“Gone to the Libe.”

“Starr, it’s time our chee-ild began to use the advantages that Nature
gave her, and to find out that men were made to be useful to the higher
sex.”

“Step down off the platform, Syl, and tell me all about it.”

“Nixie’s got a scheme to saw off a blind drag on me. I’m going to saw
our Verity off on her.”

“What for?”

“Experience in a sound school. Nixie is elected tutor to the Infant
Class. What do you think?”

“I guess it’s all right.”

“Then I’ll go over and break it to her.”

Elsie Nichols was sitting cross-legged amidst the confusion of her small
and extremely messy room, mixing instantaneous chocolate, in lieu of the
breakfast which she seldom attended, and making languid selections from
a large assortment of masculine mail.

“Throw Shiftless and Makebelieve (two of a quartet of rag dolls) off the
chair and sit down,” was her greeting. “Shut up, Trotsky.” This last to
a frenzied canary. “Just had a wire from Gee-Gee.”

This was more interesting than Sylvia had anticipated. If Gallant Gale,
that figure of almost mythical romance at Sperry, was in the game it
might be well worth playing. Was it possible that Nixie, the troll, had
made him already?

“How is he?” inquired the polite-for-reasons-of-policy visitor.

“Pickled, I should think,” replied Nixie impartially. “Judge for
yourself.”

The telegram, dated the previous day, read: “My spirit craves your
subtle hand and my heart yearns for your voice full stop arriving town
to-morrow A.M. if gas lasts halt bringing along friend hyphen of hyphen
childhood hyphen days check also sample from old oaken bucket pause
remember it is always springtime in the hearts of the innocent, and be
kind to all dumb animals including yours gee gee.”

“Sot!” muttered Sylvia. Her bolted breakfast was still rebellious within
her and she was feeling sour. “Who’s the other?”

“Name’s Loyster. He’s a friend of Pink’s. Pink says,” she continued in
an ingratiatingly frank voice, “that he’s no marvel and doesn’t rate
much higher than a kind soul to bum free meals off when you’re in New
York. But he’s tractable and has a lovely nose. Will you take him?”

“No: I won’t; but——”

“Why couldn’t you say so and save all this soul-sweat?”

“Don’t pull any of your peeves on me, Nixie,” warned Sylvia coolly. “I
can’t, but I might find somebody who would.”

“Who?” It was Nixie’s turn now to be suspicious.

“Verity Clarke. She’s as pretty as a bird in a tree.”

Nixie promulgated a word of deep wisdom. “No girl is pretty until she’s
found out that she’s pretty, and your kid hasn’t. No style, either.”

“We’ll array her for the sacrifice.”

“Does she know anything?”

“Not much. I want her to see your work.” (Nixie had that coming to her!)

She put on an innocent air. “I can tell her how to play safe of course.
But she won’t need it with this lad.”

“He sounds awfuller and awfuller.”

“Don’t you believe it. He’s perfectly presentable and just the thing for
Thirteen. (This being the room where there was dancing after dinner on
Saturdays and where men could be danced with or shown off.) You’re sure
the kid isn’t dumb?”

“Not a bit. Her trouble is that she doesn’t know what it’s all about.
She’s always lived by rule at home. Mustn’t go to the movies without
Mother. Must be in at ten o’clock. Motor with a boy alone? Oh, shocking!
No nice girl does it. All that sort of prehistoric tosh.”

The dark pools of Nixie’s eyes welled up with amused apprehension. “Why,
she’ll be a raging lion! I know what these repressed kids are like when
they get loose.”

“She isn’t loose. And she isn’t going to be. Just show her a touch of
life.”

Nixie sighed. “Send her down.”

“Now, I wonder whether that’s all right,” reflected Sylvia, a little
uneasy, as she went to break the news to Verity.

The freshman threw a near-fit. “But I don’t get along with strange boys.
I don’t know how. I get rattled and then I giggle.”

“Don’t be a slob. You’ve got to snap out of it some time.”

“But I hardly know Miss Nichols.”

“_Miss_ Nichols! For crying out loud! Who d’you think she is—the dean?”

“What’ll I wear? What’ll I talk to him about?”

“Tell him how grand you think Amherst is.”

“But you said he was a Williams man.”

“Therefore that’ll start something. Tell him he’s got dreamy eyes—nose,
I mean. Look up into his face and purr. Watch Elsie Nichols work; every
move a picture! For Heaven’s sake let’s get some color onto you.” She
caught up a lipstick and did some freehand sketching on the other’s
protesting face. “There! You look less like the deserted wife in ‘Way
Down East’ now. Come along.” (To herself she added: “I do hope she
hasn’t drawn a drip.”)

Nixie was lolling on an unmade bed, though it was noon when Verity
Clarke arrived. A half-hearted wriggle, indicating that the hostess
would rise if she possessed the energy, caused three books and the
sheets of an unfinished theme in bacteriology which was Nixie’s one
really zealous interest in college, to slither to the floor where Vee
politely retrieved them.

“Tha-anks,” drawled the troll. “I haven’t been feeling too well lately.”
She never felt “too well lately” and seldom began studying before
luncheon, although she had energy enough to spend practically every
week-end at some far-distant house-party, football riot, prom, or other
festivity, circumventing the rules by methods known to her resourceful
mind alone. (The child—so she thought of Verity, though she herself was
short of nineteen—was unusually pretty, and would serve her turn all
right.) “Have some fudge.”

Vee helped herself to the sticky confection. Nixie took twice as much.
Looking about in the wild and somehow buoyant confusion of the room, the
visitor made a startling discovery. Of the scores of men’s photographs
with which the walls were lined, practically all were upside down. Was
this symbolic? Perhaps Nixie read her mind. She laughed softly.

“Love ’em and leave ’em,” she observed. “I turned all those down but
I’ve never turned one up again.”

Nevertheless there were a few which had not suffered the indignity. One
was a face of pride and mirth and beauty, set a little apart from the
others and vaguely familiar to Vee. She recalled later that she had seen
it in newspaper reproductions.

“All waiting to join the Turn Verein,” observed the troll cynically.
“Even ‘Gallant’ Gale.” Without being told, Vee knew which one was Gale.
The sobriquet “Gallant” so fitted the face and expression.

“My man?” she asked and blushed.

“No;—mine—until further notice. You’re going to be crazy about yours,”
she pursued with smooth and false assurance. “He’s a winner. Pink’s
throwing a cat-fit because she’s out of it, and she’ll have a worse one
when she finds out who drew him.”

“What’ll I do with him?” asked the freshman nervously.

“Just play him. Don’t you know anything about _anything_?” she added
impatiently, catching the look of bewilderment on the still childish
face.

“I’ve played around with men, a little.”

“What’s your line?” queried Nixie becoming brisk and business-like.

“Line?” Verity looked doubtful. “I don’t know that I’ve got any.”

“Of course you have. Every girl is on parade with a swain. Maybe you do
plain and fancy languishing.”

“I don’t believe I’m the languishing kind,” smiled the other.

“It isn’t so bad as a side-line, though. I can pull a pretty mean
languish, myself, on occasions. What about sparkling conversation? A
little wise-cracking keeps things stirring sometimes.”

“It’s awfully hard for me to talk to a man I don’t know.”

Nixie gave a little movement of impatience. “Then how are you going to
get to know ’em? Go right into a neck? Is that the idea?” She felt a
malicious desire to overbear this infantile innocence, which, after all,
might be only a bluff. “I suppose you do neck?” she concluded, with
purposefully brutal directness.

Verity flushed. “No. I don’t like it.” Curiosity spurred her courage.
“Do you?”

To the direct question Nixie returned an indirect answer which, however,
was adequately responsive. “Most girls, if they go out with a boy-friend
that they like, naturally neck him a little. You’ve got to keep ’em
interested or some other female will snitch ’em away. You don’t sling
the gin, I suppose.”

“You mean drink? No.”

“Don’t begin now, in case your Harold has anything on the hip.” Her big
liquid eyes became shrewd, her manner confidentially impressive. “I’ll
give you a real tip. Bow off bootleg unless there’s at least four in the
party and one not drinking. If you’ll look up the records you’ll find
that, nine out of ten cases where a girl gets kicked for the good of the
college, there’s a smell of booze somewhere about the proceedings. Go as
far as you like, as long as the old bean is straight. It’s when us sweet
young things get hitting up the flask that things happen that’d tip the
halo right off Althea Sperry’s sainted head. Not so often as the talk
goes, at that. But there have been cases. Pass me that pad, will you?
I’ve got to crank up for Mediæval Art. The boys’ll be around in a couple
of hours.”

Verity’s succeeding classes got but perfunctory attention from her, and
her half hour at gym was a complete flop. Back at the room she was taken
in hand by her two elders.

“What’ll she wear?” asked Starr.

“My little green model and your new black hat.”

“Got any decent stockings to go with it?”

“No. Sue has. I’ll borrow them.” Sylvia darted around to Sue’s room. She
was out, but Sylvia borrowed the stockings just the same and returned,
triumphant. “Her own shoes’ll have to do. Sue’s are kind of busted out
at the side.” The two friends fussed and worked and dabbed at their
subject and finally pronounced her ready, “Though I wouldn’t give her
anything better than a B minus on that hat,” said Starr pessimistically.

“She’s pretty enough to get away with anything,” returned Sylvia as the
two Juniors went out. “But I do not trust that Nixie cat. Think we ought
to stick around?”

The two, having earlier detected the warm and robustious aroma of boiled
cabbage in the air, had decided that their stomachs were too weak to
withstand a meal of that character and that dining out was in order.
Starr said: “That’s asking too much. But we might go down the front way
and probably get a look at the lad.”

Downstairs in the parlor they sighted Gallant Gale and his friend.

“What think?” said Sylvia after a half minute of estimate and analysis
so profound and destructive that a masculine mind would have shrunk from
it, astounded and appalled.

“He’s good-looking enough.”

“_And_ knows it. The perfect type of the fatuous ass.”

“Probably never been to a girls’ college before.”

“And’ll think it most frightfully jolly.”

“And aren’t our customs quaint!”

“What’ll you bet he doesn’t borrow a bicycle out of the rack and go
whizzing about the campus with gleeful shouts?”

Starr delivered the damning verdict. “He looks the type that goes in for
good, clean, wholesome fun.”

“Of _course_ he’ll want to eat in the college. That kind always does.”

Starr paused, irresolute. “Surely Nixie’ll stick by.”

“When did you ever know her to stick by? She’ll be off thicketing with
Gee-Gee. He’s this term’s craze with her.”

“Can the kid handle it alone?”

“Oh, let her go through with it. She’s got to learn sometime.”

Nowhere else in the world can mere man make such a show of himself as at
a girls’ college, and in so many different ways. One of the favorite
sports of the sweet young buds of collegiate life is to surround the
casual male visitor with fluttering attentions, to hang on his every
word, to flatter his vanity to the utmost, to make him feel that he is a
very devil of a fellow, while through it all runs a salty undercurrent
of comment, unheard by the victim, but enduring in reverberant echoes
for the later discomfiture of the unhappy girl responsible for his
presence.

The blind drag, Mr. Ralph Loyster of Dayton, O., fulfilled the worst
forebodings of the two analysts. So did Elsie Nichols. But she had her
reasons. For Mr. Gale, casting an expert and conquering eye upon Verity
Clarke, had promptly decided that this freshman was a little peach, and
upon learning that she was taking a part in the forthcoming play,
announced that he would be found in the rooters’ section. Excited more
than she was attracted by his self-confident attentions, Verity glowed.
Nixie’s shrewd feline apprehensions were stirred; this freshman was
already finding out that she was pretty, and pretty she was, exceedingly
so. Nixie’s hold upon Gale was still insecure. Later when she had bound
him to her by those not too subtle strategies of sex which were her
special talent, she could afford to take chances; but not yet. Before he
knew how it all happened, Nixie had muttered to the other pair some
noncommittal reference to meeting them later, and had rapt Gale forth.
When last seen they were disappearing in the direction of the lake, the
inference (for the wise) being that they would make a detour and come
out to the main road there to possess themselves of Gale’s specially
constructed car, enameled in the colors of his college, leaving the
other couple stranded. It was now Loyster’s cue to suggest that he and
Verity stroll down to the Inn for lunch. In lieu of which he sniffed the
air, mirthfully stated that if there was anything he throve on it was a
cabbage diet (he called it “kibbitch” by way of wit), and were men
allowed to eat at the college tables? With sinking heart Verity had to
admit that they were.

“Try to ruin my appetite by surrounding it with a coupla hundred pretty
girls,” challenged young Mr. Loyster, accompanying his words with a
throaty outburst. In her stricken soul Vee found a phrase for it,
“cheery guffaw.”

Attracted or perhaps only startled by the strange tenor cachinnation,
two girls from her corridor obeyed that impulse to stop, look, and
listen; also to loiter. Vee began to perspire lightly, but she presented
the boy-friend. An imploring glance from her eyes signaled the others to
tag on, which they did though not wholly, Vee surmised, out of Christian
charity. Immediately Mr. Loyster started in to knock ’em cold. His
conversation became sprightly and provocative. He produced a running
fire of wise-cracks. He hinted at a flask, not so far distant as to be
unattainable. The girls were flatteringly responsive to his gayety. He
felt that he was making a hit. One of the two whispered to Vee:

“Where’d you glean the campus pet?”

Campus pet! The deadly characterization fitted. Even while she would
have liked to murder the whisperer, she recognized its justice.

Further along the path three seniors, spread in an uneven triangle, were
tossing a fluffy ball. With a desperate certainty of fate Vee knew that
there would be an overthrow, that the loathly thing would roll toward
them and that her companion would, with the mixed intent of doing a
gallant service and showing off his athletic prowess, plunge after it.
She was even capable of imputing malignant design to the players when it
happened. Joyous like a kitten, Mr. Loyster rushed after the ball,
expertly scooped for it and booted it. Down the path he scampered, made
another dab and opened up the shoulder seam of his too-snug coat.
Straightening, he directed the quick, piercing glance of the conscious
athlete at the field, picked out the prettiest angle of the triangle and
shot the ball toward her with the word:

“To _you_.”

“Thank you,” returned the senior gravely.

Mr. Loyster placed himself in a professional posture, humping his
shoulders and setting his hands on his knees. The coat seam opened up a
little more, betraying a rather blatant design in stripes and foliage.

“Shirt by the scene-painters’ union,” murmured one of Vee’s aides.

“Put her there!” chirped the volunteer athlete, extending his hands with
the fingers enticingly splayed.

The three seniors regarded him with faintly surprised eyes. They then
resumed their game of catch. Mr. Loyster lowered his hands.

“I see,” he observed. “You don’t let us rough, coarse men into your
maidenly exercises here.”

The two other girls recalled a date at the Libe and left.

“See you at supper,” they said, at which the flickering flame of
Verity’s will-to-live sank a little lower.

“When do we eat?” inquired her swain.

“You’re sure you won’t mind?” she queried desperately. “The food is
pretty bad sometimes.”

“Lead me to it!”

There was a late class at Stafford which they were approaching. Bicycles
filled the racks, flaunting their snappy designs of “Stop Thief,” “Wait
for Me,” “Excuse My Dust” and the like. With heart in her throat Vee had
nearly got him past this peril, when a machine leaning languidly against
a tree caught his eye and lighted unholy desires therein.

“Watch papa!” said the playful lad, and leapt lightly into the saddle.

Around and around he spun with gleeful shouts, waving both hands to Vee
each time he passed. The class came out. Vee had a horrible bristly
feeling within her that the owner of the bicycle was going to be nasty
about it. Sure enough it was Ida McKay, “only Ida.” Vee quivered and
made a move.

“Oh, _don’t_ stop him. _Please_,” besought Ida. “It’s only _my_ wheel.
And he’s having such a good time.”

Loyster circled violently back to them, dismounted with a gymnastic leap
and signified again his receptivity to food. The meal was a dull misery
to his unhappy companion. All the girls in reach talked to the lone
available member of the male sex, laughed just a little too exuberantly
at his wilted jokes, and convinced his all-too-willing soul that his
invincible personal attractions had made what was probably the social
hit of the college year. How should he know that the attentions of all
those sweetly ardent young charmers were bestowed upon him simply and
solely because he appertained to the trousered gender and not by reason
of any fatal charm in himself? As Vee led him forth, full-fed (she had
hardly been able to swallow a mouthful herself) she heard behind them
the derisive comment:

“That little freshman is certainly spread-eagling her bird!”

With his penchant for “quaint college customs,” Mr. Loyster had absorbed
the exciting information that there would be an interclass basketball
game that afternoon. In fact, Nixie had told him, in the hope,
well-founded, of giving him something to keep him busy. By all the rules
of decency and fair play as between girl and girl, she should have
returned in time to join the others and relieve her partner, in case the
blind drag was not measuring up to specifications. Not Nixie! She had
her swain, and just because he had evinced interest in other quarters
she had the more ardently set those passions which she called her heart,
upon his conquest. With bleak forebodings of what would happen, Verity
took her escort to the game.

Replete and purring, the other two H.B.V.’s returned from their
off-campus meal with the pious design of dropping in at the Gym and
lending social tone to the game by their presence for a half hour or so.
They entered upon a scene of spiritual devastation. Time had been called
between the quarters. The teams were sucking oranges and lemons, nursing
bruises, listening to advice and exhortation from their supporters,
explaining how they had done it or why they had not done it, and posing
athletically for the benefit of the fifteen or twenty men visitors who,
for the most part, exhibited the good taste of keeping themselves in the
background, when a hush fell affording Mr. Ralph Loyster his golden
opportunity. Ignoring the plucking hands of Verity’s imploration, he
leapt upon a chair and raised his arms in the manner of a cheer-leader.

“Now! One and all! A long, soft coo for Old Sperry!” And the cynical
laughter of his self-applause rattled the windows.

“Oh, my _God_!” groaned Starr.

“Nixie ought to be _slain_!” from Sylvia.

“The kid’ll never be able to live _him_ down.”

“A complete drip.”

“The drippiest ever.”

“_All_ wet.”

“The time has come for heroic measures.”

Together they jammed through the crowd. Verity, scarlet and almost
speechless but still game, presented them. Sylvia drew the Freshman
aside while Starr entertained the youth.

“Where’s Nixie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hasn’t she shown at all?”

“No.”

“She’s left you to carry _that_ alone?”

“Yes.”

“The dirty little _toad_. Is he as awful as he looks?”

Verity’s small, sniffling catch of the breath might be the beginnings of
the deluge. “What ever’ll I do with him?”

Five minutes later young Mr. Loyster learned several things that he had
not known before. He learned that the charming freshman had been
summoned to report to a committee for some past dereliction. He learned
that his appearance had so favorably impressed these two calm and
superior beauties (class, they had! commented the penetrating Mr.
Loyster, in admiring self-communion) that they wanted to take him on a
brief tour of the campus. The tour being very brief, he learned
something invented by the two for the occasion, that a new rule closed
the sacred precincts to males between five o’clock and supper. It being
then 4.46, Mr. Loyster went forth still rejoicing in his popularity, and
covenanted to return for the evening.

Verity was found prone upon her bed. “I’ll never hear the end of it!
Never!” she wailed.

“The end is not yet,” said one of her companions oracularly.

“There’s an account to be settled with Miss Elsie Nichols,” said the
other.

“I never want to see her again,” declared the freshman with excusable
violence.

“_We_ do.”

“And we propose to see to it that she shows up at Thirteen this evening.
Loyster is having supper, and taking you there.”

Verity uttered a muffled yell.

“He’ll _adore_ Thirteen. Cheer up, we’ll be there.”

“How do you know Nixie will come? She never does.”

“We’ve had a little conversation with Miss Nichols.”

“And offered her the presidency of the Bum Sports’ Club if she doesn’t
come through.”

“Also I’ve had a private talk with Mr. Sidney Gorsline Gale,” added
Starr.

“What about?”

“Your waxing pash for him. You may not know it, but you’ve developed a
yearning yen for that lad.”

“I haven’t. I don’t like him. He’s got such loud eyes,” complained poor
Verity. It made no impression upon the relentless fates as impersonated
by Mesdames Hartnett and Mowbray.

“You’ve got to play up.”

“I’ll giggle,” threatened Verity, and giggled.

“If you do,” came the solemn warning, “you go forth forever from the
company of the Hard Boiled Virgins. This is feud stuff and damned
serious.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Heavy fussing.”

“I don’t know how.”

“He’ll show you.”

Verity became sulky. She looked like a disgruntled flower when she
sulked. “I won’t like it a bit.”

“You don’t have to like it. You just have to do it.”

Full primed for another exhibition by the priceless Loyster (invitations
to the dining hall show had even been extended to outsiders), Trumbull
House was disappointed. True, the dubious hero was there, but he was in
charge of the two most competent man-handlers of their time, and none
cared to test the defenses of the formidable juniors of Suite Twenty.
Something was in the air, though: no doubt of that. But the nature of
the warfare was still undeveloped, beyond the fact that Nixie had put
over a drip on the inexperience of the little Clarke while carrying the
Prince off to one of her many lairs, and that the other two Hard Boiled
Virgins had rallied to the rescue. Doings were in prospect.

Disgruntled, but a little daunted by the intervention of Starr and
Sylvia, Nixie brought her swain to Thirteen from the Inn, where they had
dined by no means abstemiously, as late as she dared. Pausing cautiously
at a window, they looked in upon a scene none too reassuring with Mr.
Ralph Loyster in the major rôle. Within the crowded limits of the room
he dipped and glided, pranced, side-shuffled, and swooped. His collar
had wilted. His shirt stood forth in weird heraldry from the rent seam.
He was red, gaspy, sweating, spent, and puffed with a monstrous pride.
The girls were cutting in on him in endless succession with the
murderous design of wearing him down. He was fair game for a form of
hazing of which Verity was meant to be a co-victim. By the ethics of
Sperry it served her right for bringing in such a trove.

Gale was rather appalled. “Let me out of this.”

“Whatever did you trail along such a snit-face for?” whispered Nixie.

“Couldn’t find any one else that could get away.” Gallant Gale was one
of those lions who must always have his attendant jackal.

Nixie considered. “I’ll have to dance with him. It’ll make things look
better. Come along.”

“I’d rather be here with you.”

“Later,” she whispered. She lifted her face, and he bent to the
quivering hotness of her lips.

Sidney Gale was the biggest game in Nixie’s long list of conquests. The
son of a millionaire mine owner from the far West, he was the newspaper
model of what a college sport should be. His car, his clothes, his late
night parties in New York, his $25,000 a year allowance (a college mate,
scion of the fourth richest American family, was getting along nicely on
$2500) and above all his personal beauty and joyously unconscious
swagger, were topics of the Sunday journalism to which he occasionally
contributed personally signed (but not personally composed) views on
life, education, and what-is-our-youth-coming-to? He was charming,
shallow, good-humored, generous, greedy, passionate, quick-witted, prone
to easy kindnesses, and grossly selfish. At a fraternity house-party he
had referred to Nixie as “that queer little toad from Sperry” in a voice
of such alcoholic volume that she had heard and (with a silent vow that
she would take her revenge by “making” him) smilingly taxed him with it.
Before the week-end was over he was in thrall to her physical spell.
Nixie knew, with the art which her greatest-great grandmother had direct
from the Serpent, how to rouse masculine expectancy and keep it
unfulfilled but hotly hopeful. She had asked him to come down to see
her, and what her words had not promised him, her farewell kiss had.
Here he was, and Nixie was so crazy about him that, she told herself, it
might even be real, this time!

Gale was game. Even with the horrible example of Loyster before his
eyes, he let himself be drawn into that “femaelstrom” as Nixie dubbed
it. Instantly he was engulfed. His golden repute was known to all the
girls: he was a hero of modern legend: not a Galahad, certainly, but
perhaps a Launcelot or a Tristram. Nixie meantime had cut in on the
hard-sweated Loyster. Watchful ever, she became aware of teamwork
developing about her Prince. The girls who were cutting in were all of
the close corporation run by Suite Twenty. They were “passing” Gallant
Gale as expert hockey players criss-cross a puck down the ice; Mowbray
to Merrick to Clarke; then Hartnett to Quigg to Peters, back to Mowbray
again; then in quick succession La Lond (how came the toilful scholar
there? Nixie asked her troubled brain) to Forsythe to Dahl to Hartnett,
always edging over toward the side door. The watcher found her view shut
off, and when she looked again, he was gone.


                               CHAPTER VI

At the outer doorway Starr delivered Gallant Gale over to the waiting
Verity with a look which said, in silent, savage eloquence: “One giggle
and you die the death!” But Verity did not feel gigglesome. With this
paragon, this darling of the tabloids, this reputed wrecker of feminine
hearts she felt the ease of indifference. They strolled out and into
another hallway leading to the “engaged parlor,” which they found empty.
Gale opened fire.

“I hear you’re the whole thing in your Dramatic Club.”

“Am I? I hadn’t heard of it.” Verity smiled up at him. There was no
conscious lure in the smile, and certainly no confusion. The experienced
fusser speculated as to the best and readiest line of approach. He
prided himself on being a quick worker, but this was perhaps a case for
caution.

“I’m something of an actor-lad, myself,” he informed her modestly.

She looked him over with flattering interest. “You rather remind me of
John Barrymore in a way.”

“Do I? Well, I’ll take a chance. Which way?”

“You’ve got ears just like his,” she murmured.

He took it with a grin. “That’s why they made me president of our
Dramatic Club.”

“Oh, _are_ you? Isn’t that swell!”

“What about getting up a dual meet? I’d like to play opposite you. Bet
we could pull some snappy love-stuff together. Maybe I neglected to tell
you, but you sure have wrought some ruin in my tender heart, child.”

“Have I?” Verity felt that this, considered as a response, was less than
might reasonably have been expected of her, but she could not figure out
on such short notice what her sponsors in the adventure would probably
have said in like circumstances.

“I’ll admit it.” His hand reached for and enfolded hers. She looked down
at it interestedly, attentively. Queer kid.

“I didn’t think I was going to find anything like you here.”

“Did you ‘find’ me?” she said significantly.

He flushed and laughed with that ingenuous frankness which he had found
almost invariably effective. “You’re sore about Ralph Loyster. That
wasn’t my fault. He tagged on.” (Correctly she guessed this to be a
lie.) “Ralph isn’t so bad when you get used to him.”

“You’re supposed to be very alike aren’t you?”

He stared. Was this innocence or a “string”? Certainly the kid was a
winner. She had the cool, close-folded beauty of a bud. Nothing to stir
a man’s blood like Nixie. And yet—a fellow could fall for her easily.
But _she_ wouldn’t fall easily, not for any old comer: perhaps not even
for Gallant Gale. However, he was fairly embarked upon the enterprise
now. No retreating for Gallant Gale! One of the girls had thrown over
Verity’s shoulders a sweater snatched, haphazard, from the rack, and she
had drawn it around herself. As she leaned forward from his arm which
had slipped back of her, he noticed lettering across the back of the
garment and read it aloud, amusedly.

“‘No Parking Here.’ Snappy little motto,” he commented.

“It isn’t mine,” said she hastily.

“You mean the motto isn’t?” he laughed.

“No, the sweater isn’t.”

“I could pick a better line than that for you from the road sign.”

“Could you? What is it?”

His eyes ran over her gracious young figure. “‘Dangerous Curves’,” he
said.

Verity flushed to her temples. She hated anything that made her think
about herself physically. She moved away from him nervously.

“Not sore, are you—dear?” he whispered.

“No. But I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

“All right. I won’t. I’ll turn over a new leaf, like Adam. Know that
one?”

“No.”

“Adam turned over a new leaf—and there was Eve!”

“Oh!” gasped Verity with such obvious shock that Gale decided against
further wise-cracking of that order. Direct action would probably serve
better in this instance, though it would have to be managed with
finesse.

“That’s a slinky dress you’ve got on,” he murmured.

“Do you like it?” Verity, relieved, felt herself on safer ground.

“What are these funny gadgets on the sleeve?” He ran his fingers along
her wrist, closed them upon her arm, drew it gently up over his shoulder
and bent smilingly to her. Her eyes wavered—that was encouraging—and
her breath quickened—good sign. His first kiss was gentle.

“You’re a sweet kid,” he murmured and pressed his lips down upon hers.

Now there are as many ways of being kissed as of kissing; but Verity
lacked the technic as well as the taste for this form of exercise. She
spluttered. (Starr or even Sylvia would have blushed for her!)

“What’s the matter?” laughed the other. (Had he gone too fast?)

“I don’t like being kissed that way.”

“Rats! You’re just not used to it.” (Could such things be in that day
and age?) “Let me teach you a few things. I’m from Great Neck, Long
Island, where the great neckers come from. Come on! What’s the harm?”

“I don’t suppose there is,” she admitted, but her trim body was stiff
and unyielding as he drew her back into his arms.

“I could be crazy about you—easy,” he murmured.

“Be careful! Somebody’s coming.”

“Damn!” said Mr. Gale.

Footsteps approached the door. It was opened—Gale had closed it in
spite of his companion’s protest that this was against the rules—and a
voice said with slow, angry emphasis:

“Oh! So sorry to interrupt you!”

“Who’s the dark and dismal female?” asked Gale as the intruder withdrew
leaving the door open.

“Olga Tremwich.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Yes. No. Not specially.”

“Don’t commit yourself if you’re not sure,” he laughed. “She looks as if
she might bite. What’s her grouch?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she was looking for me to run over some of our
dialogue. She’s in our play.”

“Aren’t you going to bid me down for the show?”

“Won’t Nixie ask you?”

“Claws, eh?” But as he said it, he knew himself in error. There was no
room for jealousy in the indifference of this cool, desirable slip of a
girl.

She ignored the insinuation. “Why do they call you Gallant Gale?” she
asked.

“Just a name the newspapers have pinned on me.” He was well satisfied to
let her know that he was a public character. “Listen, child. What are
you doing to-morrow evening? I’m dated to go back. But if I could fix up
a little conference with you——”

“Oh, no! I’ve got a rehearsal on.”

“Well, what about to-morrow morning, then? A sunrise stroll, what?”

Desperate stuff, this, for Gale, who loved his morning sleep like a cat.
Besides, he was trysted for eleven o’clock to-night with Nixie, which
certainly meant being out till two or three (and might mean much else;
he didn’t know yet), still he could always bellycrawl the early date if
too sleepy and explain that the clerk forgot to call him.

It was on Verity’s lips to answer “No.” But what would her roommates
say? They’d slaughter her for having missed such an opportunity. “All
right. Where’ll I meet you?”

“I’ll be outside Trumbull at seven sharp. . . . What about one for
good-night, sweetie?”

He could not discern any more encouraging warmth in that kiss than in
the others, which made him, in his spoiled soul, only the more eager.
Oh, he’d be there!

Great was the exultation in Suite Twenty when Verity brought back news
of her dawn-date.

“If we could only get Nixie up to see it!” said Starr.

But, as Sylvia remarked, Nixie would be more likely to turn out at
eleven than seven after a night on the neck. However, a hint could be
dropped to Ida McKay, which would be the next best thing and a sure
method of getting the thrilling news into circulation and back to pain
Miss Elsie Nichols. For, to have a swain make furtive dates with another
girl is black disgrace. The revenge of Suite Twenty for the shame put
upon the youngest of their sisterhood would be complete. But would
Gallant Gale show up?

“Our man doesn’t set foot through the ropes till he’s in the ring,”
announced Sylvia.

At seven-five Gallant Gale was at the tryst, feeling very virtuous.
Starr and Sylvia plucked the (for once) sleepy Vee out of bed.

“Lemme alone,” she whimpered.

“Get up! Your boy-friend’s waiting.”

“Let him wait.”

“But he won’t. He’ll get sore.”

“Let him go back, then.”

Verity freed herself, dove into bed, buried her sleepy face in the
pillow. The two conspirators stared at each other. Gallant Gale, the
hero of a hundred affairs, the darling of adoring worshipers, turned
down. Ditched cold! And by a novice!

Grand! Oh, grand!

The net result was that Gale departed, raging. Nixie, equally furious,
upon learning what had occurred, was more than ever bent upon his
subjugation at any price, and hated Verity. Verity instead of being the
laughing stock of Trumbull was the heroine of the day.

Before a week was over all this had ceased even to be of importance to
her in comparison with a far more exciting event. Henry Travers of the
All-Collegiate Caravan Players, who had dropped in on rehearsal to help
the coach, had come to Miss Clarke after having reduced her almost to
tears by the tart persecutions of his criticisms and corrections, and
asked her to try out for their ten-day fall tour. The only drawback was
that Gallant Gale was also definitely booked for the trip.


                              CHAPTER VII

Extra special! Special Extra! The big news was quietly disseminated to
choice spirits in Trumbull House. Three quarts of a meritorious sauterne
had returned from Boston in Roxy Ann Merrill’s suitcase, the
after-dinner gift of an elderly (_i.e._ thirty-four) “uncle.” White wine
in the Sperry code, while a festivity, is not regarded as serious
drinking. The clans were to gather at midnight, in Suite Twenty and hold
high converse over the bottle.

At the hour the room was well filled. Seven girls sat on the floor; the
remainder of thirteen occupied the furniture. Paper cups held the
vintage, and the talk, like most eventually cosmic discussions, began
with local gossip. Recent escapades were detailed and re-enjoyed. From a
dim corner a voice recalled an episode no longer recent.

“That road house fuss three weeks ago has certainly had the muffler put
on it.” (Starr nudged Gwen Peters.)

“Balaam was in it, all right.”

“So was Giff.”

“Don’t believe it.”

“Why? D’you think he’s so pure?”

“No. He isn’t pure, but he isn’t _merry_.”

“Think he’s ever been seduced?” drawled some one with humorous intent.
“By any of the girls, I mean.”

“Doubt it. He plays the rules.”

“Well, I wouldn’t blame him, married to that weeping willow. She’s
certainly the human whimper.”

“Nixie might have some information.”

“Nixie isn’t here. This is her necking hour.”

“Did she ever try to make Giff?”

“_Did_ she! She’d try to make Prexy if she thought she could put it over
the old dear.”

“Oh, shut up!” This was Gwen Peters. “Prexy’s something else again. Who
wants to drag his name into this kind of drivel?”

“Anyway, Nixie certainly majors in men,” said Roxy Ann and at the same
moment Verity, near the door, warned, “Some one’s coming.”

“It’s me.” The low, vibrant contralto identified itself. Elsie Nichols,
the subject of the immediate discussion, had an uncanny knack of turning
up at the dramatic moment. “Just found your note, Starr. Thanks for the
ad, Roxy Ann. If I do major in men, I don’t flunk my subject.” This was
in the nature of a dirty dig, for Roxy Ann had suffered the humiliation
of having an attractive Harvard Junior whose attendance at the Prom as
her guest had cost her thirty dollars in hotel bills, snitched out from
beneath her very and rather too prominent nose, by Babe Protheroe, who
had little to commend her except unlimited faculties of acquiescence. It
was never wholly safe to rouse Miss Elsie Nichols. She slouched across
the floor and slumped down, a queer, squat little figure, beside the
table. Somebody handed her a cup. “I’ll bet you-all were girl-handling
Giff,” she remarked calmly.

“Don’t we always?” murmured somebody.

“He certainly does possess the old S.-A.”

“I don’t see it.” The objection came from Helen Quigg.

“No two people ever do see it in the same way.”

“What? Sex appeal? That’s where you’re wrong. It’s either there or it
isn’t.”

“The Ultimate Absolute,” chuckled “Golden” Ruehl.

“The ultimate asininity!” declared Sylvia. She felt inexplicably
disgusted and angry that Patterson Gifford should be involved in this.

Instantly there was a clash of opinion, counter-opinion, argument,
drawing from Starr the caution: “For Heaven’s sake, shush yourselves!
Our dear Warden isn’t deaf in _both_ ears.”

Helen Quigg gave focus to the debate: “What about Babe Protheroe?”

“What about her?”

“She’s got sex-appeal, all right.”

“It isn’t an appeal with her; it’s a yell.”

“She certainly hasn’t got anything else.”

“That’s the point. She isn’t pretty. She has no style and she’s a dumb
Dora if there ever was one. So she plays the other game.”

“Can you blame her? How else would she get her a man?”

“That’s right. I guess the sky _has_ to be the limit with her.”

“Then she’s a boob,” came Nixie’s even drawl. “If I couldn’t keep my
swains on the string easier than that, I’d enter a convent.”

“Look out, nuns! Trouble’s coming!”

“Soch a leedle geranium!” jeered another skeptic.

Starr quoted in an elegant and stilted tone a movie caption of the
current attraction: “Her young cheek had never yet known the warmth of
passion’s kiss.”

“Oh, well, if you’re talking about necking.”

“We weren’t. We were talking about the Protheroe method.”

“Necking isn’t the same.”

“It’s a preliminary.”

“You make me sick.”

“The men think it’s a preliminary—or hope it is.”

“That’s their lookout.”

“Just the same, the whole business of attraction is ninety per cent
physical,” insisted Nixie.

“A hundred.”

“Don’t believe it. An imbecile could be beautiful as a dream, yet any of
the boys we know would run shrieking, from her.”

“Because an imbecile wouldn’t be beautiful as a dream. She couldn’t.”

“Besides, I didn’t claim that sex-appeal and beauty are the same. They
aren’t. I only said that sex-appeal is mostly physical.”

“That comes of majoring in biology.”

“All right, biological, then.”

“Biological, maybe,” agreed Starr. “But it’s mental as much as physical.
If they can make you laugh, they can make you love ’em. That’s been my
experience.”

“I wonder why it is,” speculated Verity, “that when a bunch of us gets
together for a gab-fest, the conversation always gets around to sex.”

There was a rush of voices to tell her.

“Why not? Think it isn’t nice?”

“What else is as interesting?”

“It’s the only big adventure left to us.”

“The last outpost. Every other kind of experience is free and open.”

“The fascination of the ‘Verboten’ sign.” (Sylvia looked quickly toward
the murky corner whence Starr’s voice had issued.)

“It’s the Great Revelation.”

“Or not—as the case may be.”

“Well, it’s so advertised.”

“But not guaranteed.”

“Did any of you ever think,” Sara La Lond’s definite and arresting voice
cut through the jumble, “what a queer discrepancy it is that most of us
are women in body four, five, six years, before we’re supposed to be
women in mind and know what it’s all about?”

Some one delivered the damnatory verdict: “Victorian stuff.”

“It still holds, though. And that’s where our troubles come in.”

“Rats! What I didn’t know when I was fourteen, they wouldn’t dare print
in a tabloid.”

“Well, a girl’s got a right to know.” Gwen became oracular, with the
emphasis of one who expounds a pet theory. “I believe every girl has a
perfect right to find out for herself what it all means.”

“Oh, if you’re going to put it on the high moral ground of one’s duty to
self-development and all that.”

“Maybe you think that’s what makes girls take the Fatal Step—if any.
Well, it isn’t.”

“What is?”

This elicited another scattering fire of answers.

“Curiosity.”

“Just one drink more than you meant to take.”

“Middle-of-the-term boredom.” (Starr’s view.)

“Being cooped up week after week with so many girls that men become
irresistible.”

“In other words, nerves.”

“Don’t fool yourselves. It’s the old primeval pash that does the trick.
Cupid-stuff.”

“Celia’s right. Ask the girl that’s tried it. Nine cases out of ten,
she’ll tell you she was crazy about the man.”

“That’s only her excuse.”

“I don’t care about the _why_. It’s the right to find out things for
ourselves that I want,” insisted Gwen Peters, who was born to rebellion
as the sparks fly upward. “A girl’s body is her own.”

“Even when her parents are paying to feed and clothe it?” questioned the
practical Roxy Ann.

“No credit to them. The law compels them to do that,” Sylvia pointed
out.

“Of course there’s the question of age,” Gwen qualified. “Personally I
think a girl ought to wait until—well—say until——”

“She’s asked,” suggested Pink Delavan mildly.

“The age of consent,” put in Nixie with a grin.

“The first gray hair.”

“Years of discretion.”

“It’s a long, long trail.”

“Some of ’em ought to wait till they’re a hundred.”

“Some of ’em’ll have to!”

“No girl _has_ to.”

“Wait till you’re sure you’re in love, then go ahead.”

“Wrong!” declared Nixie. “It’s letting yourself fall in love that makes
all the trouble. That bunch over at Balch Hall have got the right idea.”

“You mean about men over forty?”

“Or more. The uncle game.”

“I didn’t suppose that men as old as that were—well, that they——”
Verity’s voice trailed off.

“Don’t fool yourself! It’s the danger-age for men.”

“But not for the girls that play them. The Balch idea is that if you’re
going to take a lover you’d better take an old one. Not _too_ old, of
course.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s the safest. They’ve usually got money enough to give you the
best kind of a good time, and finally—this is the most important—you
aren’t as likely to fall in love. Though I’ve known it done.”

“The father-complex. Vide Freud.”

“But I think it would be too horrible,” said Verity, her face hot even
though the dimness hid it, “unless you were awfully in love with the
man.”

“Sweet little Victoriana!” came a derisive murmur.

Sylvia came to the rescue. “That isn’t being Victorian. That’s just
being plain _clean_.”

Starr’s suave and naïve voice offered a solution. “Well, you can be
temporarily in love.”

The talk became more excited, more intimate under cover of the darkness
and the stimulus of the warmish wine. The familiar formula, “I knew a
girl who—” flew back and forth, usually cloaking personal experience or
opinion. Said some one—it sounded like Golden Ruehl’s voice:

“A married woman I know told me that it was only luck or protection that
kept any one from—from stepping out if the circumstances were just
right.”

This elicited a rather shocked outcry of protest.

“Any girl that feels that way ought to go out and run around the block
three times,” proclaimed Roxy Ann indignantly.

“Run around the lake ten times,” amended Elsie.

“And then jump in.” Pink Delavan capped the prescription.

“It isn’t what you feel; you can’t always help that. It’s what you do
that counts,” contributed Starr thoughtfully.

“Oh, well! Nobody _does_. They take it out in talk.”

“What d’you mean, nobody does? D’you think conversation is Babe
Protheroe’s limit?”

“Babe’s different. I meant none of _us_.”

“Oh, of _course_ not!” But the whispered drawl from the dimness was too
obviously sardonic.

“Well, who is there here that any of us would suspect?”

“We wouldn’t say, if we did.”

“And they certainly wouldn’t let the rest of us know.”

“No. Not right out in the open. But, listen; girls.” It was Pink Delavan
and she was excited. “Let’s try it out, right here.”

“How?”

“Take a ballot. A secret one.”

“Sure! So there’ll be no reason for anyone lying.”

“We can do it this way,” announced Gwen Peters, who had an organizing
mind. “Every girl gets a slip of paper, and a pencil. She marks her slip
and folds it.”

“Marks it how?”

“With an X for experience.”

“Or with a V, I suppose,” supplemented Celia, “if she’s in the vestal
class.”

“That’ll do, all right.”

Lights were turned up while preparations were completed, and turned down
after the slips were distributed. There was a little nervous giggling;
self-consciousness asserting itself. But for the most part they were
silent and rather serious, for there was a genuine interest in the
experiment, beyond mere prurient curiosity. Starr Mowbray acted as
teller. She bore the empty candy box to the table and carefully sorted
the small squares into two piles, all but one, which she put by itself.
There was a graveyard stillness when she made her announcement.

“Out of fourteen here, thirteen have turned in slips. There are three
X’s and ten Vs.”

“What’s the extra one?” Half a dozen joined in the query.

“Somebody with a distorted sense of humor,” said Starr drily, and
emptied the symposium into the scrap-basket.

Instead of general talk, quiet whispers passed from girl to girl. Verity
was the one to bring the topic back into the open.

“Would it come out the same way in the whole college, do you think?” she
said in an awed voice that appealed for refutation.

“One in four!” came a wondering murmur.

“Not quite.”

“Near enough. Too near.”

“Our set doesn’t really represent the college at large, though.”

“Do you mean we’re pretty rotten?” came a fierce challenge.

“No; I don’t. We’re not like the Balch Hall crowd but——”

“Wonder what _their_ batting average would be?”

“All that Gwen meant, when she said we weren’t representative, was that
we’re more independent than the rest; more experimental minded.”

“If that’s what you call it!”

“I’ll bet there aren’t twenty girls in the whole coll that aren’t
straight,” declared Elsie defiantly.

Nobody took it up. Talk languished. The wine was all gone.

“Let’s forget it,” came the suggestion from Sylvia, and a general murmur
assented. Soon the party broke up.

“What was on that slip?” asked Sylvia as soon as the three Twenties were
alone.

Starr fished them all out of the basket, and handed her roommate the
curious one. It bore the symbol, “?” Sylvia stared at it. Then she
stared at something else. In her class in Mathematics Three one girl was
famous for the neat precision of her letters. Sylvia had just identified
a familiar and unmistakable X, curved like a Greek letter Chi.

It was Sara La Lond’s handwriting.

Said Starr: “What does any one expect to prove by that stuff, anyway?”

“Don’t you think they told the truth?” asked Verity quickly.

“I did,” said Sylvia. “But that was no stunt.”

“But—three out of thirteen. Wow!” said the Freshman.

“If you ask me, _I_ think some of ’em were boasting.” This, scornfully,
from Starr.

“On which side?”

“On the X side, of course.”

“Why would they do that?” Verity’s wide eyes were the wider for a sweet
perplexity.

“The sophisticated pose.”

“I wonder who put in that question mark,” mused Sylvia, “and what on
earth she meant by it.”

“Josh,” was Starr’s impatient verdict.

“Maybe she didn’t know which letter to put down,” suggested Verity.

“Rot! A girl would know whether or not she’d been on a sleeping party,
wouldn’t she?”

Verity threw her first bombshell. “I put down the question mark.”

The others stared, or rather glared at her. “You! For the sake of a sick
fish! _Why?_”

“We-ell, I might have put down a V, I suppose. And then again——”

“Is our chee-ild a blithering It? Don’t you know whether——”

“Well, I’ve slept with a man; that is——”

“For the love of _Pete_! Then, if you have, why not be square and put
down your X?”

Verity blushed deep pink. “Because I couldn’t qualify. I’m still Class
V.”

“That’s making virtue a pretext for cowardice,” said Starr
contemptuously. “The man ought to have beaten you senseless.”

“It wasn’t that at all.”

“Then what was it? Go on. Shed it!”

“Don’t laugh, then. I’ll tell you.” She gave forth her narrative in
little nervous, laughing jerks. “It was on the train. Coming back after
vac. The sleeper was full. I doubled up with a townie of mine. We had
lower six. It was darn cold and not enough bedding. I woke up in the
middle of the night and went to get a drink. The train had stopped. When
I got back it was moving out. Very slow and quiet. Everything still. I
crawled in. There wasn’t much of the berth left. I nudged Myrt over when
I’d crawled in. Then I got an idea. I said, ‘It’ll be warmer if we sleep
spoon fashion. Turn over.’ The train began to get up speed and make a
lot of noise. I wasn’t sure she heard me. Anyway, I snuggled up.” Verity
giggled; the others were charmed, ensnared, thrilling to that invincible
romanticism which is one of the triumphs of femininity over modernity.

“I think I really fell asleep. Then it wasn’t so warm. Myrt was turning
over to speak. Only, it wasn’t Myrt’s voice. It was a man’s.”

“Oh, grand!” from Starr.

“_Grand?_ It was awful. I was petrified. He said: ‘Don’t get rattled.
Keep quiet.’ I could keep quiet, all but my teeth. They were chattering.
I didn’t dare try to answer. I’d have just squeaked like a mouse. He
said, ‘If you make a noise we’ll both be in a hell of a jam. I know this
is all a mistake, and I wouldn’t recognize you if I saw you to-morrow.
So you don’t have that to worry about.’ Wasn’t that _dear_ of him?
‘What’s your berth number?’ he said. I hissed ‘s-s-s-six’ like a scared
snake. ‘Cheer up, kid,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right. This is seven.
But don’t cross right over. You might be seen. Go to the wash room and
stay ten minutes. Then count three berths on your right and get in.
You’re a game little bird.’ He gave me a pat on the shoulder and I got
out. I’d like to have kissed him, he was so sweet to me. But I thought
he might misunderstand.”

“Quite possibly,” admitted Sylvia. “Then in the morning, I suppose——”

“Nothing.”

The others looked blank, frustrated of a vicarious sensation.

“He must have got off before nine, when I went into the dining car.”

“And no more, alas! my breaking heart?” quavered Starr.

“When I reached the dining car I nearly had a fit for fear I’d recognize
him——”

“Or wouldn’t,” put in Sylvia.

“Well, yes: maybe.”

“But how could you expect to?”

“That’s just it. It couldn’t be by listening for his voice, for that had
been only a whisper in my ear. I looked for somebody that I thought
ought to look like him; somebody very frank and manly and nice. Every
man in the car must have thought I was trying to start something. The
head waiter came up. He fussed around. I was on the verge of perishing,
thought he had a message. He didn’t say a word. When he went away I saw
two spoons at my plate—tied together—spoon fashion. And that’s all.”

“It can’t be all!”

“How’d they get there?”

“The only thing I could think of was that he’d tipped the waiter to put
’em there for a josh.”

“Maybe he was there and had you spotted all the time. What’ll you do if
he shows up some day?”

Verity, teetering in the doorway like a butterfly on a flowering stalk,
turned to them a face of mischief and mirth. “What can I do? I’m fatally
compromised already, aren’t I?” She dropped an elaborate curtsy and for
exit gave them Nerissa’s line: “‘I’ll have that cleric for my bedfellow’
. . . Good-night.”


                              CHAPTER VIII

“’Lo, Harve.”

“Hello, Jim.”

“Bin t’ th’ show?”

“What show?”

“Didncha know Risley Centre was on the theayter map again? We gotta
swell buncha one-night standers doin’ business inside.”

“Don’t excite me. Is it East Lynne or Uncle Tom?”

“Nothin’ like that.”

Jim Bascover, mechanic, stage hand, and head scene-shifter of the Risley
Centre Auditorium took a bite of sandwich and a sup of milk from his
worktime supper, spread on a rock in the lot at the rear of the town
auditorium overlooking the lake.

“Society stuff. Lissen.”

Through a high rear window, opened to admit whatever breeze might be
wandering in palliation of the unseasonable October heat-smother,
floated a clear girl-voice: “But I don’t understand that kind of love.”

“Then you never will.” (A man’s heavier tones. “That’s a movie
beauty-boy, that guy,” commented Mr. Bascover.)

“I never want to.”

“Bet she gets a hand,” presaged the authority in matters theatrical, and
as the event justified his prophecy added: “She is sure one slick kid.”

“What are they, cheap barnstormers?” asked the other in negligent and
not too guarded accents. The girl who had just made her exit and had
kept on going for a breath of fresh air, overheard and paused at the
door. She could not see Jim Bascover’s grin but she heard his reply.

“Not so bum, either. Want to meet some of ’em?” He was not without pride
in his official privileges.

“I’m hardly dressed for society, thanks. Just out of the woods and
honing for my little bed.” His lank frame, stretched in its loose, rough
clothing. “Good-night, Jim.”

“_Wait_ a minute.”

The urgency in the Bascover voice was hardly needed to check the other’s
retreat. The girl had stepped into the open and was drawing
deep-savoring breaths of the night’s fragrance. The woodsman stood
blinking.

“Hey, Miss Clarke.”

She peered with close-drawn lids into the dimness. “Is it you, Mr.
Bascover?”

“Sure. You was wishin’ you had a canoe or boat or somethin’ to go on the
lake.”

“Oh, yes!” she said softly.

“Make you acquainted with Mr. Westfall. Harve, Miss Clarke. He might
help you out.”

“Are you a boatman?” she asked doubtfully.

“If he ain’t,” cut in the ready Mr. Bascover, “they ain’t no sech
thing’s a boatman on Lake Risiquara.”

“I’d like to take a boat for an hour or so,” said the girl.

“He’ll row you. Unless he’s feelin’ too tired. Be you, Harve?”

Mr. Westfall bestowed a secret wink upon his friend. “This way, lady,”
he invited in professional tones. He led the way to the lakeside,
settled her into the stern seat of a smart looking cedar craft, pushed
off, swung the bow outward and poised his oars. “Where to?”

“Anywhere.”

“Anywhere is nowhere.”

“Very well; around that point, then.”

At a modest estimate, “that point” was five miles distant. In the misty
night and to an unpracticed eye it looked less than a mile. The boatman
rolled up his sleeves and sent the boat through the little ripples with
a long and seemingly easy stroke. His fare leaned back and drank in the
silence. She was having a luxurious time. She had need of quietude and
loneliness to free her spirit, for she was feeling messy, soul and body.
Gallant Gale’s persistent love-making had decidedly got on her nerves;
that hot and sticky evening in particular the kisses which she could not
avoid without throwing out the action of the play had inspired her with
virginally murderous feelings toward the whole masculine world. In this
category she did not reckon the oarsman; he was merely the minister of
her need, though, indeed, something about his voice as she had first
heard it, seemed hardly in character. A moment later her doubt returned
upon her with added circumstance, as the outcome of an impulse of
kindliness on her part.

“Don’t you want to smoke?” she had asked.

“Yes.”

He lighted a stubby pipe. In the flare of the match she got an
impression of a face younger than she had inferred, lean and tanned and
alert and characterized by a sort of hard humorousness, lighting in her
mind a lively, curious, and not unpleasant misgiving as to what she was
doing alone on a lake with a total stranger of this particular kind,
sensations by no means such as would logically be aroused in a young
amateur actress by a person of the opposite or any other sex to whom she
was about to pay fifty cents an hour. Inconsequently—or so it appeared
to her—there came into her mind a surmise as to whether the Unknown of
Lower Seven mightn’t be expected to look like that. She rather wished he
would!

Something in the long, steady sweep of the oars suggested a distance
pull. Moreover the goal did not seem to draw noticeably nearer.

“How far is it to the point?” she asked suddenly.

“About four miles, now.”

“Won’t it tire you?”

“Yes.”

The matter-of-fact affirmative made her giggle. She was quite sure that
her companion was grinning inwardly and that it was a nice, reliable
grin. “Let’s not do it then.”

“All right.” He let his oars trail.

“What are you doing it for?” she queried curiously.

He declined the opening. “The usual rates.”

“Fair enough. But we have to go somewhere, at that rate.”

“It’s your party.”

“Isn’t that an island over there? With the light on it?”

“En-_tirely_ surrounded by water.”

“We might call on them.”

“You might.”

“Wouldn’t they be surprised!”

“No.”

“No? Why not?”

“Well, they just wouldn’t. You might surprise them some ways but not
that way.”

“Then they must be funny people. Do you know who lives there?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I do.”

“_You?_ Why?”

“Why not? A fellow has to live somewhere.”

“Are you a hermit?”

“No; I’m a forester.”

“And a boatman on the side?”

“At your service.”

A sudden wild, fantastic fancy took possession of Miss Verity Clarke and
would not be denied of its hope. “Tell me; have you ever been West?”

“Yes; and my grandmother put up her own preserves.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” she demanded, taken aback.

“I don’t know. What’s my having been West?”

“I just wanted to know whether the number seven had any special
significance in your life.”

“Witchcraft!” said the oarsman in semblance of wild terror. “I’ve got
four fingers and two eyes crossed and if you try to throw your shadow on
me I’ll jump overboard.”

“Then it hasn’t.” She was so patently disappointed that he sought to do
something about it.

“I’ve got a seven-toed cat,” said he hopefully. “Would you like to meet
her?”

“Where is she?”

“Tending the light and waiting for me to come home.”

“I don’t think it would be proper,” said Miss Clarke demurely, “to call
on a bachelor with a seven-toed cat at this time of night.”

“Are you such a stickler for propriety?”

Verity reflected. A stickler for propriety? All her life she had been,
instinctively. She had never yet taken a chance. This was not because of
timidity but of distaste. Suddenly the bare idea of risk, in and of
itself, took on allure. She did not even formulate definitely the nature
of the allure or of the risk. There were vague, misty, unexplored
corners in Verity’s young mind. She had never cared to think much about
“that sort of thing.” But was this “that sort of thing”? Was this
queerly attractive and rather secretive chance acquaintance that sort of
man? According to the two other hard-boiled virgins any man was, under
certain conditions and upon certain provocations. What a story to take
back to the two of them if she did go! With such imaginative
embroideries as she might devise. Or, better, with titillating
reticences, irritant hints of more to tell than could be revealed all at
once—more than had actually happened, of course. For Verity possessed
that innate confidence of the innocent in her own ability to preserve
her innocence.

“Does the court instruct me to withdraw the question?” he asked after a
prolonged silence.

“No. Answer it yourself.” She leaned back, smiling.

“If you are, you’re in queer company,” he decided.

Verity was startled. “How do you mean—queer?”

“A third-rate, barnstorming troupe.”

(So he didn’t know. He took her for a professional; cheap, but still a
professional! Verity was thrilled.)

“How do you know we’re third-rate?”

“What other kind would come to a backwoods town like Risley Centre?”

“We have to take what bookings we can get,” she said meekly.

“But _you’re_ not third-rate, are you?” It was an affirmation of faith
rather than a question. “What are you doing with that lot?”

Verity had an inspiration of gay possibilities. She could masquerade as
well as he. “Trying to earn a little money,” she replied in what she
intended as an ambitious and uplifted voice.

“To support a widowed mother and pay your poor little crippled sister’s
hospital bills, I suppose.” (Something wrong with that uplift idea.)

“You needn’t be snippy about it. Suppose it was to help put a certain
party through College.”

“Oh, that’s different.” (So was his tone.) “How much?”

“Five hundred dollars—or—or something like that.”

“Do you _know_ anything about college expenses?”

“Well, I thought one could start on that and wait on tables or something
to help get through.”

“Brave little woman!” he sighed elaborately.

“I think you’re rotten!” said Verity, and her voice trembled. (She
really had gifts as an actress.)

He leaned forward across the oars. “Look here, girl; is this real?”

“Of course it’s real.” There was an actual quaver in her throat now but
that was mainly due to the dawn of misgivings.

“All right. I’ll loan you five hundred. . . . Sit _still_! This boat is
crank.”

“Have you got five hundred dollars?”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t possibly take it.” (No use! She couldn’t carry the comedy
any further; he had ruined her lines for her!)

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then don’t be a fool.”

“Why should you lend it to me?” queried Verity desperately.

“Because you said you needed it.”

“Do you lend five hundred dollarses to all the girls you know who need
them?”

“Not _all_.”

“Only the worthy ones, I suppose.” Verity was beginning to recover.

“Suppose as far as you like.”

Verity considered him with nervous and enjoyable speculation. Was this
one of the lures of man for unsuspecting girlhood? It seemed rather too
movie-picturish to be convincing or alarming; yet it had the support of
long tradition. “Suppose I say I’ll take it; what are the conditions?”

“Roll your own.”

A gentle current had drifted them close in upon the island. She said
boldly: “Is the first one that I make a call on your seven-toed cat?”

“Unless you want to get a good soaking.”

Her eyes followed his glance back over his shoulder and upward. A slant
of chill wind had given warning of impending change and one look at the
sky aroused even Verity’s inexperience to misgivings. The moon, a
harried and pallid fugitive, faltered in an open space of misty gray,
hemmed in on all sides by imminent clouds. They closed with a rush;
Verity could almost have thought that she heard a desperate cry from the
vault of heaven. The breeze wavered and, for the moment, died. Then a
white whisper rushed across the surface of the lake. Above it loomed a
swirling curtain.

The boat lunged forward in a brief and violent struggle against the
weight of the squall, gaining the lee of the island just as the rain
crashed down. Westfall vaulted ashore and held out his hands with a
brusque order. As the girl stepped out uncertainly a form from the
darkness flew straight at the man’s throat. Verity shrieked, stumbled
back against the yielding bow of the boat and would have fallen into the
lake but for his quickness.

“It’s only Whiskers,” he said. “My cat, you know. Her real name is
Tabitha. Come on.”

The cat purred against his neck, a reassuring sound. But Verity had to
put forth all her will power not to turn away into the blackness lest
she feel herself dragged by the wrist—whither she wanted to go!

The opened door showed an interior mannish but as perfectly ordered as a
ship’s cabin. There were books, pipes, fishing tackle, guns, and
comfortable old furniture. The host lighted a second lamp.

“Wet?” he asked.

“Not to amount to anything.” The trees had formed an effective canopy.

“Want a drink?”

“No.”

“Cigarette?”

“Ye—No; thank you.”

He laughed. “It doesn’t commit you to anything, you know.”

It was true. Or if it wasn’t, what of it? She was as far committed as
any one could be. As if to give point to this, a solemn clock in the
corner tolled out twelve strokes. “Tactless grandpa” was his comment.

“How long do you think it will keep up?” she asked.

“No telling.”

“I’ve _got_ to get back.”

“Have you?”

“Of course I have!” (Indignantly.)

“Why?” (In the most matter-of-fact manner.)

“Well, I can’t stay here all night.”

“Can’t you?”

“You know I can’t.”

“Well, if you spurn my humble hospitality I don’t know what I can do
about it except smother my lacerated feelings.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“Not at all.”

“Then will you take me back?”

“Certainly. At once if you say so.” He opened the door. The night roared
like a ravening and thwarted beast of prey. An inrush of wind shook the
lights and splattered a spray over Whiskers who resented it and said so
in no uncertain terms.

“I can’t get wet,” wailed Verity. “If I do my throat will go bad and
there’s no one else to take my part. What’ll I _do_?”

“Make yourself at home.”

“I think I’m a little fool,” mourned the girl.

“Why so? You’ve done this sort of thing before, haven’t you?”

“Have you?” she shot back.

He seemed startled at this. “Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t,” he
confessed. “It’s a new and interesting experience for me, the romantic
abduction of a young and lovely chorus-lady.”

“I’m not a chorus-lady.”

“Pardon. Actress. So if you know more about it than I do, tell me the
rules.”

Verity began to recover more assurance and in proportion to grow
obstinate. “I won’t tell you anything about myself or—or anything. You
can just take all the risks yourself.”

He did not ask her what she meant by this, which was quite as well, for
she would have found it extremely difficult to tell him. He just sat,
considering her. His scrutiny came to a focus in an expressed desire for
illumination. “I wonder why you picked me up.”

She was justly indignant. “I didn’t pick you up. You were regularly
presented.”

“Of course. Jim.”

“Your intimate friend, apparently.”

“We were schoolboys together.”

“So I thought at first you really were a boatman instead of a—a——”

“Pirate,” he obligingly supplied.

She gathered her forces to a show of dignified appeal. “If you really
are a gentleman——”

“Oh, let’s not exaggerate,” he murmured, thereby spoiling that. “I’ve
just remembered something important,” he added, after a pause. “I
haven’t had a bite to eat since two o’clock. Can you cook?”

“Not very well.”

“Then I can’t marry you. Sorry to disappoint you, but I positively must
have a cook in the family to spoil me. I’m an excellent cook, myself.
What about some supper?”

“Oh, I don’t care!”

“The condemned woman,” observed Mr. Westfall taking a frying pan from a
wall cupboard, “ate a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs before going,
with a firm and steady tread, to her doom.”

“I don’t think that’s so funny,” returned the girl disdainfully.

“Back to the drying room, little joke; you’re all wet.” Expertly he
cracked and delivered six eggs which set up an appetizing splutter in
the pan. “Doesn’t that cheer you up?”

“I’ll admit it. It would cheer me more to know when I’m going to get
back.”

“By the dawn’s early light, I should guess. Now don’t look like a hunted
woodchuck, _please_! I’m not a villain of one of your mellerdrammers and
there is a husky bar on the inside of that bedroom door and it’s a devil
of a night to navigate in.” In confirmation of which there was a swish,
a groan, and a shock from outside as a heavy bough came down.

“But what’ll they _think_?” wailed Verity.

“Without wishing to knock your ancient and honorable profesh, I never
understood that it was long on chaperonage or insisted that every lady
be in by curfew.”

“N-n-n-no. But——” She hesitated. For some reason she shrank from
dispelling his gayly romantic illusion that she had to do with a
trouper.

He looked up from his operations. “You don’t happen to have a husband or
anything like that in the company, do you?”

“No! I hate men.”

“Thanking you on behalf of my humble sex, may I ask why?” He held a
pinch of salt over the simmering dish, interestedly awaiting her reply.

“I don’t know. They paw you.”

The salt sifted down in a fine aspersion. “That’s one method, I
suppose,” he reflected.

“Not all of ’em,” she explained. “But—well, there’s a boy in the
company; he’s usually cast opposite me; leading juvenile. He’s always
taking every advantage to make love to me. . . . That’s one reason I ran
away to-night.”

“‘You don’t know what that kind of love means’; is that the idea?” he
quoted, smiling.

“I know as well as I want to know.”

“Cross-patch! Haven’t you _any_ human hungers?” He indicated the eggs,
now garnished with bacon.

“I believe I have.”

He lifted a lamp from the mantel and walked toward the door of the inner
room. “Want to fix up first?”

She stood a moment, doubtful, on the verge of dismay, then followed him
and looked about her.

“Oh-h-h-h-h!” It was an uncontrollable gasp. She was staring at a
photograph of Gwen Peters on the dresser. He turned and caught her at
it.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she disclaimed hastily.

“Have you ever seen that picture before?”

“No.”

“Ah!” he said indifferently. “Then you don’t know Hilda.”

“Hilda!?” Too late she realized her self-betrayal.

“You _do_ know Gwen, I see.”

Verity shut a tight and obstinate mouth.

“Oh, well! Help yourself and then come out and tell me everything or
nothing as you choose.”

When she emerged he had evidently made a trip outside, for his shoulders
were wet. “I’m going to ask you one question and only one. Is it really
important that you get back to-night?”

“Of course it is. They’ll think I’m drowned or something.”

“Well, you’re not going to be drowned and you’re not going to be
‘something’,” he retorted drily. “But you may be scared.”

“Is the storm so bad?”

“Bad enough, though it’s letting up. But you’ll have to stay here alone
with Whiskers for a while.”

“Why?”

“The boat is gone.”

“Gone! How? It’s a trick.”

“For what purpose?” he asked quietly.

She looked at him intently and the color rose again in her whitened
face. “I’m sorry I said that.”

“When the cat startled you and you jumped back against the boat, you
must have pushed it off.”

“Then how are you going to get anywhere?”

Westfall had his story ready. “There’s a canoe, but it isn’t safe for
more than one in this sea. I’ll cross and come back for you. You’ll be
perfectly safe here. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Until the door closed behind him Verity had never known what loneliness
was. It seemed interminable hours before she heard his voice,
triumphantly signaling his return. But when he came into the light she
saw him grotesquely changed. He seemed to have outgrown his clothes,
from which he protruded in ungainly extensions. Also his shirt, which
had been khaki, was now dark blue flannel. He was shivering all over.

“Do you mind if I take a drink?”

“Of course not! Did you get very wet?”

“Yes. It’s clearing now. We’ll be all right.”

“Where did you leave the canoe?”

“What canoe?” he asked absently.

She stared. “Why, the one you went in?”

“Oh! Of course. At the village pier. I wangled a boat to come back in.”

He bundled her up in an old coat and took her to the place where he had
beached the borrowed craft. The moon had struck through the clouds and
now cast a spotlight on a rock curiously decorated. Verity, astonished,
made out first the nature of the decoration and next its significance.
It was the suit which Westfall had worn when he left the shack.

“Your clothes! You swam across,” she accused.

“Oh, damn!” said Westfall.

“You didn’t have any canoe.”

“Discovered!” he cried dramatically. “Now, if you’ll get in——”

“I wouldn’t have let you go. I’d have stayed here all night—a
week—anything, rather than let you go.”

“Don’t be delirious! It’s only half a mile.” (This was a liberal
discount.) “I’ve often swum it.”

“But not in this icy water.” She dipped her hand in and shivered. “And
the storm, too. It’s too——”

“If you’re going to throw heroics,” he said uneasily, “I’ll go back to
the house and let you row yourself home. All aboard!”

She sat silent and thoughtful while the wind aided them on the quick
passage back. “We’re playing Woodside to-morrow,” said Verity when they
were close to the landing. “Will you come to the show if I send you
tickets?”

“Can’t. I’m off to the woods at daylight. Just came in to get my mail.”

“Then I won’t see you again.”

“No? Why not?” He ran the craft expertly alongside the float and whisked
her out. Her hands were still in his as she murmured with a sort of
childish awkwardness:

“I dunno. I just kinda think we won’t.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“I do and I don’t. This has been something all by itself. Wouldn’t it be
grander just to let it stand by itself with nothing before and nothing
after it?” As he made no response but stood looking down at her with an
expression half disappointed, half quizzical, she added softly:
“Good-by, boatman.”

His arms were strong and close about her. At first she thought he was
going to lift her back into the boat and, dizzily, she knew that she
would make no struggle against it. Then terror and delight struck
through her in mingled fires as her lips met his. But now she was
afraid, not of him but of herself, a tumultuous, unheeding,
swift-blooded self that she had never dreamt of harboring. The reaction
came at once; instinctive in defense her maidenhood sought to raise a
final barrier. “It _is_ good-by. It’s got to be. . . . You’re laughing
at me again.”

He released her. “I give you warning,” said he gravely. “Keep off the
public thoroughfares when I come to your town.”

“Why?”

“If you don’t I’m liable to catch you and run away with you.”

“Fair enough,” she allowed gayly. “But you don’t know my town.”

“I’ve got a clew.” He pushed the boat off. The oars dipped and swirled;
the waters whispered as they parted before the prow.

“Boatman!”

The oars poised. “Yes?”

“I think you’re absolutely perfect except for one thing.”

“Tell me the fatal discount.”

“Seven doesn’t seem to mean anything in your young life.”

“’Fraid not.”

She heard the craft surge forward to the impulse of his powerful back
half a dozen times, then drop.

“Oh, trouper!”

“What?”

“I’ve just thought. Seven is a big number in my life.”

“Is it? How?”

“This is the twenty-seventh of the month,” he chuckled.

“That isn’t it at _all_,” said Verity in disgust as she turned away.
Nevertheless she threw a kiss into the night for the wind to carry on
its wings.


                               CHAPTER IX

Anxiously posed before the mirror, Starr examined an overnight
florescence on her chin. Was it? Or wasn’t it?

               “_Redness, soreness, heat, and pain._
               _Mark the advent of the boil_”

she intoned.

This was a line from Hygiene B, not intentionally rhythmic and the more
highly prized for its innocently perfect scansion. Sylvia, still abed,
yawned. “Too much rich, off-campus food. Try our Trumbull House Menu and
Grow Thin.”

Starr lifted her smooth contralto a little higher, this time in the
Dining Song of the House (unofficial; words and music by Gwen Peters):

                “_Swill and bilge; bilge and swill:_
                _Pay your money and eat your fill._”

“You’ll be getting all flabby and pimply if you don’t lay off,” warned
the frank friend, adding the sugar-coating: “You’ve got such a wonderful
skin, too. It’s a slimy shame.”

“What’s the use of having any skin at all when there’s nobody to see
it!”

Sylvia raised herself on one elbow, the better to examine the other’s
face. “Getting nervy?”

“I’m getting dam’ well fed up with this place,” was the muttered reply.

Shrewd in her time and generation, the other recognized the initial
symptoms. This was about the time of term when the week-end psychosis,
akin to the prison psychosis of our more frankly penal institutions,
manifests itself in virulent and unpredictable form. Football was over
and the epidemic of house-parties in the men’s colleges had pretty well
died out. An early winter was compressing life at Sperry to a dull
monotony. The path of duty stretched in long and straight and dusty
sameness to distant vacation. When a girl feels this, everything becomes
a bore, and the superabundance of unmitigated femininity a corrosive to
spirit and conscience. College is a dull, gloomy, repressed grind shut
in behind blank walls. The outer world glows like a vanishing hope. Men,
god-like and irresistibly charming creatures, exist still, but in some
unattainable planet. Why more college girls do not elope with the
milkman in the intolerable aridity of mid-term is a mystery of our
educational system.

Starr would have sold her soul for a thrill.

The early bell rang. Sylvia dropped back with a slothful groan. In the
other room Verity Clarke was stirring about. Always an early bird, she
had been specially industrious of late. There was in her a disturbing
energy, a tendency to express her super-abundant vitality in unnecessary
endeavor, which her two roommates viewed with alarm. The rule of their
cult was to do as little as possible and still get by, and to do that
little with an air of contemptuous ease, as if it were hardly worth
while, anyway.

Energy in a freshman has its advantageous side, however. Verity could be
relied upon to pull down the windows, adjust the heat, and get her bath
over and done with before the John (the communal bath-room at the hall’s
end) was crowded. This was a great help. It enabled the more leisurely
pair to drop back in luxury for ten minutes more. Starr had already
regained her still warm bed with a leap that would have done credit to a
frog.

“Aren’t you two going to get up?” queried the Freshman, entering.

“What’s the use?” mumbled Sylvia. She burrowed her bright head into the
pillow.

“’time is it?” yawned Starr.

“Half past seven.”

“Grand! Lemme lay for ten minutes.”

“Want a bath?”

“Angel child! I’ll do as much for you some day.”

When the helpful one got back looking pink and firm as a shrimp, her
mates were both a-doze.

“Tub’s almost ready,” she reported.

There was a knock at the door. Esther Reynolds, a conscientious
supporter of college spirit and hall representative on the Self-Guv,
thrust in a large face with an earnest expression on it. “Didn’t see you
girls at the meeting last night.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” This in muffled tones from Starr, whose
features were, at the moment, full of bed clothes.

More responsive, Sylvia said ingenuously: “We didn’t see you, either.
What was it all about?”

“Nothing special. They’re just asking people to try and be in more
promptly at ten o’clock and want to remind you of the fire rules against
smoking in the rooms and please be sure to sign up if you’re going off
campus after seven and, oh, yes, Prexie wishes more people would try and
attend Sunday chapel because it’s awfully hard to get good ministers
unless there are lots there and it must be awfully discouraging, don’t
you think, to come ’way up here and then not——” The conscientious
voice died away as the gospel-heaver retreated into the corridor.

“Blobber, blobber, blobber, B L A H!” commented Starr, leaping to the
floor with the final explosion. Sylvia from her rumpled bed contributed
an equally impolite antiphony.

“Goofy, goofy-guff! But she means well.”

“And isn’t there something in what she says?” asked Verity.

Sylvia sat up, fixing her with a baleful eye. “What’s rasping _your_
youthful spirit?”

“Nothing. Only, my faculty adviser has been talking to me about making
some effort to—to—well, to do something outside of just—you know——”

“Omigod!” from Sylvia, now shiveringly exploring with a long, shapely
leg for a mule which had taken refuge under the settee.

“You don’t think,” Starr anxiously appealed to her classmate, “that the
reaction from her wild life on the stage is going to turn our little pet
collegiate, do you?”

The object of this dire solicitude puckered the corners of her soft
mouth. “No; I’m not. Whatever ‘collegiate’ means.”

“It means getting fervent about good works and the Sperry Spirit and
being an honor to the institution and making the Debate Team and—Heaven
help you!—landing Self-Guv eventually and becoming a menace to all your
suffering friends.”

“A little expert fussing is what she needs,” pronounced Sylvia with the
air of a successful diagnostician. (“She isn’t the only one,” murmured
Starr, sotto voce.)

“You make me sick!” was the energetic retort.

“_I_ think,” pronounced Starr with intent to tease, “that she’s eating
her pure young heart out for the forbearing hero of the sleeping car.”

“Fur-bearing, more likely. I’ll bet he’s got whiskers and a meek
expression,” put in Sylvia.

“D’you think he’ll ever show, kid?”

“I’m waiting,” said Verity with her most demure expression.

“And that’s the reason why you showed no human interest in Gallant Gale
on the trip, I suppose,” murmured Starr.

Verity said nothing. It wasn’t. But she had not yet told her companions
the thrilling adventure of the island.

“You’ve got Nixie worried,” announced Sylvia.

“She’d give the ribbons off her shimmy, if any, to get Gale back,” said
Starr inelegantly.

A plaintive and angry voice down the hall shrilled out, “Whose tub is
this? Because if somebody doesn’t come, I’m going to——”

“_Mine._” Starr snatched an armful of bathrobe, soap, powder and other
appurtenances, and with towels between her teeth and incipient murder in
her eye, limped for the open on one naked foot. “And I’m coming right
away. Don’t anybody _dare_ touch it!”

“Well, hurry, will you?” demanded a dishevelled figure in the John
doorway. “I want to make breakfast, too, and they’re all full at the
other end.”

Starr returned to Twenty, refreshed and fit, passing Verity in the
hallway. Five minutes to dress. She couldn’t make it.

“Save me a place, will you?” she called. “Flakes and two cups of
coffee.” (Which was rank optimism.) “And eggs, if they’re boiled.”
(Which was wild absurdity.)

Sylvia, the champion three-minute dresser of the House, had gone. On the
door was a note to take back some books, an overnight loan, to the
library. Starr was justifiably indignant. “Damn! Catch me trotting over
there before class. And me with nine o’clock Spanish.” Nevertheless she
took the books. It is well to acquire merit with your roommate.

Her particular group had permanently preëmpted the best table by the
simple and effective process of insulting or ignoring any outsiders who
tried to butt in. Starr’s coffee (single cup and that not too well
supplied) was cold from standing and the choice of fruit lay between a
senile apple and an undernourished banana. She nibbled at the latter and
gulped her tepid drink.

“Anybody got a chapel date who’ll drop these books at the Libe?” she
asked in the dim hope of shifting Sylvia’s loan. Nobody had. On her way
back along the hall she yelled not wisely but too well for succor, with
the logical result of getting eight more books pressed upon her—“so
long as you have to go anyway”—and was giving way to despair when she
caught a rumor that Esther Reynolds had a chapel mission. Only too eager
to propitiate the independent-spirited and important Starr, Esther, who
cherished a pathetic hope of being admitted to the clique, was run down
and loaded like a camel. Thus relieved, Starr lifted up a voice of
further inquiry.

“Anybody going to Span? Elsie? Gwen? Roxy Ann?”

No Sperry girl except a greasy grind or a serious thinker or a
hopelessly unpopular member of the community ever walks anywhere alone
unless it is a matter of vital haste. Rather will she trudge three
flights of stairs to meet a girl who is going two-thirds of her route,
or wait ten minutes for a companion to walk a block with.

“Ay-yah!” It was Pink Delavan’s voice from the floor above. “Wait for
me.”

Warning bell had rung at least nine minutes before, but that didn’t
matter. When Pink appeared, looking a little spent under the eyes, it
transpired that she was going not to Spanish but to Art, being quite
ready, however, to walk around by way of her friend’s destination.

“What time did you get in?” inquired the latter, interpreting the ocular
symptoms.

“After three.”

“Have a good time?”

“I’ll admit it. But I’m getting leery about this twosome game. Foursomes
are safer for my precarious state of health, I b’lieve.”

“Wasn’t Nixie with you?”

“At the start only. Did you ever know Nixie to stay by a party?”

Starr would have liked to ask what happened, but one has to be extremely
intimate to go that far and Pink proffered no further details, merely
expressing the hope that Miss Brink wouldn’t catch her falling asleep as
had been the embarrassing case the week previous.

The Spanish class was sleepy and sulky. Nine o’clock classes are prone
to be unless the professor is extra peppy. Starr sat, indolent,
negligent, growing momentarily more bored and irritated. Well, anyway,
there was the mail to be looked forward to. After class she went back to
the House and headed for the milling mass at the table, groaning at the
thought of submitting her nervous body to the pushing and trampling
throng, and answered with relief a hail from Sylvia, who had already
gathered the joint harvest and was waving in air a sheaf of letters from
a vantage spot near the bulletin board. One of them had a goodly check
in it from the Pater.

Instead of abating, this only added to the restless craving of Starr’s
nerves. She thought, though with no special relish, of cutting her
eleven o’clock class in favor of a hotel exhibit of styles fresh from
Kaplan & Boyle of New York, if she could get Sylvia to go with her. Not
for Sylvia! She was broke. Besides, Giff was lecturing at that hour on
“The Hetaira’s Place in the Social Life of Greece,” a subject that no
pure young girl could afford to miss. Professor Gifford was adept at
keeping his classes full to the limit by a judicious admixture of
sensational appeal with the duller routine.

Starr decided that to look over the style exhibit alone was too much of
a bore. But, having made up her mind to cut the eleven o’clock class it
was, of course, unthinkable that she should attend it, so she took some
clothes to the cleaner’s, fell in with a group and wandered back
discussing the latest developments of the various members’ love affairs,
prospective house parties at Amherst, Williams, Rutgers, Princeton, and
Tech, the intolerable irksomeness of college existence, the equally
intolerable monotony of the college food, the rumor that Babe Protheroe
had at last been caught with the goods (i.e., a man) and was in very
bad, indeed; the still vaguely persistent rumor about an escapade of
Balaam’s, some weeks back, with five of the girls (these rumors are
always inaccurate; Starr kept a close tongue), the new cast for the
Dramatic, a faculty, who would be the most sprightly of the outside
lecturers, a flirtatious Briton who had been on the previous year’s list
and would never be on another, and by the inevitable circle back to the
most vital topic, the latest developments of the various members’ love
affairs. Again on the campus, Starr was moved by her anarchic spirit to
stroll up Cigarette Walk, an insufficiently sheltered by-path popular
for mildly illicit pursuits, and smoke. This failed to soothe either her
nerves or her demands.

Lunch with the same old bunch she just could not face. She accepted an
invitation to eat over at Corning Hall, which was no better and no
worse, only different—but not very! The table was rife with chatter
about what one of the number had been doing over last week-end—girls
who have not been away or had any one up will absorb with pathetic gusto
the most petty details of what has occurred to a more fortunate friend,
begging to know what she wore, what _he_ wore, what kind of a car she
rode in, what movie, even, she saw if she has done nothing more
exciting—and with the merits and deficiencies of the few men who were
prospects for the near future. Bridge, suggested somebody. Starr yawned
and declined. Cards bored her. What else was there, though? Class sing;
she couldn’t be bothered with that. Might almost as well settle down to
study. Damn, damn, and again damn!! She slumped back to her room, to
find under her door an unstamped missive which, something told her
before she opened it, was of a displeasing purport. While she was
reading it her two roommates came in. Starr turned to the younger.

“Vee, didn’t I hear the click of a typewriter in your room yesterday?”

“Yep. I borrowed Madge’s portable.”

“Sweet soul! Want to do a stunt for me while I sweat out this philos
grind?”

“What is it?”

With a sourish grin and the admonition, “Use the discretion to be
expected from us H.B.V.’s” the recipient handed over the note which was
written in a clear, bold, conscientious hand on the stationery of the
“Sperry College Self-Government Council” with its urgent slogan: “Live,
Think, Work for Sperry.”

    Dear Starr:

    There are many aspects of student life which fall under the
    jurisdiction of the Interclass Judgment Board. One of these is
    the conduct of the girls, which is extremely important, since
    the world judges us by the appearance and action of each girl.
    It is concerning your conduct that the Board has asked me to
    write to you. Neither your appearance nor your actions seem
    always to be representative of the standards we attempt to
    maintain.

    In order that you may clearly see what I mean I will cite the
    criticisms which have been brought to me about you. Your gown
    and your dancing at the Junior Promenade were both quoted as
    indiscreet. Your behavior on the campus is conspicuous and so is
    your use of lipstick very frequently. The members of your House
    find your attitude rather difficult to cope with at times.
    Surely these things are enough to show you why you have been
    called conspicuous.

    Since each individual has a very definite responsibility toward
    this community in which we live it is essential that each one
    shall contribute something constructive. Your name does not yet
    appear on our records and I want to give you an opportunity to
    keep a clean slate.

    I trust that no further reports of you will reach me.

                            Sincerely yours,
                                                 Prudence Chase,
                                       Chairman of Interclass Board.

“Why is it,” yawned Sylvia, looking up from her notes on Prof. Gifford’s
lecture, “that Guv officials always have names like Prudence and
Constance and Faith and——”

“Poverty, Chastity and Obedience,” put in the flippant Starr.

“Chase is a square-shooter, though, even if she is in the uplift line.
You’ve got to hand her that.”

“What shall I say to her?” Vee lifted inquiring gray eyes.

“What’s your idea?”

“Why, I suppose if you apologize and say that you didn’t appreciate that
you were doing anything to bring discredit—to injure——”

“Stop right there! You certainly have got something to learn.”

The Freshman turned a little sulky. “How do you want me to answer it,
then?”

“Tell ’em to go to hell, of course. Politely, vous comprenez.”

“And sign your name?”

“Oh, certainly not! Sign it ‘William B. Cressline, President of Sperry
College for Women.’ That’ll give it a lot more kick.”

“That’s a grand line, but you have got to do something about it, haven’t
you?”

Starr exploded in a full-bodied, double-barreled oath of the
longshoreman variety, directed at the Interclass Board and all its
works. She then snatched the irritant letter from Verity’s hand, tore it
to shreds, and stamped on the remains, after which she whizzed forth
from the room like a rocket. The amazed freshman stared after her.

“Where’s she going?”

Once more Sylvia detached her attention from her work. “Something has
bust,” said she portentously, “within the sorely tried soul of that
child. We shall see her again when we see her.”

Vee was troubled. “Shall I go after her?”

“Not unless you want to get yourself dam’ well murdered,” replied
Sylvia, and readdressed herself to the task of becoming a cultured
gentlewoman and an ornament to her Alma Mater.

Having completed her notes in the course of an hour, she decided that a
little gym work would do her no harm. At the head of the stairs she was
almost knocked off her feet by Starr. Her eyes were shining. The look of
tension had been superseded by one of excited resolution.

“Why the Marathon, m’love; why the marathon?” queried the innocent
victim of the collision.

“Don’t stop me. I’m making the 4.38.”

“Need any help?”

“Oh, would you be a darling and lend a hand? I’m just on my tin ear.”

“Got enough money?”

“Gibley’s’ll cash the check if I can make it in time.”

Sylvia accompanied her speeding classmate back to the room, where the
process of a hasty packing began with the exhumation of her suitcase
from its closet lair beneath a mound of shoes, books, and soiled
laundry. “What are you gonna take?”

“Oh, _any_thing! Drag down my green hat from that shelf, will you, while
I collect some stuff.” She whirled around from a destructive tour
through her dresser. “What do you think? I can’t find that black satin
dress anywhere. I lent it to Mary last time she went down to see Dick
and I haven’t seen it since. I _must_ have it.”

“That’s a low trick. Where’s Mary?”

“Class. Won’t be back till five.”

Both girls continued to hurl things into the suitcase without any regard
to order or neatness, Starr attempting to dress at the same time. She
ran frantically around with one stocking off and one on. “Oh, dear! I
just remembered; I haven’t ’phoned for a taxi. Won’t you run down and do
it while I finish dressing?”

“Sure. Gimme a nickel.”

“Look in my purse.”

The search was unsuccessful. Sylvia ran up and down the hall demanding,
“Anybody got a nickel?” in a penetrating yell. After a long interval
there was an affirmative answer and she came tearing down the back
stairs. Starr was almost in tears.

“There’s a run in my best and only clean stockings. What’ll I do?”

“Wear another pair.”

“Haven’t got any.”

“Bet anything you have.” Sylvia went to the bureau drawer and
triumphantly fished forth a sound pair. She dodged into the closet again
and came out with the missing black satin. “God, but you’re a dumb
bunny! This was here all the time.”

“Oh, thanks a million times. I’m so upset I can’t think. And _look_ at
this room. I can’t go off and leave it like this.”

By this time she was fully dressed, looking as fresh and smart as if she
had spent hours at her toilette. But the room was a sight. All around
were clothes, on chairs, on the floor, on the dresser; powder was
spilled all over the dressing table and the bureau drawers yawned wide.

Sylvia said in a resigned tone: “Don’t worry. I’ll fix it up. What’s the
good news waiting at the other end of the line?”

“Alec.”

“Oh-h-h-h! The old Alexander-uncle, eh?”

“I know.” The other’s response was to the spirit rather than the letter
of the comment. “But I’ll just blow up if I don’t get away and get away
quick.”

“Back to-night?”

“Doubt it.”

“Got a green card?”

“Of course not, and no chance to get one.”

“What’s the answer, then?”

“You’ll have to report me in.”

“All right. But where will you be staying in case of a mix up?”

“Lloyd’s, I guess, if I can land him. I wired him at the same time as
Alec, but only waited for one answer.”

Lloyd Dresser was also an “uncle” but of a more legitimate kind, being
Helen Quigg’s widowed stepfather, with a duplex apartment in New York
where he kept open house for such friends of Helen’s as wanted to put up
there. He was known as being both a good sport and safely trustworthy.
Indeed it was common rumor that one or two of the Balch Hall crowd, a
cult with enterprising views regarding middle-aged, unattached men had
endeavored to make him, and had been not unkindly laughed at for their
advances, whereupon one of them had fallen violently in love with him,
to the edification of the Trumbull Housers who made his life a burden to
him about his fatal charms. There were uncles and uncles in the lives of
such Sperry girls as made a playground of New York. One of them had
given Babe Protheroe an emerald pendant, and Celia Way had returned from
a party with another owning a fur coat of which there was no previous
record. What the girls had given in return was a matter of conjecture,
with little doubt in the public mind as regards Babe.

“Have a wonderful time,” was Sylvia’s farewell. “And keep your foot on
the brake.” For Alexander Stark, a Wall Street man of forty, rich,
generous, and easy-living, was deemed to be rather dangerously and
therefore attractively experimental.

The telephone rang. Taxi for Miss Mowbray. “Right-o!” Starr was off in a
whirl.

No word came from her that night. So it was a week-end party. Sylvia
loyally reported her in for the night, looked up her Saturday classes,
found that she had two, and so announced her as suffering from a slight
cold. Saturday evening Starr called her chum on long distance.

“Everything all right at your end?”

“Yes. I’ve fixed it for you. Having a good time?”

Starr laughed queerly. “Grand!”

“Staying at Lloyd’s?”

“Yes. Just now I’m on a party.”

“How’s Unky Alec?”

“I canned him—at the station.”

“_No!_ What for?”

“Oh, we had a little difference of opinion. About lodgings. I’ll be back
some time to-morrow.”

Having a headache Sunday evening Sylvia turned in early. She woke from
an uneasy sleep thinking that she had heard some one in the outer room.
She called. No answer. After a time she rose quietly, opened the door
and looked out into the room.

Starr in her dressing gown was lolling in the only easy chair. She had
turned the principal wall ornament of Suite Twenty around so that the
official motto faced outward, and was looking at it with an expression
relaxed, weary, inscrutable.

“Hello, girl.”

“’Lo, yourself.”

“Have a swell time?”

“I’ll tell you when I’ve had more chance to think it over.”

Sylvia stared. “Don’t you _know_ whether you had a good time or not?
That’s a piffling state of mind, I’ll say, for a genuine H.B.V.”

Starr transferred her attention for a swift moment to her friend. “Well,
I’m still hard-boiled,” she said.

Again her look was fixed on the jumbled symbolism of the motto. And now
there had come into it a quality which gave the other girl a little
shudder, not unpleasurable, in spite of its tingle of alarm.


                               CHAPTER X

Clad in skating togs, Sara La Lond climbed the stairs of Trumbull, her
hockey stick trailing and bumping after her, and dragged herself
listlessly along the hall, limping on her right leg. From time to time
she thrust a bluish finger into her mouth. She was sniveling. Sylvia,
emerging from Twenty, asked with concern:

“What’s the matter with you?”

“The Freshmen beat us.”

“Don’t you care. You’ll make Varsity all right.” Varsity is a selection
on paper of the best players from the four class teams, having no more
actual existence than an All-American football eleven.

“Damn Varsity! I wanted to beat ’em. We dubbed around like a lot of
sissies.”

“Well, it’s nothing to blubber over.”

“I know it. I guess I’m shot.” Sara was by nature a Spartan.

“Come over and have some chocolate.”

“Got to study.”

“You’ll crack if you don’t look out.”

To this admonition the scholar responded only with a careless shake of
the head. Sylvia thought of what Patterson Gifford had said of her.
Could he be right? How did he know so much about her?

In the morning Sylvia woke up rather “shot” herself. The familiar room
was hateful to her, the prospect of classes, nauseous. Every stroke of
the chapel bell jangled on her raw nerves. The thought of fourteen or
fifteen hours in the coming day spent among the fussiness, the
pettiness, the chattiness (oh, God! the chattiness!) of several hundred
of her kind and sex inspired in her an impulse to YELL. Sylvia was
having her turn at an ailment rife in the middle of term, of which the
cause is monotony and the chief symptom desperation. She announced to
her chum in local and inelegant style:

“Girl; I’ve got the itch.”

Starr was interested. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Something or bust.” She looked out of the window where the sun was
pouring a candescence that rippled and shattered into a million facets
of cold flames from the crisp snow. “I’d go hitch-hiking if I could get
some one to go with me.”

“Not me,” disclaimed the other. “I’ve got a written in Art to do for Old
Switches.” This display of virtue, as Sylvia well understood, was due
mainly to the truancy of the previous week-end. Starr’s spirit, if not
content, was temporarily sated as regards adventure. “Take Verity.”

“Too young and inexperienced for rough diplomacy.”

“Let’s see, then. Roxy Ann is rehearsing. Gwen’s on the R. L. (meaning
the Registrar’s list; for some dereliction, involving confinement within
the town limits). Helen Quigg?—No; I guess Helen isn’t doing any
pedestrian stunts. Maybe you could get——”

“I’m going to ask Sara La Lond.”

“Try and get her! She won’t quit work long enough.”

“Betcha the lunches I do.”

To Starr’s astonishment, on returning at ten o’clock she beheld the La
Lond girl, a faint pink of excitement in her usually sallow cheeks and
her dark, big eyes crinkling with excitement, in full regalia, seated on
the couch while Sylvia dressed hastily.

“Where are you headed for?”

“How do we know?”

“When’ll you be back?”

“At the end of a perfect day,—mebbe.”

Total uncertainty is the informing spirit of a proper hitch-hike, a form
of outlawry which consists in delivering oneself over to the chance of
gratuitous wheeled travel. The qualities demanded are initiative, tact,
nerve, attractiveness enough to enlist the cooperation of the motoring
public and self-reliance enough to prevent adventure from degenerating
into license. The costume, carefully systematized by previous
experimenters with a view to the best results, is practically the same
as for a trip to the Big City; in fact, that is the impression to be
produced upon the unsuspecting accomplices. Baggage is barred; money is
often foregone, and the thoroughly conscientious hitch-hiker does not
even pack a cracker against hunger, though cigarettes may be taken ad
lib. Both girls wore well-fitting suits, good shoes (this is important
as making a favorable impression of respectability, as well as for
utilitarian reasons) and small, smartish hats. Sylvia had borrowed
Starr’s opossum jacket for herself (in the owner’s absence) and had
loaned Sara her own Hudson seal. They gave the impression of two demure
and properly conducted young women bent on some definite errand—which
was about as far from the facts as appearances can divagate.

They set out northward for the main road. Distinctly an attractive pair;
Sylvia with her defiant, mobile young face and her boyish gait and
figure with its impudent hint of rounded womanhood beneath the close
jacket; Sara with her athletic vigor and grace and her questing, avid
eyes. For half an hour they tramped briskly, looking neither to the
right nor to the left. Then Sylvia, who had learned her technic from the
most experienced hitch-hikers of her time, began to lag a bit, casting
exploratory glances over her shoulder. Almost at once her artifice was
rewarded. With a shriekage of brakes a small, closed car pulled up, and,
at the end of a pronounced skid a puffy and self-satisfied male head
protruded with the query as to whether they wouldn’t like a lift. They
would.

As it is a convention of the game to be a good mixer and pay your way
with fellowship, Sylvia sat in front with him and made talk. Guessing
that he would be impressed, she told him the truth about herself and her
companion. He was impressed, and to impress her in turn exhibited the
extra fittings of his car, including a nude lady motometer deemed very
classy, a special cut-out, and a fancy cigar lighter. His business, he
proudly explained, was selling accessories. The girls sat in the car and
smoked while he solicited business in country town garages and village
groceries, and when he regretfully dropped them with a date for a later
meeting (which they had not the slightest intention of keeping) they
were twenty-five miles on their undetermined way. Sara bethought her of
a nice tea-room at Bergentown, somewhere in the vicinity—at least it
ought to be. They decided upon that as an objective, subject to change.

Their next pick-up was a Socony monster whose driver won their good
opinion by giving always more than half the roadway to lighter and
speedier vehicles instead of presuming upon his bulk to hog the middle.
This was good for six miles, to which a loquacious plumber in a
limousine with richly oiled upholstery added three more. Following this
they had their first misadventure. They were fairly in the car before
Sylvia perceived that they had to deal with two specimens of a most
difficult and troublesome genus, the youthful small-town sport. By
adroit management she succeeded in quelling the immediate advances of
the driver beside whom she sat, without getting him so sore that it
would be necessary to get out and walk. A hitch-hiker who can do this is
no longer in the novice class. All might have gone well had not Sara
committed a cardinal error of inexperience by producing a cigarette,
symbol of feminine depravity to the bucolic mind.

“I guess these kids know their onions,” cackled the rear-seat Don Juan,
slipping his arm about the girl.

“What-say we take ’em to Sid’s place for a few drinks and a hotsy-totsy
old time?” proffered the driver. “What about it, girlies?”

Their objections and protests were overborne with boisterous laughter
and playful maulings. Sylvia, cool-headed and resolute, saw that this
case called for action.

“Where’s Sid’s?” she asked.

“Atta girl!” exulted her companion, gratified by this apparent
acceptance of the situation. “Atta sport! Just up across Brundage’s Hill
Road a coupla miles.”

She moved nearer to him. He grabbed her, gleefully asserting that he
could drive the old boat with one hand as well as two. Sylvia, still in
his embrace, waited until he had slowed down for the turn. Then she
kicked his foot from the accelerator, jammed her own down on the brake,
and with a snatch at the wheel swung the car off the roadway into a snow
bank. While the frenzied driver was still struggling with the car and
his discomfiture, she rolled out, followed by Sara. Another car was
speeding down the road toward them. Seeing that something was wrong, it
slowed, and, as the girl ran into the road with hand uplifted, stopped.
It was a shining and costly glory of a car. The lone occupant, a furry,
dressy, granite-faced, old-appearing young man, removed a cigar from his
lips and silently looked his inquiry.

“These boys insulted us,” explained Sylvia.

The stranger took it under consideration, seemed to decide that it was
nothing to get excited over, and spoke. “Did they? Get in.”

The non-driver of the half-ditched auto came running up, followed by his
companion. “Hey, you!” he blustered. “You can’t get away with anything
here, you goddam dood.”

The fur-bearing motorist gave this due consideration also. He reached
into a side pocket and drew forth an automatic. “Can’t I?” said he. “Get
out.”

The girls got in. The boys withdrew, abashed but jeering to show they
were not afraid.

“We were going to Bergentown,” stated Sylvia.

“Were you?” said the rescuer. “I wasn’t.”

“Don’t let us incommode you,” said Sylvia politely.

“I won’t,” he replied.

He turned about, drove them seven miles at an appalling speed, and
pulled up in front of a bleak town hall. “Anything else?”

“No. Thank you a thousand times. We enjoyed the ride very much.”

“Did you? I didn’t,” returned the furred one and vanished around a turn.

“That’s the way life is,” murmured Sylvia. “You run into something grand
and exciting and it passes along and leaves you flat. We shall never see
his like again.”

Himself they never saw again. But they read of him a fortnight later,
under the newspaper caption

                        CLUB BOOTLEGGER KILLED.

The description of the man and the car was unmistakable.

The Bergentown tea-room, it appeared, was closed for repairs.

“That’s that,” said Sylvia. “What next?”

“Who cares?” Sara was now well inspired by the spirit of the venture.
“Onward Christian Hikers. Strike for the open road.”

Thenceforth their pilgrimage, as itemized in Sylvia’s note-book, later
written up, proceeded as follows:

    Item; farmer in shiny new Ford . . . 4 miles.

    Item; drunken, swinish insurance salesman . . . 2 miles and quit
    in disgust. A _foul_ creature.

    Item; country doctor and wife . . . 7 miles, being three miles
    out of their way. A pair of fussy old darlings, much concerned
    for the safety of us two young innocents.

    Item; delivery wagon . . . ½ mile (puncture).

    Item; bass horn of a country band, in great hurry to make a
    church fair somewhere but helped us along . . . 2 miles.

    Item; taxi on country call, very talkative . . . 1 mile.

    Item; girl in touring car (a very rare type of pick-up on a
    hike; girl’s inhumanity to girl makes countless thousands mourn)
    . . . 4 miles on our way and 1 mile out of it before we found
    our mistake.

    Item; fatherly, middle-aged bank cashier who became quite
    paternal and told us all about his daughter who was a head
    librarian, though only 35, whereat we expressed voluble
    admiration, Sara making a special hit with him and getting us
    both invited home to lunch, which we didn’t accept . . . 12
    miles.

    Total of distance covered since departure . . . 65 miles
    (estimated) and high time we had some grub and considered the
    homeward way.

They bought crackers, cheese and ginger ale at a grocery and ate it
sitting on a rail fence. Before they had finished a hospitable looking
milk truck—trucks are generally easy—came along, rattledy-banging with
empties and pulled up at Sylvia’s food-muffled but still comprehensible
signal. A gargoylish head protruded and estimated them from a level eye
(one), the other being slanted at an involuntary but coquettish angle.

“Hop yourselfs in,” invited the proprietor of this singular countenance.

On the whole they would have preferred not to. The quarters would be
close and the proximity possibly unsavory. But the unwritten law of the
sport provides that a “call” is a commitment. In they got. The driver
was young, robust and chatty. They gave themselves out as stenographers
returning from a disabled car and desirous of getting to the next town,
this being as far as they expected to be able to endure the association.
To their self-identification his prompt response was a foxy leer and a
“Know any newer ones than that?” The situation called for a display of
saving dignity. Sylvia said coldly:

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He was dismayingly undismayed. “Sure, you do!” And he began to sing in a
stentorian voice and wholly off the key, a ditty strange to them:

          “_You can fool any other silly owl in the tree_
          _But you_ CAN’T—FOOL—ME!”

His next procedure was to reach over and give Sylvia a hearty thump on
the shoulder. “I’m wise. College skirts. Which institootion, ladies?”

“I think you’re drunk,” returned the “stenographer” with a fine show of
indignation. “Let us out.”

He turned to grin in her face, his slanted, squinty eye giving to the
manifestation an expression of satyr-like lechery formidable to behold,
and immediately belied by the reassuring chuckle in his voice. “Sit
tight, sister. No offense meant. Don’t get sore.”

“No girl likes to be called a liar,” put in Sara.

“All right; all _right_! You could be Colleen Moore and Patsy Ruth
Miller for all I care. You see, I got a sister in Vassar and I know
something about these college cutie-cut-ups.”

“You?” The exclamation was unanimous, which made it none the more
flattering. He took it in good part.

“Don’t look it, do I? It’s straight, though. A chunk out of the middle
of the old pay check goes to Pow-kipsy every week. And if ever I caught
my kid traipsin’ around pickin’ up rides, I’d just turn her over and
spank her. Oh, it’s all right for youse two,” he added generously. “You
can get away with it. But not my li’l sis. _She’s_ too darn
pretty. . . . Wotcha laffin at?”

“I guess that makes us even,” declared Sylvia. “We’re your passengers as
far as you’ll take us. Have a cigarette.”

Nearly eighteen miles this proved to be before he reluctantly informed
them that he had to turn off or depend on them to think up a better lie
for the boss than he had in stock. They left him with urgent invitations
to come down to Sperry for one of the hockey or basketball games, really
heartfelt and hopeful, for they were socially strong enough to put
anything over, and could imagine nothing more enlivening than presenting
so genuine a specimen as Mr. Stanley Bogash (such was his amazing name)
to the crowd. But he modestly declined.

“The Toot Ensemble Social Club is about my high speed. Hope I meet you
again, girls.” And he was off.

Luck went with him, forsaking the travelers. Their next pick-up was a
soapy and corrupt auctioneer’s assistant who followed them with a volley
of abuse and smut when they insisted on getting out. Three successive
lifts at widening intervals thereafter netted them less than two miles,
all told. Everything seemed to be full or going in the wrong direction
or turning off at the next crossroad or callous to their appealing
glances and drooping figures. Moreover, the sky was getting filmy and it
was past the middle of the afternoon.

“Heaven helps those that help themselves,” observed Sara
philosophically. “Let’s hit the pike and keep going.”

“For forty miles, I suppose!”

“We can make a start, anyway.”

Sara was a changed person. The spirit of the adventure had taken hold on
her. She was vivid and alert as a fox. Her unwearying stride—faltering
only when a prospect hove in sight and that purely for purposes of
deception—threatened to wear down the endurance of even Sylvia’s strong
young body.

“You certainly have got rid of your blue devils,” remarked the latter.

“Red,” said Sara abruptly. This was nearer to a confidence than the
taciturn student had ever come before.

“Mine are blue, when I have ’em.”

“They’re not so bad. I wish to God I had your temperament!”

“I don’t believe I’ve got any,” confessed Sylvia.

“That’s what I mean,” returned the other, gloomily envious.

Sylvia made a venture. “Is it so hard?”

“It’s hell, sometimes. I wouldn’t care so much if it didn’t”—she
hesitated—“intrude when I’m working.”

Said Sylvia boldly: “Well, then, why don’t you?”

“I’m afraid. Oh, not physically. It’s a kind of superstition. I have a
feeling that if I didn’t—if I don’t go straight, it would react on my
work, and that I couldn’t go on here. Maybe I can’t anyway. I may have
to drop out at the end of the year.”

“_What?_”

“If I don’t make the Alumnæ Scholarship.”

“Is it money?”

Sara nodded. “The man who was helping me through died. Oh, it was all
right, my taking it. Not but what I’d probably have done it if it hadn’t
been. I’d do anything, _anything_ to get my education,” she concluded
fiercely.

“You’ve got a cinch on the Alumnæ, from what I hear.”

“I ought to come through if I don’t crash first.”

“Nerves?” enquired the other sympathetically.

“You can call it that if you like. It is nerves, of a kind; a highly
specialized kind as they would say in Hygiene if Hygiene dared to face a
case like mine. Wouldn’t they be horrified!” Her laugh was hard and
mirthless.

“Maybe you ought to see a doctor,” was Sylvia’s suggestion.

“Last vacation I went to a neurologist; one of the best. What do you
think he gave me for my ten dollar fee? The best he could do for me was
to tell me smugly that after marriage my symptoms would doubtless abate.
‘What if I don’t marry?’ I said and he spread out his hands like a
crow’s wings and purred out: ‘Well, my dear young lady! it would be
advisable,’ and handed me some in-the-meantime tosh about cold baths and
exercise and mental control. Witchcraft to cast out red devils.
Hartnett, I’m not _bad_!” she cried, her face a tragic bewilderment.
“Why are some girls made that way?”

Secretly appalled, Sylvia with a feeble idea of presenting the bright
side ventured: “Wouldn’t you rather be that way than the other
way—without anything of that at all—like Myrtle Dashiell?”

“No! I’d give anything to be as unfeeling as stone. Oh, well; I’ll live
through it, I expect. Anyway I’ve got it off my chest. . . . Let’s talk
about _your_ troubles.”

They plodded along through the dwindling day six weary miles before
Sylvia flumped down on a log. “I’m not going to walk another dam’ step,”
she announced sulkily. “What’s more you’ve got to engineer the next
hitch—if any. I’m pepless.”

Cars became scarcer and scarcer. In half an hour the watcher hailed but
seven, all of them vain hopes. By this time they would have gladly
caught a ride on a garbage cart, had one offered. The vehicle that next
hove in sight was not much more ornamental, being a queer wheeled hybrid
operated by a lone male, the most promising species of prospect. But to
Sara’s seductive “Hi!” the man turned a face as blank as a desert
landscape as his car humped unevenly along, and, like a desert
landscape, fringed with an oasis in the form of a stubbly mustache.

“Get a ‘Road Closed’ sign. That’s the only way _you’ll_ stop ’em,” said
Sylvia, very cross.

But Sara was looking hopefully toward the turn around which the
unsympathetic car had vanished. “I think he’s coming back.”

The auto chugged into view, backing jerkily. Sara stood waiting, her
lithe body straight as a flame in still air, a touch of flame in her
cheeks. “Did somebody signal me?” asked the motorist.

“Yes. We did.”

“I’m sorry. I’m rather absent-minded when I drive. What is it?”

“We wanted a ride.”

“Where to?”

“The way you’re going.”

“Get in.” He was perfectly cheerful, perfectly obliging, perfectly
neutral. Sylvia tumbled into the rear seat, leaving the front to the new
leader. She wanted to go to sleep and promptly did so.

Observation of the Sylvian technic had taught Sara that in successful
hitch-hiking the whole duty of the hitcher toward the hitchee is to be
conversationally interesting and interested. What should she tackle this
curious, composed and not unattractive specimen on? Having noted that
the car carried a commercial license she asked (as man to man, so to
speak):

“What’s your line?”

“Eh?” returned the stranger, turning on her a pair of small and shrewd
eyes in which a faint astonishment shone.

“I asked what line of business you’re in,” repeated the girl wondering
whether she had committed a solecism of some sort.

“Oh! I beg your pardon. What would you think, now?”

This was her cue to become flippant. “Butter and eggs.”

“And a pound of cheese,” he capped the line mildly.

Sara’s brilliant eyes went wide. “What? Wh-wh-where did you get that?”

“Off the same fly-leaf as you got yours. My Calverley’s a first
edition.”

“I—I thought you were some kind of farmer or grocer or something.”

“Well, there are lots of kinds of farmers, and some of ’em even read
poetry. I’m a farmer on my few leisure days. This is one of ’em.”

The car chugged and jerked and made progress of a sort. In the rear seat
Sylvia’s troubled slumbers were penetrated by weird chantings and bursts
of mirth. She struggled awake enough to speak. “What’s all the fuss
about?”

Sara turned upon her a strange face, bold with color and fervent with
fun. “This is a soul-mate. He knows Calverley by heart and sings the
most absurd songs in a still more absurd voice, and we’re going to his
house to cook ourselves some dinner——”

“I’m the rottenest cook in the world, and you’re no better,” objected
Sylvia.

“I’m the best—almost,” stated the cheery and confident stranger. “Also
there is beer. Home brew.”

Said Sylvia severely to her mate: “Did you ever hear of an institution
called Sperry College?”

“Oh, that’s all fixed. He’ll drive us home afterward. It’s only thirty
miles. He’s awfully nice and his name is—did you tell me your name?”

“No. We’ve been too busy. I am known by the romantic and overpowering
name of Marmaduke Rainger; Mark, for short. The Château Rainger is at
your service, gentles and nobles, if ever we reach it in this ark which
is constructed exclusively out of spare parts left over from Noah’s
craft of the same name.”

“Is there a Mrs. Rainger or anything?” Sylvia wanted to know.

“Nothing worth mention. It’s a terrible risk you’re taking. But you are
two to my one,” he pointed out gravely, “and you have the advantage of
me in youth and daring.”

“Don’t be an ass, Hartnett,” added Sara.

“Oh, I only asked as a matter of form. I’m game for anything if I can
get fed.”

With a gasp, a snort and a gurgle the car perished on a side road two
hundred yards short of a snug-built white cottage. Laden with bundles
they made the rest of the trip on foot.

Rainger built fires, fetched water, set the table, put on potatoes,
onions and corn, got out the promised beer and broiled a steak over
hickory embers in an open fireplace, that justified fully his generous
estimate of his culinary skill.

“But what _is_ he?” whispered Sylvia, as the two girls retired to the
one ground-floor bedroom to wash up.

“I don’t know. Something to do with shipping in the city, I believe.
This is his playhouse. I think he’s _grand_.”

“Very likely. But how is he going to get us back?”

“Leave it to him.”

Accepting all responsibility, the host went to a neighboring house to
telephone, after dinner, but returned with a dubious face and bad news.
“Can’t get a mechanic up here till to-morrow, and the garage won’t
promise a car before midnight and aren’t sure then!”

The truants looked at each other. “What’ll we _do_?”

“Stay here,” invited the proprietor of the “Château Rainger.”

“I’ve got a philos’ class first thing in the morning,” said Sara, who
majored in that subject.

“All right. Breakfast at five, served by my own fair hands. I’ll
undertake to land you on the campus—again my own fair hands—before
sunrise. Is it a deal?”

“It’s a deal.”

By an irrefragable rule of Suite Twenty, if any one of the H.B.V.’s
failed to return on time from an absence, one of the others dropped in
at eight o’clock at the local hotel and waited for a possible phone
call, thus eliminating the danger of being listened in on by the
constituted authorities. This time it was Verity who got Sylvia’s
message and undertook to fix things up for the absentees. Reassured,
Sylvia turned in. Sara proclaimed herself never less tired in her life.
She was going to sit up for a while and help the master of the house
keep the fire awake and fed. Before she dropped asleep, Sylvia heard
quick talk and low laughter outside. A saying of that wiseacre, Starr,
came back to her: “If they can make me laugh, they can make me love
’em.” Starr was facile in her affections. But Sara; she couldn’t quite
conceive of Sara in love. Yet it had been such a different Sara that
day, a Sara to whom anything might be possible. . . . She woke up with
that Sara, fully dressed, standing over her.

“Oh, Lordy!” groaned the sleeper. Then, “Haven’t you been to bed at
all?”

“Not that I can recall. But we had some swell coffee at half past two.
Breakfast will be served in the dining car in ten minutes.”

The first graying of the east had hardly begun when Rainger set them
down at the campus edge. Both girls kissed him good-by. They could
hardly do less. Besides, they wanted to! As they crossed to Trumbull
House Sylvia noticed a light in the office building.

“Whose room is that?”

“Looks like Giff’s.”

“I thought so. Let’s walk around that way.”

“And run the risk of being seen and reported?”

Sylvia’s smile was secret and confident. “He wouldn’t ever report us.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

Sylvia made a cautious approach to a spot that commanded a view into the
room. Patterson Gifford was bent over a desk with papers on it. As if
sensing something alien to his work he lifted and turned his face. It
was tired and lined and thoughtful. The girl was struck anew, was
stricken by his austere beauty. She blew a kiss toward the unconscious
figure and rejoined her comrade.

There was no difficulty over their entry. Starr, for whom servants and
minor officials gladly perjured their souls and risked their jobs, had
corrupted the complaisant old watchman with food and drink. Sara yawned.

“Too late for a nap. Got any coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s brew a pot. Then I’ll go to work and you can turn in.”

They made the coffee in Twenty. Sara drank two cups and set to her
books. But Sylvia did not turn in. Her day of adventure was not yet
ended.

The coffee had given her an idea for a finish.


                               CHAPTER XI

From the patent bottle with attendant cup and saucer, Patterson Gifford
lifted his tired eyes to the dim-bright face of the girl, bright with
adventure, dim with a soft weariness. She stood mutely, wistfully
smiling, in the oblong of yellow light from his opened door.

“Was it you outside, about fifteen minutes ago?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I thought so.”

“How did you know? It was pitch dark.”

To this he made no answer. “What are you doing here?” he asked
presently.

“I thought you might like some coffee.”

“All right.” He took the utensils from her hand and stood looking at her
expectantly. The expectancy seemed to be of her departure.

“You might be a little human,” she said sorrowfully.

“I might be too human.”

“I don’t know the answer to that one.”

“Perhaps this is it.” He stood back for her to enter. She dropped into
the nearest chair. “Another night ride?” he asked in a voice whose
unpleasant effect was mitigated by the cracker he was munching.

“Not of the same kind. Did you ever hear anything more of those people?”

“Nothing.”

“Then the human baboon didn’t die.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said with such gloom that she chuckled.

“You wanted to slaughter them all, didn’t you? I hated you for it at the
time. Because I was so scared, I suppose. Do you know, you’re very easy
to hate?” (Had she put it “You’re very easy to love,” the voice would
have been no more caressing). His face did not relax its strained,
reflected brutality.

“Do you know why I wanted to smash their foul heads in?”

“Yes. No. Tell me.”

“You remember, I told you that you’ve always given me an impression of
physical reticence.”

She said softly: “Yes. I liked that. I think I am that way.”

“It was the thought of that reticence being overborne, conquered,
invaded that drove me berserk.”

The fierce old Norse word fitted and expressed his strength, as tempered
as steel and as austere. Like a fanned and secret spark, the dark
passion in her leapt to meet and fuse with his savagery. “I _wanted_ you
to kill them—for a minute.”

“You called me a brute. It was true enough. Every man that is a man can
be a brute under provocation.”

“Is that a warning?”

He stared across the table at her, half admiring, half amused at her
effrontery. Beneath that trim, serene, confident and unaroused poise,
the presumptuous, the preposterous femininity of her called to him with
a summons which he understood so much better than she.

“It is as you take it.”

As if pursuing some earlier trend of thought she observed: “My mother
says that what’s wrong with the world is women starting in to think for
themselves forty years ago, and their daughters starting in now to do
what the mothers only thought about.”

“I don’t know how your mother got into this; but what is she like?”

“Oh, peaceful and set and old. Tries hard to be open-minded about me.”

“What would she think of this?”

“Nothing. It’s in her scheme of things that women should get up early to
feed men.”

“Of what this involves, then. Of what it is leading to.”

Calmly she accepted that implication. “She’d think it was _terrible_.”

“Is it terrible?”

“_I_ don’t know.” (Meaning, of course, “I don’t care.”)

Did she know? Or did she only feel vaguely to what consummation of
tyrannous nature they were being impelled? What was the basis of that
superb calm; that unafraid acceptance? Innocence; inexperience? He
needed an answer to that question. But now she had a question of her
own.

“Have you been working all night?”

“Pretty much.”

“Are you a bad sleeper?”

“At times.” He could have told her that he had lain awake that night,
thinking of her until fancy became an intolerable flame.

“Then do you come here and work?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes in the tower room of our house, where there is a
stove.”

“I thought so.”

He looked his question.

“I can see the light from the corner room of Twenty. I had a feeling
that it was yours.”

His hard smile changed without mollifying his expression. “I’ve flunked
more than one of your little companions by that light.”

“Whom are you flunking now?”

“Was Gwendolen Peters on that road house spree of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m perhaps flunking her.”

“How beastly of you!” she flashed. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d use
private information that way.”

Imperturbable, he answered: “I would and I shall.” After a moment he
added: “You may as well understand that I don’t recognize the
hairsplitting and infantile ethics that reduce life to the status of a
playground for mechanicalized sports. If I had conducted that little
affair in the wood-lot according to the principles of the Marquis of
Queensberry, you might not be so well off as you are now.”

A thought leapt in Sylvia’s mind. What if she were to say to him, “Were
you saving me for yourself?” Just for the adventure, the risk of it!
What would be his come-back to that?

He stated disagreeably, “I make my own rules.” (She abandoned the gaudy
idea.)

“Why be grouchy about it?” she retorted. “Besides you can’t. The world
is run by rule.”

“Not as much as it used to be. Most of the old rules were bonds, forged
to keep the human spirit in subjection. The acid of thought has eaten
them through.”

“Don’t you believe in anything?”

“Yes. Work. Scholarship. Achievement.”

“Freedom?” she ventured.

“For myself. The others can go to hell.”

Beneath their feet the furnace man banged about like a stoker for the
noisy fires of a discredited future. Gifford looked out of the window at
a paling star. Sylvia rose. She stretched out her hand for the vacuum
bottle.

“You haven’t half drunk the coffee I made you.”

“So I haven’t.”

Both laughed at nothing. Something dissolved in that nervous outbreak;
his restraint, her reticence.

“Sylvia,” he croaked.

The Eve-instinct, deep and obscure and flamingly apt to his call, rose
and for the first time in her unawakened womanlife, utterly possessed
her as she felt his lips stir and quiver upon hers. She leaned back from
him, her eyes dilate, big with secret speculation, hot with undefined
expectancy. Once more and longer they kissed. She freed herself
composedly enough, but wavered a little as she stepped back.

“Good-by, Giff.”

“This isn’t the end, you know.”

“How could it be?”

She darted across the snow, a night-elf pursued by the couriers of the
dawn. As she ran, a queerly exultant thought tingled from brain to
nerve-ends. “Starr can’t tell me anything about thrills after _that_!”


                              CHAPTER XII

“Why the feverish energy, M’Hartnett?”

Sylvia, surrounded by notes, reference books, and reports, looked up at
her classmate with nervous eyes. “Got a written to turn in.”

“Who for?”

“Giff.”

“You should disturb yourself! He’ll hand you an A on any old canned
goods.”

“Think so?” Sylvia was flattered. “But I gotta furnish something. It was
due last week.”

“They’ve got the Spring clothes show down at the Inn. Let’s beat the
bunch to it.”

“What about this tripe?”

“Leave it till evening. Wet towel; hot coffee. You’ll have it all
finished ere yet the tocsin sounds.”

Ever willing to be seduced from work, Sylvia yielded. After inspection
of the new styles the pair went for toasted sandwiches and coffee and,
with a bottle of the stimulant in hand for the night-watch, strolled
reluctantly home. There Sylvia decided that she was not quite keyed up
to work; maybe a bath would help. After the bath she recalled an
important letter unanswered and after the letter the deprecant
announcement, “It’s only me,” admitted Ida McKay on borrowing bent. Even
Ida was welcome as an excuse for postponing the evil hour and, to her
surprise and gratification, was bidden in for a talk. Ida’s snappiest
news was that Nixie, two pillows and a pair of blankets were out for the
evening with a suitor. As tidings, this was neither surprising nor new,
but it served to while away the time until nearly midnight, when Ida
departed. Then, with the coffee at her elbow and Starr spreading a film
of cheese over a pile of crackers, the sufferer settled down to the
ordeal.

One o’clock sounds on the deep bell; then two. Sylvia lifts a weary
head. _Why_ did she postpone the damn stunt so long? She began to pity
herself. Alone and wakeful in a world of night. Any one else awake at
that hour—except of course, Nixie? Probably not? Not even Sara La Lond,
who had abandoned her nocturnal pacings since the famous hitch-hike.
Sara had seemed a different person since that day. Could it have been
Mark Rainger’s influence? Had she seen him since? A curious personality;
not charming, exactly, but in some way pervasive. Hard to forget. And
Sara; how vivid she had looked that day! A small, brown face with big
brown eyes that drowsed and dreamed and became abruptly, vividly awake,
alive, questing, when some speech of Rainger’s struck fire and mirth
from them. And the low laughter of the two in the fire-flecked dimness
of that outer room at the “Château Rainger.” Could anything have
happened? . . . Of course not! Absurd to think of! And yet—with a groan
she dragooned her mind back to the task, drove her numbed pencil across
the paper.

Something stirring in the hall below. The slave of duty shook her head
violently, trying to free it from these disastrous influences,
when—Clang! Brang! Bong! Bong-Bong-Bong-Bong-Bong-Bong-Bong!

Fire drill!

Bump! went Verity’s window; bump! two seconds later, Starr’s. The two
emerged in bathrobes and carrying a towel each, to be joined by the
cursing Sylvia.

“Twice in less than a month. It’s a damn shame!”

“I smell smoke, though,” asserted Verity.

“Freshmen _always_ smell smoke,” said Sylvia crossly.

She darted in, snatched a towel, and rejoined the others. In the hallway
they met Sara La Lond, emerging in a breeze.

“Shut your window, you dumb bunny!” shouted Sylvia to her. She vanished.

The hallways and stairs were alive with hurrying figures.

“What time is it?” asked Starr, with a sudden thought.

“Just after two. Why?”

“Nixie!”

“Great cats! That’s so!”

Practically a state of feud existed between Suite Twenty and Elsie
Nichols since the event of the lamentable Loyster; but that counted for
nothing in such an extremity as this. Against the constituted
authorities, all Sperry girls (except Self-Guv officials and a few
volunteer godhoppers) stood shoulder to shoulder. Out in the hallway,
full of softly outlined forms and the sound of shuffling feet, the
H.B.V.’s sent the query circulating in whispers.

“Any one know whether Nixie is in?”

Nobody did. Dollars to dill pickles she was in the rear seat of
somebody’s car, it being a rainy night. Well; there was still a chance
of covering her trail at roll call.

Down the close huddled lines of girls, the sleepy responses ran.
“Martin?” “Here!” “Massinger!” “Here!” “Neylan?” “Here!” “Nichols!”
“Here!” A pause. The warden’s voice repeated “Nichols.” The lines swayed
uneasily. “She’s on,” went the gloomy whisper. “Who answered for
Nichols?” “I thought you said ‘Pickthall,’” whimpered the owner of that
name. It had been a forlorn hope, but worth trying.

“Miss Reynolds: report from Elsie Nichols’ room.”

There was a dismal silence, through which sounded the swift patter of
Esther Reynolds’ steps, going, returning.

“I can’t find her.”

A long, rippling sigh down the lines. Pinched at last. Well, they all
knew it was bound to come.

“Drill dismissed.”

The bath-robed figures returned to their rooms to conjecture what
penalty would be meted out to the truant, and to sleep, all but the
unhappy procrastinator of reports.

At four-twenty the pallid remains of Sylvia Hartnett set the alarm for
seven and staggered to bed. The remainder could be finished in the
morning.

The jangling whir awoke Starr, too. “Didn’t you finish?” she asked
drowsily.

“No,” barked the toil-worn student. “Get up and go over it for mistakes,
won’t you?”

“Awri’. Caw me, haff ’nour,” mumbled the obliging but slumbrous chum.

Verity joined the symposium at 7:30, offering to touch up indecipherable
words, or even to type it if there was time; meanwhile producing rolls
and promising coffee, as breakfast was out of the question for the
laggard. Over the finished opus the two delivered consolatory
assurances.

“Of course I don’t know the subject, but it looks swell to me,” from
Starr.

“D’you think it’s long enough to make a good showing?” came the anxious
query.

“It isn’t so very long.” Verity was painfully conscientious at times.
“But some faculties like ’em short.”

“It’s certainly neat—for a first draft,” contributed Starr.

“And you’ve got a spiffy bibliography.”

“But I don’t know that I quite get this part. What does it mean,
exactly?” Starr held the page up to the light, as if the explanation
might be concealed.

The authoress read it over feverishly. “Why, can’t you see? Here! Don’t
be _dumb_. It means that—it doesn’t mean a dam’ thing!” she broke out.
“That’s where the fire drill crashed in on me.”

Starr had a helpful idea. “Take Giff’s lecture and recast a couple of
paragraphs from it. You can cut Chapel and class and catch him when he
comes out, with a hand-made excuse.”

It seemed the only resource.

Emerging from his recitation room after a class at which Miss Hartnett
had not been present, Prof. Patterson Gifford was waylaid by a wistful
and weary maiden who offered a sheaf of neatly clipped sheets with a
soft-voiced apology for having overslept. The “faculty” looked
unimpressed.

“This was due last Friday, I believe.”

“Yes; but I couldn’t find some of the authorities that I specially
wanted,” lied Sylvia glibly. (If only she could catch his eyes with hers
which were ready to implore—“Please don’t be so facultyish with _me_,
Giff!”)

“Humph!” commented Prof. Patterson Gifford but Sylvia was so sure of
having seen the despotic chin twitch that she reported later to Suite
Twenty: “I put it over him like a tent.”

The two juniors had a smoke to celebrate the supposed victory, going to
the roof for the purpose while Verity studied some new business for her
part. Starr, curious, ventured a tentative violation of one of the
H.B.V. fundamental tenets; viz., no questions asked.

“Syl, have you really got sneakers for Giff?”

“I expect you might call it that.”

“Nobody’s ever succeeded in making him yet.”

“So they claim. What does that prove?”

“Well—of course—but—isn’t it dangerous?”

“That’s what gives it a kick. That and his hard shell.”

“Are you really crazy about him?”

“I dunno. I might be.”

“Lay off him, girl! Lay off him. It’s no good.”

“I shan’t! Why should I? All the rest of you go necking around with boys
that would never raise my temperature a millionth of a degree. But if I
play a game that’s got some pep in it——”

“All right. All _right_! It’s your game. I’m out.”

“Not sore, are you?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“Well, I’ve had my shot at you. Want to take one at me?”

“Yes: If you want to tell me.”

“Shoot. It’s about my week-end in New York, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You canned Aleck for wanting too much for his money. Then what?”

“Oh, then I called up Lloyd. He was just going out of town, but he left
the keys to the apartment with the janitress and a _sweet_ note, telling
me to make myself at home and the key to the pre-war locker was inside
the clock and if I needed pajamas, his best would be honored to be of
use, but he was locking up his toothbrush until we knew each other
better. He’s such an old lamb. So I went down there to think things
over.”

“What did that get you?”

“It got me an evening paper with a head-line in it about a semi-official
reception to some German big-bug at the Plaza that evening. And says I
to myself, ‘My Fritzie-Captain will be there. Such is fate.’”

“Was he?”

“If he hadn’t been, this story wouldn’t be worth telling.”

“How did you reach him?”

“I tried to crash the gate, but Sperry methods were no good against the
cold brutality of Prussian militarism. But I did get a note through
informing my Fritzie that Miss Sarepta Hassenpfeffer——”

“You told us Schallenburger.”

“Yes; but I couldn’t remember to save my life, in the excitement of the
moment. Any name was good enough, when accompanied with what I put with
it. Out came my beautiful Fritzie and I got the thrill that comes but
once in a semester—at least, that’s my average. He seemed rather
pleased, himself.”

“Did you own up?”

“Approximately. I couldn’t stand for being called Fraulein Sarepta, you
know.”

“Did he take you in to the show?”

“No. He came out. We went dancing. He dances like a wiz and makes love
like a—like a flame. At two in the morning we were drinking champagne
in one of those Greenwich Village jazz-joints, and I remembered that
Lloyd’s was only a few blocks away, so I suggested that he stop in and
have a farewell drink.” Starr extinguished her cigarette with minute and
suspicious care. Sylvia waited. Was this the end of the chapter?
Couldn’t be! She put the logical question.

“Well? Did he?”

“He did. That is, we had the drink—but not the farewell.”

“_Starr!_ You mean, you asked him to _stay_?”

“I didn’t ask him. It wasn’t necessary.”

There was a long pause. The girls did not look at each other. Then
Sylvia said in what was meant to be a matter-of-fact tone: “I don’t know
why we make so much fuss over what is a perfectly natural thing. . . .
Have you seen him since!”

“No.”

“Aren’t you going to see him again?”

“I—don’t—think—so.”

“Starr—don’t answer this unless you want to—was it—had you—you never
had before, had you?”

There followed a perceptible pause. Starr said quietly, “No.”

“Let’s go back,” said Sylvia. Both were silent during the climb down. In
the lighted hallway Sylvia tried hard not to steal furtive glances at
her friend. Was she different, changed, perhaps in a way aloof and
superior because of her maturing experience? Some girls said that the
whole point of view changed when you “became a woman.” Would the change
be apparent only to the subject of it, or would others feel a subtle
difference? Questions impossible to put; equally impossible not to
wonder about.

For once, Suite Twenty went to bed betimes. Of the two who had exchanged
confidences, it was Sylvia who tossed and burned and finally fell into a
sleep troubled by uncertain dreams. The town crier passed through them
proclaiming some girl’s secret and wild doings, Starr’s, Verity’s, her
own—with Giff!—Sara’s, Nixie’s, her own again, and finally brought her
forth from sleep with his jangling.

It was the Chapel bell rousing Sperry to another day of routine.


                              CHAPTER XIII

“Heard the dirt?”

“No. Ply your shovel.”

“Nixie.”

“What about her?”

“Kicked.”

“For keeps?”

“Yep.”

“Who told you?”

“Roxy Ann. She got it from Gwen and Gwen met Nixie coming out of Prexy’s
office.”

“Sounds straight enough.”

“I’ll say so.”

“Well, I call it rotten.”

“It’s a stinkin’, dam’ shame.”

“I thought an R. L. was the worst she’d rate.”

“It’s all she ought to have had.”

“Once they get a hate on you, it’s flooey for yours.”

“Bet there isn’t any other college would slate a girl like that.”

“And what did Nixie do, after all? Just stayed out a little after
hours.”

“It’s the limit; that’s what it is.”

“Dirty pups!”

Not a contributor to the dining hall symposium of wrath but knew that
Elsie Nichols had more than deserved her expulsion. That she was on
honor to obey the rules formulated by the student body itself for its
own guidance, that she had consistently cheated, involving others in the
dangers of her duplicity, counted for nothing. The unwritten law of
take-a-chance-on-anything-you-can-get-away-with was on her side: she was
a martyr and the authorities tyrants. Trumbull House was hot in
partisanship. The resentful quick-fire continued:

“They say she gave Prexy an earful.”

“What about?”

“Oh, repressions and rules and not giving a girl an even break with her
boy-friends: ‘How are lives stunted and starved!’—that stuff.”

“I heard she’d ’fessed up.”

“To what?”

“Everything.”

“Don’t you believe it. Nixie’d be game to the finish.”

“She’ll snap out of it some way.”

“How can she if it got to Prexy?”

“Always has.”

“But she’s been on the J.B. records since second term, Freshman.”

“Ida McKay saw her packing up.”

“Ida would, if the keyhole wasn’t plugged.”

“Gee! The nights will be dull without Nixie!”

“I will say this much, though; if any——”

“Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh!”

The nervous, weedy figure of Elsie Nichols lounged through the entrance
and slouched to its place.

“Anything left to manger?”

Every one feverously and solicitously passed things to her. She looked
about, a gleam of humor in the dangerous eyes. “Fattening the victim for
the sacrifice.”

“Is it true, Nixie?”

“Sure, it’s true,” was the composed reply. “Who’s going to take in my
orphaned dolls?”

A dozen voices offered hospitality. Pink Delavan inquired: “What did
Prexy say?”

“Prexy’s a lamb. We had a real heart-to-heart.”

“Didn’t he kick you?”

“Sure he kicked me. Then I gave him the low-down on some things about
Sperry that he’d never even dreamed of. It wasn’t his fault.” (The whole
noisy room became quiet: every interest focused on the speaker).

“Whose was it?”

“The godhoppers. They’ve had it in for me right along.”

Esther Reynolds, the Self-Guv corridor representative sitting at the
next table squirmed, and reddened, and her eyes took on a filmy glaze.
From further down the room Prudence Chase said quietly:

“That isn’t so, Elsie, and you know it.”

There was an excited buzz. Prudence as Chairman of the Judgment Board
was not popular with the clique—it was not possible that she should
be—but they respected her character and courage. Nixie turned her big,
queer head toward the challenge.

“I’m a liar, am I?”

“Yes.”

“Right you are, generally speaking. Dishonesty is the best policy if you
want to enjoy life at Sperry. So that’s that.” She fell to eating.

“But, Nixie, what are you going to do-oo-oo?”

“I’ll live through it, I guess. Pipe down and talk about something
else.”

Little else was talked about for three days when a sensation of more
immediate concern to Suite Twenty succeeded Nixie’s débâcle as a topic.
Gwen Peters came flying in from Ethics Two and encountered Starr in the
hall.

“Where’s Syl?”

“Dunno. Wasn’t she in class?”

“For a while she was. Then she wasn’t, and I saw her loping across the
campus like a bat out of hell.”

“What happened?”

“Giff handed her the worst bawling-out of the year.”

Patterson Gifford’s bawling-out—an inexpressive term for his quietly
corrosive method of public castigation—were a tradition and a treat,
one of the rare features which kept his pupils expectant and his classes
popular. They were bitter, humorous, and just, and they often embodied
in lively form a thesis upon the relationship of student and Alma Mater
which gave his hearers a new point of view.

Starr made a deduction. “That report, huh?”

“I’ll say it was that report. He read part of it to the class, _with_
running comments.”

Starr whistled, a short, reflective, pitying pipe. “What did he say?”

“The juiciest part was where he said that excerpts from his own unworthy
works—she must have cribbed that lecture straight, the dumb
bunny!—suggested an interesting contrast between plagiarism and
research; then there was something about personal consideration being
overestimated——”

“The skunk! Did he give her name?”

“Didn’t need to. Syl sat there looking like a torch-light parade; then
like an icicle. In the intermission for questions, she got up and walked
out.” The reporter stopped. She looked hesitantly at the other. “Starr.”

“Well?”

“There was one queer thing about it. You know how Giff usually hands out
the whipping-post stuff; calm and pleasant, like a man who rather enjoys
the job.”

“Yes.”

“This was different. All the time, he was furiously angry—_hot_ angry,
you know; not just the hanging judge kinda thing—and hurt. Say: he
isn’t crazy about Syl, is he?”

“I hope so,” returned Starr viciously.

All that day the roommates did not see their third member. Nor did her
classes, nor the eating hall. At five minutes before ten, she came in.
Verity was busy with some chocolate. Starr gave quick study to her
friend’s face. There was a tightness in it that she had seen once
before; a tightness which, in herself, would have dissolved only in a
burst of furious tears. Sylvia never cried. For that very reason Starr
was secretly afraid of her; even more afraid for her. She gave
commonplace greeting.

“Hullo.”

“Hullo.” The tone was not as frozen as the other had feared.

“Hungry?”

“Yes.” This was good.

“Vee’s got some grub ready.”

“Swell!”

Sylvia got off her shoes. They were wet. Starr brought her a dressing
gown and a cigarette. She won no thanks except a nod; also a good sign.
The prodigal ate several toasted crackers, drank two cups of chocolate,
asked for another Lucky. Vee came over to her.

“Want to sleep in my room to-night?” Vee’s cubicle was a one-girl room;
Syl would be alone, there. The victim of man’s inhumanity to woman shook
her head.

“Going to turn in pretty soon?” asked Starr.

“No.”

“Want to talk?”

“Yes.”

“It was the overdue report, of course.”

“Yes.”

Verity said in her clear and honest voice what Starr would hardly have
ventured. “It was pretty punk, you know.”

Angrily accusatory, Sylvia turned on them. “You said it was swell. Both
of you.”

“That was to cheer you up.” Starr meant this to have a soothing effect.
She received a glare which would have done credit to a tigress.

The freshman contributed nothing of serenity to Sylvia’s mind by adding:
“If a faculty believes that you’re working him for a meal-ticket, he
naturally gets sore.”

“I’m not working him for a meal-ticket,” was the wrathful disclaimer. (A
“meal-ticket,” in this sense, means high marks or other class
favors—and perhaps Sylvia _had_ presumed a little on her drag with the
professor.)

“Still, he might think so,” pointed out Vee, with a show of reason.

A show of reason was the last straw for the martyr. Her wrath broke
through her reticence, in a passionate spate of words. “He’s a loathly
toad. I hope he rots. He—he kissed me. _Really_ kissed me, I mean. That
morning. After the hike. And now he makes a goat of me, this way. It’s
rotten. It’s beastly. It’s—it’s—” she searched the store house of
wrath for forbidden lore—“it’s _sadistic_. That’s what it is. The
snay—(glug)—unk!” This peculiar summation was estimated by the
startled hearers to be a composite indictment, comprising the elements
of “snake” and “skunk” and finding both insufficient.

Verity, scandalized, said: “You petted with a _faculty_?”

“Of course I did. I didn’t mean to tell, but now I don’t give a damn.”

Unexpectedly Starr murmured: “Poor Giff!” She had remembered what Gwen
said, and could imagine that austere face, burning but controlledly
still under the self-torture. Starr, instinctively wise in her
femininity, knew that when a man fell for Sylvia, he would fall hard,
whether Patterson Gifford or another. But what about the girl? What had
been her response to the new experience? Her response to her roommate’s
comment was a haughty: “I suppose you think that’s funny,” followed by a
goodnightless departure for bed.

Hours later the wakeful and thoughtful Starr heard a long-drawn sigh
from the other bed, followed by the pluffy swish of a rearranged pillow.

“Syl?”

“What?”

“Are you sane again?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got something I want to ask you. When Giff kissed you did you get
a kick out of it?”

A low, uncertain and surprising chuckle answered her. “Did I! Oh, boy!”
Then: “That’s what makes it seem so rotten, his turning on me.”

But Starr was not primarily interested in the grievance. That, she felt
sure, would adjust itself. “It was first alarm for you, wasn’t it?”

“Yep. And it’ll be the last, as far as he’s concerned.”

Starr smiled in the darkness. “I knew you’d come to your senses one of
these days.”

Again that dim chuckle. “I think my senses have come to me. And I don’t
quite know what to do about it. At least, I didn’t at the time.”

Starr sat up abruptly. “What did you do about it?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s all right then.”

“Is it! Wait until I get my chance at that rotter.”

Privately Starr considered that Giff had probably been right though
rough; but as a discussion upon the sore point would hardly have been
conducive to sleep, she merely said: “Good-night,” and turned over.


                              CHAPTER XIV

Winter had broken. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it
exploded. Its shattered fragments, snowbanks left in the folds of the
Hills, patches in tiny bays of the pond, were being dissipated by the
mopping-up activities of a victorious spring sun which (sign of an
ofttimes too optimistic hope) had brought bicycles out on the campus.
The gym windows stood wide to air out the place for the sophomore-senior
basket ball game. Sara La Lond, flushed with exercise and vivid as a
young animal, came out and made for Suite Twenty, Trumbull.

Since the day of their hitch-hike, already become a classic chapter in
the unwritten history of Trumbull House, a curious and confident
friendship had sprung up between Sylvia Hartnett and Sara La Lond. The
brilliant, laborious and usually saturnine scholar would come to Suite
Twenty when Sylvia was alone there, and sit talking at top speed and in
high, if rather sardonic spirits, or smoking with a singular daintiness,
a small clay pipe in a comfortable silence. Seldom did she come when the
other H.B.V.’s were in. She did not like Starr—a little jealousy there,
Sylvia suspected—and regarded Verity with amused but impatient
incomprehension. In some unanalyzable way, Sara seemed to have blossomed
since that December day. Her personality had expanded; she seemed more
at ease with herself and her world; and her work was even better than it
had been. Something of the old nerve-strain was evident in her bearing,
though she sedulously tried to cover it with an air of insouciance as
she approached the door and entered. All three occupants were there.

“Have any of you girls heard of any papers being found around the
hallways since the night of the fire drill?” she asked.

“I remember there was a lot of stuff blowing around in the dark that
night,” said Verity.

“What have you lost?” asked Sylvia. “Not part of your prize theme?”

“No. Just some private stuff. Not specially important.”

Was it accident that Starr and the freshman drifted out of the room on
suddenly remembered engagements? Sara shrewdly doubted it. It was
generally believed that Suite Twenty operated a code of silent signals
so secret that its very medium of communication had never been
discovered by any outsider. (This, by the way, added greatly to the
prestige of the H.B.V. trio.) Sara was sure of it when Sylvia at once
accused her.

“You’re worried.”

“A little. Part of a letter I was writing has gone.”

“Signed?”

“No. It was a second page, typed. It must have blown off my desk when I
opened my door.”

“‘Rule 3-C—Do not open door until windows are closed and draft thus
guarded against,’” quoted the other from the fire regulations.

“That’s past mending. Hope no snooper picked it up.”

“Was it to Mark?”

“Yes.”

“Anything in it to show it was yours?”

“A reference to our hitch-hike.” (Sylvia grunted; the whole campus knew
of that exploit), “and a date. Tentative. No names or places. But there
may have been a letter of Mark’s, too. I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Not too good. I’ll sniff around and see if I can hear anything.” Upon
which triply mixed metaphor the scholar started out, when her friend
held her up.

“Girl, are you behaving?”

“You mean about Mark?”

“Darn Mark! I mean about overwork.”

“Never felt so fit in my life.”

“But you’re working ten and eleven hours a day——”

“And sleeping eight hours a night. I could lick the world on that
schedule.”

“Why strain a tendon?” argued the other. “You’ve got the Alumnæ
Scholarship lashed.”

“Yes. Maybe. Unless——”

“Unless what?”

“There are other considerations besides scholarship.”

“I don’t get you, Stephanie.”

“Oh, well, I might set fire to the chapel or pull old Miggle’s whiskers
or have an illegitimate child or deliver a bolshevik address in Debate
or have the wrong person find that letter——”

“But you said there were no names.”

“There was that New York date. Syl, you don’t happen to be going down
for the week-end of the 24th, do you?”

“I was thinking of doing that very little thing; give the aged
grandparents a treat.”

“Take me with you.”

“Of an assurance. Get your parents to write and sign up for the green
ticket to have you spend the week-end with us.”

“That’s the difficulty,” returned Sara calmly. “My parents can’t write.”

Understanding this to mean that there was some obstacle to the elder La
Londs’ making application, Sylvia inquired: “Why not?”

“They don’t know how,” said the finest scholar in her class calmly.

The other simply stared.

“Don’t let it shock you. My father is a French Canuck, and wholly
illiterate. My mother was a Portuguese Islander, and can hardly speak
English. _Voila tout!_ They could get someone to write and affix their
marks, but—— Well, it’s all false, silly pride on my part——”

“Of _course_ my grandmother will write,” hastily broke in the other.

“I won’t really be staying with you, you know.”

“You’ll be more than welcome,” Sylvia assured her.

“That isn’t the idea. I want this week-end to myself, if you can fix it
with your family.”

“Sure.”

This, Sylvia reflected, after the other had gone, was probably the date
with Mark which was mentioned in the lost sheet of Sara’s letter. And
that reminded her of something she had meant to tell her. Ida McKay had
been making inquiries about the House, as to who was going away over the
week-end of the 24th. That might be just Ida’s prevalent
inquisitiveness, or it might be something more dangerous; she’d try to
remember to speak to Sara later.

(How dangerous, Sara could have told her, for that missing sheet
contained these words: “No: I can’t get away this week. Not before the
24th, and I ought not to come then. It isn’t conscience: I haven’t any
about us, dear. It is work: but I’ll fix that some way.”)

Meantime Sylvia herself was restless and unsettled. More than a week had
passed since the grilling in History Three and no word had come from
Patterson Gifford. She wanted to go to him and have it out, but Starr,
the strategist in all affairs of the heart, opposed the direct attack.
It would put her at a disadvantage.

“What do I care!” said the wrathful girl. “I can tell him what I think
of him.”

“Don’t you care—really?”

“No,” was the stout reply.

“Then apply for a transfer from his course. That will put it up to him.”

Sound advice, and ingenious. Sylvia put in her application. In the
course of routine it was referred to Prof. Gifford. He sent for her.

“Why do you wish to transfer, Miss Hartnett?” His tone was professional,
kindly, interested.

“I don’t see that I’m getting any good out of the course.”

“I agree. Your work has slumped badly.”

“Then what use is there in my staying? Unless you want the satisfaction
of flunking me.”

“It would not be a satisfaction. It might be a necessity.”

“Oh, if it’s a duty, of course, you’ll flunk me,” she broke out. (Why
did he have that power of irritating her self-control beyond endurance!)

“Undoubtedly.”

His calmness was too much. Probably it covered a satyric amusement.
“Conscience is your middle name, isn’t it! Except when you’re making
love to some girl.”

His face changed. He rose and closed the door of the office, then stood
confronting her, his eyes hardly more than level with hers. “The basis
changes. Whom am I dealing with now? Sylvia, the dawn-elf, is a very
different person from Hartnett, the sloppy shirk of History Three.”

“I’m not a sloppy shirk.” Almost on that same spot she had gone to his
arms and momentarily lost herself in a new and passionate comprehension.
His eyes now, as then, had become hot and threatening. But his voice was
still the instrument of his mockery.

“I think you are. And something of a cheat, too.”

“Oh!”

“Did I make love to you?”

“Didn’t you? I suppose you mean that I started it.”

His response to this was more a grin than a smile. It began her defeat.
Angrily yet wistfully she said: “You won’t let a fellow get away with
anything, will you!”

“Not with the stale old man-and-girl gambit. Let’s deal in facts.”

“All right. Why am I a cheat?”

“Because you expected me to give you good marks in return for your
favors, and on that presumption you turned in a report that a high
school girl might have been ashamed of. Such a procedure I can interpret
only in terms of an assumed bargain. Very good: let us deal, then.
Exactly what terms do you offer?”

His quiet brutality took her wholly aback. She found nothing better to
say than a murmured and rather piteous: “I think you’re rotten.”

“Sit down, please.” She took the chair which she had occupied on that
morning of the early coffee. He sat opposite her, as then. He said with
vigor and conviction, “Sylvia, I’m disappointed in you.”

“You’ve told me that, already.”

“Knowing you to be game physically, I thought you were game morally. I
was wrong.”

“I loathe you.”

Impatience and compassion were in his tone. “It is not a question of
what you think of me, but of what I think of you. You deserved
everything that I said about your report. Didn’t you? . . . Well, I’m
waiting.”

She maintained the silence of obstinacy.

“At least you can’t deny it. But you hadn’t the fortitude to stand up
and take it. I’m ashamed of you.”

Then she struck. “Would you have roasted me that way, if it hadn’t been
for what happened here, that morning?”

His demeanor changed from that of the judge to that of the
self-questioner. “You think I did it to prove to myself my own——”

“Incorruptibility,” she broke in.

“Or”—he had paid no heed to the interruption—“was it because it was
_you_? A sort of perverse desire to hurt you; is that what you’re
getting at?” He seemed startled at this formulation. “Do I care that
much?” he muttered.

“Not as much as for your own standards of morality.”

“Even if I were in love with you, I would not favor you in class,” he
declared.

“The upright judge. Your favorite pose.”

“And I’m by no means certain that I’m in love with you.”

“That makes it unanimous!”

Her flippancy provoked no response from him. “You thought I was and you
presumed upon it. There you infringed on my standard of morality; the
only one I profess and practice. A poor thing, but mine own. That is no
pose, Sylvia.”

“I’m not sure that I even know what you’re talking about.” She was still
nursing her resentment. “Is it some trick of faculty ethics?”

“I don’t care a damn for the conventional moralities. No student of
history can. The eternal verities! Forever changing their aspects in the
interests of whatever perishable authority happens to be in power. The
turncoats and lickspittles of man’s progress upward; that is what moral
codes are!” He spoke with a kind of high anger. “But there is something
higher; the light that mind hands on to mind. We’ve got it on our seal
here at Sperry: ‘Lampadia echontes.’ That is the one thing that we must
keep undimmed and uncorrupted.”

He rose and strode about, flinging his arms wide; he, the restrained,
constrained, contemptuous and sardonic ironist. The girl thrilled at
this unconscious betrayal of the fire at his heart.

“Look at this place. A great woman suffered and slaved and braved the
ridicule of her friends and the abuse of her contemporaries to build it.
Since then women have diverted their instincts of creativeness to its
purposes, and men have given the best in them to make it a force for
thought and progress. What happens? You petty chitterlings, cheap
flutterers, come here and make it a convenient sort of country club for
the four years which you don’t know how to occupy better. Waste and the
frustration of high purposes. That is the final immorality, the one
unpardonable sin.”

Sylvia whispered to herself: “Giff, I love you.”

That he should have heard it was impossible. Perhaps his hot eyes had
read her lips. Perhaps his flaming soul had read her heart. His next
words seemed an answer, and a denial, a return to his habitual mood of
quiet contempt.

“Yes: for my fine words. And I’m belying them while I speak them, by
being here with you, by letting myself become interested in you, by
making love to you.”

“_Are_ you making love to me?” This time the words were spoken aloud,
and followed, fatally, by a giggle. It was pure overstrain of nerves and
emotions. But his face changed. The dark exaltation in it died bitterly.
He laughed.

“Thank you. I’m a fool, of course. I’m talking to you like a woman, and
you’re only a silly child. Waste!”

“I’m a woman for you, Giff.”

His eyes burned again. He said composedly: “You are a Junior at Sperry,
come to consult a member of the faculty on a change of course.”

“I don’t want to change now.”

“Very well. Withdraw your application with your dean.”

“Promise not to flunk me?” she was incorrigible.

“I’ll undertake to flunk you at the end of this semester unless you make
up that report.” (So was he.)

“I sat up all night over that dam’ thing. Have you been sitting up
nights again?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t seen any light in your office.”

“Not there. When my wife is away, I work in the studio room at the top
of my house.”

She nodded. “Yes, don’t you remember, I told you that I can see your
light through the trees, from Twenty?”

“Yes: I know. . . .” Had he, too, been watching and thinking—thoughts?

“What would you do if I were to walk in on you some restless night?”

“You couldn’t. The outside doors are kept locked.”

“Are all doors locked in your life, Giff?” She was as pleased by her
allusive cleverness as she was startled at her daring.

He said slowly. “Not against you, if you really wanted to come in.”

At that, panic fell upon Sylvia Hartnett. She turned and went away.


                               CHAPTER XV

For two nights and days in New York Sylvia neither saw nor heard from
Sara La Lond. Mark Rainger had met them at the station and politely
included Sylvia in his dinner invitation, which she as tactfully
declined. She had plenty to do at the Library, working on her substitute
thesis for Patterson Gifford to replace the fateful rejected one. This
time she was determined to make a killing. She would show Giff what she
could do when she set her mind to it!

On Sunday afternoon Sara called up. “I’m motoring back to coll.”

“With Mark?”

“Yes. Want to come along?”

“No; thanks. I’ll stick to the train.”

“Everything all right at your end?”

“Yes. I’ve covered your trail. Where are you?”

“Somewhere south of Harlem and having a marvelous time,” Sara laughed
happily. “See you to-morrow.”

That evening a belated and wettish snow set in. Recalling Mark’s
temperamental driving, Sylvia hoped that the pair had got a good start.
But when she reached the campus next morning, she found her roommate not
yet arrived. At ten o’clock Sara turned up in class, flushed and
excited, coughing a little but insisting that she had not caught cold.

At midnight an intermittent tapping at the door of Twenty roused Sylvia.
Prudence Chase stood there in sandals and bath robe. Without being in
the least a snooper, Prudence had a faculty of knowing what was going
on, and a gift for handling troublesome situations which made her the
most trusted and respected and not the least feared of the
self-government officers.

“La Lond’s ill,” she whispered.

Sylvia grabbed her dressing gown and crossed the hall with the other.

The prize scholar lay in her bed, her face reddened and splotchy. Her
lips, dry and loose, moved in an incessant whisper. She only muttered
when Sylvia spoke to her.

“Oughtn’t we to get her to the infirmary?” asked the girl in dismay.

Prudence shook her head. “She’s talking.”

The sick girl’s voice took on coherence. “Oh, Mark! Help me find
it. . . . Of course it was your letter. Whose else would it be? I’ve
told you there was nobody else. There hasn’t been since—since I entered
college. I’ve looked everywhere. It must have blown out the door. . . .
Part of mine, too. Why did you write me that way? It’s my fault for
being careless. Of course you have a right to write as you feel. But
they’ll find it and read it and I’ll be kicked. Or if I’m not they’ll
disqualify me for the scholarship—unimpeachable moral character and all
that, you know—and Whittall will get it. I need it so, Mark! Please
help me! . . . No, your name wasn’t on it. You won’t be kicked. That’s
funny, isn’t it? That ought to give you a laugh. . . . Don’t you care,
dear! It really was my fault for not burning it. Good moral character;
‘Applicant must be of unimpeachable moral character.’ I’m not, you know.
We’re not. Are we? . . . I’m not blaming you, dear. You mustn’t blame
yourself, either, or be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry about, unless
I lose the Alumnæ, and maybe I wouldn’t have got it anyway. I’m not
sorry; not a bit. I wanted to stay; Yes, even that first time. . . . Oh,
well, a girl has to pretend. Isn’t it silly? But I’m telling the truth
now. Any time after that first night in your cottage when we sat up all
night and talked. Yes, even then, if you’d asked me. Sylvia can tell
you. She was shocked. . . . No, no, don’t say anything to her about it.
Don’t say anything to anybody. They’d find out about us and I’d be
kicked. For not being respectable. You’re respectable, aren’t you, Mark
dear? But how can you be if I’m not? . . . Long before that. Long, long
before. They’d look back and find out about it and I’d be kicked.
Professor Gifford knows about it; anyway he suspects. Not about us, but
what happened long ago. He’ll never tell. He’s a sport, Giff is. He
believes in brains; that’s all he does believe in. Pretty good
religion—what? Everybody knew at home. I was only a kid then. I didn’t
know what it was all about. That oughtn’t to count, ought it? It does,
though. It makes you not respectable. No matter how much of a kid you
were. I don’t understand about that, do you? It’s different from
anything else you do. If you’re sick you can get well, and if you’re
dirty you can get clean again. But if once you’re not respectable you
can never get respectable again. Funny world. Funny rule. Did you make
that rule, Mark? Or was it God? I guess it was the trustees. They’re
terribly respectable or of course they wouldn’t be trustees.”

Prudence at the window said: “How can we take her to the infirmary and
have them hear . . . ?”

“What’ll we do? She looks awful.”

“I thought you could get Dr. Rathbun while I stay with her.”

Even this much would be imperiling the official’s position. Sylvia
recalled with remorse some of her too-sweeping strictures on the
“godhoppers” in which category she had listed all student officials. The
hot, quick voice from the bed began to whimper. It became childish and
pleading.

“I never! Honest, I didn’t. Not if you was to send me to the principal a
hundred times. . . . I don’t care what Johnny Barto said. Johnny Barto’s
a liar.” Then with a sob, “I only did it because all the rest did.”
There followed a revelation of early school days that terrified and
sickened the unwilling listeners until the swollen eyes opened and
another voice, a woman’s voice said clearly: “Not after that, ever,
until you, Mark. It was terribly hard sometimes. It is when you’re
not—quite—respectable. You see, you know so much, and that makes it
hard.”

“Sara! Wake up! You mustn’t.”

“That’s Sylvia. Ask her. She’ll tell you. She’ll tell you that I
couldn’t take your money. Not now. It would make everything horrid
between us. . . . Is that you, Syl?”

“Yes, dear. Lie quiet. I’m going for the doctor.” She hurried out and
was back in twenty minutes with the young physician.

Dr. Rathbun was known to be reliably secretive; he had handled too many
of those confidential cases which are common in a college town, not to
have deserved his reputation. The patient greeted him upon his entrance.

“Mark! How did you get here? It’s no use your coming, dear. I am not
going to marry you. I don’t want to marry any one, not even you. I
couldn’t belong to any one that way. Why can’t you let things go on as
they are, dear? Oh, _no_; I couldn’t take your money. . . . I’ll drop
out a year and make some money and then come back if they’ll let me. If
they haven’t found the letter. . . . You know you put too much salt on
the steak and made us laugh and that’s what began it all.”

The physician quieted her and, after examination pronounced it a severe
case of tonsillitis with high fever. Infirmary in the morning. But not
until the delirium broke. He understood. Sylvia sent Prudence Chase to
bed and sat out the night with the sick girl.

Four days later Sara, back in her room, was smoking unpermitted
cigarettes with her friend.

“You gave yourself away the other night when you were light in the bean,
old girl.”

“Did I?” Sara was undisturbed.

“About money. How much do you need to get through?”

“More than I’m likely to pick up in the road.”

“We had a conference on it in Twenty. D’you mind?”

“Yes. What if I do?”

“I’m to blame then. I couldn’t see any harm. Starr and Vee and I figured
out that between us we could raise the wind a couple of hundred.”

The scholar shook her dark, sleek head. “I won’t take it. Anyway it
wouldn’t get me through.”

“What would?”

“Not less than five or six hundred.”

“Then I think you ought to take it from Mark.”

“Would you take it from Giff?” retorted the other.

“It isn’t the same.”

“You mean it hasn’t gone as far—yet.”

“No.”

“If it had?”

The thought dizzied Sylvia a little, thus suddenly brought out into the
glare of plain speech. She tried to free her brain of pictures, to clear
her blood of the insistent pounding of her heart. “If I’d gone that
far,” she said, “I don’t think anything else would matter.”

“Don’t go that far,” advised the other calmly.

“Why not?” Sylvia was curious to get an outside viewpoint.

“It wouldn’t do—for you.”

“Why not for me if——”

“If for me,” supplied the other. “I’m different.” Her swift, graceful,
abandoning gesture marked a difference that was more than temperamental;
that was racial.

“Has it done you any harm? Would you want it undone?”

“If I could go back to the beginning? My God, yes!” Sylvia was struck
with a sense of tragic injustice somewhere. “As far as Mark goes, no. It
doesn’t matter.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“I suppose so. In a way. When I’m with him I am.”

“And that’s why you won’t let him help you?”

“I can’t bear the thought of money coming into it.”

“If you were married to him you’d take it.”

“That’s the reason why I won’t marry him; one reason.”

“He’s asked you, hasn’t he?”

“Yes. From the very first time.”

“I think you’re an awful fool, La Lond.”

“Maybe I am. But I can’t endure the thought of giving myself up
permanently and becoming part of some one else’s life. There’s a part of
me that wants to, but that’s only nerves. I can compromise with that. I
want to study and travel and know things and find out what it’s all
about. That’s what my mind wants and I’m not going to let my body bully
me into doing something else. There are times when I wish to God I
hadn’t been born a woman, and there are other times when—when I don’t
wish that at all. Life’s something of a mess for a girl like me, Syl.”

“I’d take Mark Rainger’s money and finish my course,” persisted her
friend. “It isn’t as if you had done what you did for the money. Of
course you wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t I!” retorted the scholar somberly. “Girl, I’m going to shock
you.”

“Try and do it!”

“There’s a middle-aged man who has been pretty nice to me, and he’d have
paid my way through in a minute. He was crazy about me.”

“What was the price?”

“There wouldn’t have been any bargain. He wasn’t that kind. But I
wouldn’t have taken it from him without giving a return. I’d about
figured it out to spend spring vacation with him——”

“Sara! You couldn’t do that!”

“You don’t know. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to finish my course
here. At least I thought so till I met Mark. Then the other thing was
all off.”

“You _are_ in love with him. And you’re a perfect damn fool if you don’t
marry him.”

“And get kicked for sure?”

“Secretly, then, till after you graduate, you imbecile. It’s been done
before. Remember Sequoia Martin in ’25?”

The prospective valedictorian shook her head. “No. I’ll go on as we are.
For a time, anyway. It won’t last.” A wry smile twisted her features.
“Too many people know about my over-picturesque past. When I was giving
an imitation of the Ravings of John McCullough did I touch on my happy
childhood days?”

“Yes.”

“You must have got an earful.”

“I tried not to listen.”

Sara went to her locked trunk and produced a large envelope which she
handed to the other. “The eye is less shockable than the ear,” she
observed. “Take that home and try it on yours, some time.”

“What is it?”

“It is,” returned her friend with a grin of sorts, “a document of
Extreme Sociological Importance. So extreme, in fact, that nobody will
print it. I sent it to the most solemn and serious of the pedagogical
magazines and they returned it with shrieks of editorial horror. So
unless I land it in one of the ‘private confession’ type of publications
it will perish, unread.” She abandoned her tone of raillery. “There’s
stuff in there that ought to be studied by every family with a girl in
it and every teacher in every school.”

“Is it about your own experiences?” asked Sylvia fascinated.

“Yes.”

“Not under your own name?”

“I don’t want it to be. But I’ll even go that far to get it published.
God! How could it do a millionth part of the harm that letting these
things go on unknown does?”

“But do they go on, much?”

“I don’t suppose the mill town where I went to public school was so
different from a lot of other mill towns. I was ‘ruined’—that’s the
term, though I don’t see what meaning it has for a kid—when I was
thirteen. It was quite casual; as much my fault as the boy’s, I expect.
Curiosity and the lack of any intelligent information, because I was
‘too young to learn about those things.’ Well, I learned! It meant very
little to me in one way; didn’t register, you might say; but it gave me
a thrill of excited superiority to the other girls till I found out that
half the class knew as much about it as I did, or more. To be sure, most
of them were a couple of years older than I.”

“Sara! What ever were the teachers thinking of?”

“Something else, I expect,” was the bitter response. “One of the younger
teachers did make a fuss. It cost her her job. She was ‘casting slurs on
the school.’ The rest either didn’t know or were afraid to let on that
they did, except one of the men teachers. He knew too much.”

“You don’t mean that he was. . . .”

“Yes. Not entirely his fault. He fell for the girl who was the
ringleader. She was a fifteen-year-old devil, precocious physically and
a moron in every other way. She corrupted the boys of the class. That
kind of girl isn’t so uncommon; I’ve heard of other cases. She went
after the teacher on a bet and got him. There was a scandal—hushed up,
of course, for the good name of the school—and he disappeared, ran away
and afterwards committed suicide. Well, those things spread; there was a
kind of rivalry about it. It ran through my class, particularly. By the
time we graduated more than half of us were ‘unchaste,’ ‘ruined,’ ‘not
respectable.’ Would you have known it on me,” concluded the narrator
bitterly, “if I hadn’t told you?”

“It doesn’t seem to have any meaning,” replied Sylvia slowly, “in your
case. I can’t see that you are ‘ruined’; not in any essential.”

“Because I had a faculty of keeping the two sides of me distinct.
Perhaps that’s my Latin blood. And I had a passion for learning, for
knowing things. That helped, too. But I’m conscious, just the same, of
being different from the rest of the girls here.”

“That’s rot. You’re not different. What you did hasn’t cost you your
self-respect or changed you in any important way. It’s just something
that has passed and is over with.”

The other looked at her darkly. “You don’t know. Those things do leave a
mark. They make it harder—you know too much—you think too much—it
rouses something in you—your natural inhibitions are gone—and then you
think, ‘What does it matter what I do?’ I did keep straight after I came
to college; but there were times when I was almost crazy. Then Mark
came. But I’m not ashamed of that.”

“Have you ever told Mark?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Wouldn’t he understand?”

“Oh, probably. It’s easier for a man to understand a girl like me than
for another girl, I guess; but—there’s always that ‘but’ with a man. It
would only hurt Mark.”

“Giff knows something, doesn’t he?”

Sara’s eyes burned upon her friend. “Has he told you?”

“Don’t be a sap! Of course not. But I know that he came from your town
and he asked me to—well, to kind of stand by you when you were having a
bad time of it.”

“Giff’s not a bad sort. He deserves more than he’s ever got from this
place.”

“Do you think I ought to leave coll?” asked Sylvia abruptly.

“Why? On account of Giff?”

“Yes. While it’s still at the halfway point with us.”

“Those things usually stop halfway.”

“I don’t get that. I don’t believe I’m the halfway type of girl. And you
warned me not to go through with this.”

“Yes. On Giff’s account as much as your own.”

“How do you know it wouldn’t be—worth while?” queried the other
perversely.

“You’re the one to answer that—and Giff.”

“Hasn’t it been with you and Mark?”

“Yes; but that’s different. You’ve never had any experience.”

Sylvia grinned impishly. “It strikes me that experience might be a good
thing to have. And who would be a better source of wisdom than a
faculty?”

“Oh, well! If you’re only joking about it all,” said Sara, relieved. She
knew how many girls “take it out in talk,” and thus find relief for pent
emotionalism.

“Sure!” said Sylvia.


                              CHAPTER XVI

English Five was Sylvia Hartnett’s special aversion. She considered that
there was something phony about it and about its presiding genius, Prof.
Violet Shenstone, a gushy and rigidly opinionated spinster of fifty
whose passion for the poetry of Shelley rose so far above her other
vapid enthusiasms that imaginative scandal-mongers among the
undergraduates had assigned her a former existence wherein her relations
to the poet had been decidedly informal. Reaching her ears, this
delighted her secretly but greatly. She was understood to be gestating
for publication a critique upon her favorite genius.

Belatedly Sylvia was working up her Oral on Shelley for Miss Shenstone’s
class. Each pupil was expected to be ready to discuss, with illuminating
commentary and apt comparison, any one of ten poems designated in
advance, which meant, of course, that they were to echo the
instructress’s ardors and chaste ecstasies—if they aspired to good
marks. Sylvia desired the marks, but she was no devotee of Shelley at
best, and she now discovered in herself a positive dislike for what she
had once heard Patterson Gifford refer to as his “laborious
saccharinities.” The more she dug into the ten selections, the more she
appreciated that acid phrase and the more rancorous became her
resentment toward the dead songster and his faculty adorer. She had a
pat foreboding that she would draw “To a Skylark.”

“And if Old Shinbone dishes out the usual hooey about expressing our
opinions frankly and fully,” she told her roommates, the light of
schism, secession, and heresy glowing in her eye, “and I get the
bloomin’ Skylark for mine I’m going to pull the tailfeathers out of the
dam’ bird!”

A bored class gathered rather late and listened perfunctorily to Miss
Shenstone’s oft-repeated exhortation to frankness, originality, and
freedom of expression, then rose, girl after girl, and sing-songed their
quotations, offering safe and sane comparisons with Keats and Coleridge,
after the approved manner of mark-hunters. The hour was half over when
the professor suavely called for Miss Hartnett’s analysis of what she
termed “our poet’s highest flight of genius. Your own authentic analysis
and opinion, if you please, Miss Hartnett, not a mere rehash of the
pronouncements of others.”

Well, fate had handed it to her; let fate be responsible. Sylvia drew a
long breath and said:

“I think it’s rotten.”

There was a blank, terrified, incredulously delighted silence,
accentuated by a single titter instantly suppressed. The sour
virginality of Miss Shenstone’s countenance turned a yellowish white.
“Rotten?” she repeated faintly. Then, explosively, “Rotten! And,” with
deadly quietude, “may one ask the basis of this ripe judgment?”

The girl’s color rose. “It may not be ripe, but it’s honest. I think the
poem is just plain sloppy and slipshod. The stuff is all wet and the
rhymes are punk.”

Miss Shenstone’s chair creaked under the impact of her spare shoulder
blades as she threw herself back like an offended cat. “This is
interesting, indeed. The class would, I am sure, be enlightened by
hearing my own poor opinion, the fruit of a mere thirty years of study,
authoritatively controverted. Proceed.”

Baiting Miss Sylvia Hartnett was never a safe procedure where she felt
herself within her rights; she had the Puritan pride of opinion. “Do you
want me to read it?” she asked ominously.

“If you please. No.” The pedagogue reversed herself. “If it is to be
read we will insure a sympathetic rendition. Miss Reynolds.”

Esther Reynolds, the best elocutionist in the class and always on the
side of the angels, got eagerly to her feet and with an appropriately
ecstatic smile began:

            “_Hail to thee, blithe spirit,_
            _Bird thou never wert,_
            _That from heaven, or near it_
            _Pourest thy full heart—_
            _In profuse strains of unpremeditated art._”

“Urt,” amended Sylvia.

“Huh?” queried the reciter, startled.

“If it’s wert, it ought to be urt,” explained the critic blandly. “Also
hurt, not heart.”

“But it can’t be urt and hurt. It doesn’t make any sense that way,”
protested the interpreter.

“That’s Shelley’s lookout, not yours,” rejoined Sylvia severely. “Be
yourself and stick to the rhyme.”

Miss Shenstone was afterward alleged to have said in a failing voice:
“This is too outrageous,” but the protest was lost in Miss Hartnett’s
follow-up.

“Anyway, the sense is just as sloppy as the sound. ‘Unpremeditated art!’
I suppose all the rest of the skylarks were sitting around in the grass
premeditating their art—I mean urt—and only Shelley’s got up and did
his stuff unpremeditated. It’s like that poem the Sweet Singer of
Michigan wrote about ‘The Unostentatious Potato.’ I’ll bet she got her
inspiration from Shelley.”

“Are you quite finished?” came the icy inquiry from the rostrum.

But Sylvia had the bit in her teeth. “No; I’m not. Look at the rest of
the poem. There’s hardly a stanza that hasn’t got a sour rhyme or two in
it. Read ’em and weep! Even—heaven, flight—day-_light_, sphere—there,
cloud—overflowed, wrought—not, leaves—gives, grass—was, know—now,
and so on. Pity somebody didn’t give Percy a rhyming dictionary for
Christmas. If you ask me, I don’t believe that stuff would get by to-day
in the Sperry Spotlight.”

Miss Shenstone was now looking gray and hollow about the jaws. “I trust
that Hartnett on Shelley is about concluded,” she said with still
malevolence.

“You asked for a free expression of opinion,” urged the rebel, “and I’m
giving it to you.” (“Shuttup, yourself, Roxy Ann.” This to Rosanne
Merrick who was tugging frantically at her dress and imploring her to
stop.) “When he does pull a correct one, it’s the same old stock
jingle-jangle that has been running double since Noah first paired up
the rhymes and sent ’em aboard the ark, two-and-two; art—heart,
loud—cloud, thee—see, tower—bower and shower—flower,
fountains—mountains, gladness—madness; all the mildewed old vaudeville
teams are out there doing their stuff.”

The professor broke in. “Your views are, I fear, too advanced for this
simple company. We can dispense with them, from now on—and with you.”

“You mean I’m dropped?” Sylvia’s eyes were fixed upon Miss Shenstone.

“I am sure that you can find no further profit in such poor instruction
as this class can offer.”

“You particularly invited us,” said the girl hotly, “to say what——”

“I did not give you permission to insult our intelligence. You may
withdraw.”

Sylvia walked to the door. There she turned. “I’m glad I’m through with
your class,” she said clearly. “It’s the worst bunk in college.” And she
left behind her a rising hum and buzz that would not be stilled.

Righteous wrath induces tears in some girls; in others, the sulks; in
still others a feminine form of running amuck chiefly expressed in
hurling clothing and bric-à-brac around the room. In Sylvia it inspired
a coolly savage desire to do something desperate and determinative. That
her case would be cited before the faculty was certain. Old Shinbone
would be just that venomous over the double insult to herself and her
god.

Probably an apology would be demanded, for her final speech had been
deliberately and provocatively offensive. Let ’em demand! She wouldn’t
apologize. She wouldn’t! Damned if she would! Not even if it meant
expulsion. It might well mean that, too, for Shenstone would make a
special point of the breach of decorum, and Sylvia’s record was none too
good. Hers was that take-it-for-granted independence of spirit which, to
the more touchy pedagogical mind seems sheer insubordination. Well, let
’em expel! Or, what if she forestalled action by resigning and giving
her reasons publicly? How could she give them the greatest possible
currency? She recalled the tradition of a rebel far back in 1912 who had
posted her frank impressions of the faculty on the college bulletin
board where it had remained long enough to create a very superior
scandal. Something more original would have better suited Sylvia’s mood.
Something like hiring an airship to let fall over the campus a gentle
rain of dodgers, publishing to the collegiate world an untrammeled
expression of her wrongs and her resentment? Apropos of rain she now
perceived that she was pacing the campus in a steady downpour. She
retired to Twenty to dry out.

Conversation on the subject of her probable fate received small
encouragement from its subject when her roommates returned in high
excitement.

“What did you want to kick out like a wild ass of the desert for?” said
Starr disgustedly.

“Shinbone had it coming to her. She makes me sick.”

“Callow exhibitionism, my child,” was the superior diagnosis of her
classmate.

“Forget it, can’t you?”

“Get off your shoes and stockings and go and lie down, Syl,” advised
Verity, and got only a low growl for her pains. But the other accepted
the suggestion.

All the rest of the day she drew spiritually more and more aloof, became
more and more self-centered upon her unlucky outbreak. Too late she
began to realize that she had reacted not to a righteous literary
indignation against Miss Shenstone, but to the irritant of her own
rasped nerves. Nor was the nerve-rasp due to her instructor. It had its
origin deep within herself. She felt herself wondering with a sort of
angry sympathy, how much of the spinster’s arid enthusiasms and
acerbities were due to long-endured suppressions. But she would not
apologize. There was in the girl leaven of the unyielding and unlovely
Puritan obstinacy of spirit which can be as dogged against right as
against wrong.

She went to bed early. Toward midnight, after much restless tossing, she
found herself broad awake. She got up, put on a dressing gown, tiptoed
into the living-room and sat there in the dark, sadly and consciously
pitying herself; then, less artificially, feeling something of the panic
of the lost as she contemplated a life severed from the companionships
of Twenty, of Trumbull, of Sperry itself. No avail to tell herself that
she hated the place; it only caused gulpy sensations in the throat. She
wandered to the window and looked out into the darkness.

The warm, smooth rain whispered memories to her. A soft breeze divided
the branches of the tree before her and, as if it had parted the
darkness, too, she saw, for a vivid instant, the glow of a distant and
unforgotten light.

Giff’s light. In his tower room. And Giff there alone and at work. Or
perhaps thinking of her, Sylvia. Perhaps wanting her. No; not perhaps;
she knew with an absolute certainty. And as if his light had been a
clear call to her through the darkness, she went back to her room,
slipped on her slicker and oilskin cap, found a pair of overshoes (they
were Verity’s and a little large for her) and went out and down the
stairs. This was the end of her college life; she would make it a
fulfillment, and the beginning of a new and warmer living.

She descended the stairs and let herself out at the window of an empty
ground-floor room. The night and the soft rain folded her about with an
invisible cherishing.

A few minutes later Ida McKay dropped to the lawn and cast about her in
the murk. She had heard and seen and now, with a definite motive, hoped
to verify suspicions which she had slowly formulated concerning Sylvia
Hartnett and Patterson Gifford.


                              CHAPTER XVII

Beneath the high, golden window the earth was miry with rain. Sylvia
muddied her fingers well before she found a pebble to throw. Practiced
in baseball, she sent her shot true. The sash slid up; a dark outline
blotted the light. Sylvia’s whisper—it was all that she could manage in
her sudden, inner tumult—was lost in the soft cataract of the rain.
Patterson Gifford’s voice said:

“The side door.”

The side door! She flinched back for a moment. Were his words symbolic,
prophetic? Must her entrance to this new phase of life be through a side
door? After this would she whose pride it had always been to go straight
and openly to her objective, be committed to the furtivity of secret
entries? She wrenched her mind from the clogging thought, her feet from
the clogging mud. What did it matter, the way of entry? What really
mattered was that which lay on the further side of doors.

She stepped into a dim hallway. He drew off her raincoat, touched her
hand, her cheek. “You’re cold.”

She said excitedly: “I’ve lost one of my overshoes.”

“Shall I look for it?”

“No, I can only stay a minute.”

“That’s a futile thing to say,” he returned gravely.

She laughed. “Absolutely.”

“Come up.”

Sylvia followed him to the tower room. A weak fire was struggling for
life on the hearth. He busied himself mending it while she settled into
a chair and looked curiously about.

“This isn’t a bit as I’d imagined it. I love the disorder of it.”

“My life has been rather disordered lately,” was the quiet rejoinder.

“Hasn’t it ever been before?”

“Not to this degree.”

“You mean that I’ve done it, Giff?”

“Yes. It’s not your fault, though.”

She leaned to the fire, smoothing back her wet, abundant hair with both
hands, a gesture which subtly carried an effect of occupancy, of making
the place her own. He went quickly to her, as quickly turned away and
bumped himself down upon an ottoman with some violence.

“Sylvia, we’ve got to talk, you and I.”

Slowly she turned her head. “Have we? Why?” Her voice was no more than a
dreaming whisper.

“Don’t look at me that way!” His throat twitched over the words. “If you
do I’ll kiss you and then it’ll be too late for talk.”

She made no reply; only regarded the fire with thoughtful eyes and
unafraid. But her brain was racing in wide speculation. She was on the
verge of experience. Experience! Which of the other girls had had it?
And what effect had it upon them? Nothing palpable. Nothing that would
enable one to separate the goats from the sheep, the Class X girls from
the Class V. Starr, for instance. With her independence and courage she
was a law unto herself. Sara? But Sara had eaten of the fruit of the
tree of knowledge when she was still a child. Vee? No; not Vee. She was
by nature a Sainte Nitouche. Nixie? Too selfish. Pink? Too conservative.
Gwen? Too cautious, for all her boastful talk. Ida? She laughed. Prue?
Not enough sex to her. Elsie? Too unimaginative. Funny, thought Sylvia,
that in almost every case chastity seemed to be connected not with some
fine and positive but with some weak and niggling quality. What was the
answer? Was virtue no more than a timid denial? Was she herself wise or
a fool. “Wise virgin”—a paradox perhaps. Could one be a virgin and
wise? A memory of valorous song came to her:

               “_Nor shall the flaming forts be won_
               _By sneaking negatives alone._”

Worth a thousand of Shelley’s unpremeditating skylarks, that
trumpet-call. Shelley! And Miss Shenstone, his belated soul-paramour.
And her own plight, between the two of them. Should she tell Giff about
it? He at least would sympathize with her right to her own opinion. He
would——

“Let’s be sure that we understand each other, Sylvia.” His voice,
breaking in upon her thoughts, had hardened to its accustomed precision.
“You’re not a child. You haven’t come here in ignorance of what your
coming implies.”

She shook her head. On her lips hovered a small, undaunted smile.

“Very likely you’ve heard talk about me,” he pursued. “You know”—rather
contemptuously—“I don’t profess the usual collegiate conventions. I’m
not what is called a moral man.”

For some obscure reason this annoyed her. “How do you know that I’m a
moral girl?”

“Have I ever assumed that you were?” was the quiet retort.

To her utter chagrin she, who never cried, burst into choky tears. He
jumped to his feet and loomed over her, threateningly, it seemed to her
quivering mind.

“Then you are,” he said.

“I won’t tell you,” she sobbed.

“You needn’t. I think I knew it all the time, in my heart.” He spoke
with a slow and tender gravity. “And that makes it the more essential
that there should be no room for misunderstanding between us.”

“I’m sorry I made a fool of myself just now, Giff.”

He turned away, walked twice up and down the breadth of the room, and
stood facing her from the hearth. “What I am trying to say to you is
that I do not measure morals and behavior by the commonly accepted
yardstick. I have certain standards—such as most people mistakenly call
morals—and I try to live up to them. At least up to now I have tried.
But you—this—is quite beyond them. And I don’t seem to care. But I
want one point clear between us. In these affairs it is always the girl
who is supposed to be lured to her ruin and all that sort of rot, and to
take all the risk while the villain, man, gets off scot free. I want to
be sure that your eyes are open to all the possibilities for us both,
Sylvia; and I want to point out that the risk and the danger run equal
for both of us. If we should be discovered, even now before anything
decisive has occurred, it would mean the collapse of my structure of
life quite as much as of yours.”

“Yes, Professor,” said Sylvia with malicious meekness.

He drew a sharp breath. “I am telling you this in an effort to be quite
fair.”

“Do you want me to go back?”

“I love you,” he said.

She stood up. “Couldn’t you have left the rest of it out?” she murmured.

Against the look on his face she shut her eyes; shut them the better to
feel his strength enclose her, his breath steal her own breathing; then
his kisses, slow, soft, wounding kisses that bruised something deep
within her with a hurt sweeter than delight, leaving her helpless for
denial, even had she had the wish to deny.

The fire, leaping, whispered and exulted. Sylvia lost sense of time and
space.

A clock struck. Sylvia stirred in her lover’s arms. “I think I’ve been
asleep,” she marveled.

He laughed. “You have. Nearly an hour.”

“That’s funny.” She pressed her cool cheek to his, then drew herself
gently free and walked over to the window. “Twenty seems very far away;
whole centuries away. Maybe it was a century that I slept instead of an
hour.” She peered through the leaves. “There’s a light there. I must
have left it. Or maybe Starr is up and worrying about where I am.
Wouldn’t she be surprised! I ought to go back, but I don’t want to go
back.” She seated herself at his desk, wedged his working glasses upon
her delicate nose, wrinkling it under the burden, fussed among his
papers. “Here’s where you mete out fate, like a god, to us poor
earthlings. Is this Ida McKay’s written? I’ll bet it’s punk.”

“Pretty awful,” he agreed. He came and bent over her. “The gentle Ida
believes that there are other and easier ways than honest toil.”

“In your course? I believed that once—and look at the darn thing now!
What’s ‘Only-me’s’ idea?”

“Something in the line of blackmail. If she could look into this room
now it would be very much in her line.”

“What does she know, the sneaky little snooper?” asked Sylvia.

“She doesn’t know anything. She suspects that I take a more than
academic interest in you. And she has darkly hinted at reasons why I
should be lenient to her manifold failings, as far as she dared.”

“How far was that?”

“Not very far.”

She looked up at the tyrant chin, said “I should suppose not,” and
kissed it. “You do need a shave, Giff. What time is it?”

“Two-twenty.”

She sighed. “I suppose I ought to go.”

“Four-twenty is just as safe as two-twenty.”

“That’s a powerful thought,” she agreed gayly. “Give the fire a little
encouragement then.”

While he was coaxing the embers she sat musing. Out of her meditation
was born a query: “Giff, do all affairs like ours end in disaster?”

“All human affairs end in disaster. Death takes care of that.”

“A cheery soul, you are!”

“I never set up for an optimist.”

“Don’t you believe in anything?” she asked with a note of wistfulness.

“Yes. Will you understand me when I tell you that the one thing I do
believe in, as in a gospel, is the pursuit of that eternal fugitive
called truth.” She thrilled to his quiet exaltation, for this was his
inner heart that he was opening to her. “Probably I shall never so much
as catch sight of her ‘flying tress and fluttering hem.’ If I did, how
can I know that I should even recognize her?”

“Why shouldn’t you?” asked the girl jealously.

“Better men than I have passed her, unknowing.”

“Then what’s the use of it all?” came her passionate demand.

“We have to try. That’s part of the creed. I know that I can teach; that
I can excite minds to want to know, which is the essence of teaching.
And perhaps some day it may be given to me to stimulate some mind that
might later catch a revealing glimpse of the Splendid Fugitive.”

“Sara La Lond?” she asked.

“It’s just possible.”

“That’s why you’re anxious that she should keep straight.” She had not
meant to say so much but the words were too quick for her.

He shook his head. “I’m not interested in her morals. I’m interested in
her mind. What she does with her life is for her to decide, but she
mustn’t take any risk of spoiling her chances.”

“You don’t believe in anything but mind, do you, Giff?”

“You’ve made me believe in that illusion which is happiness.”

“I’ll never disillusion you,” she promised softly.

“Yet disillusionment may be only a synonym for wisdom—in the minor
key.”

“In novels,” she reflected, “there’s always a crash in this sort of
thing.”

“Because our writers cater to the social demand that they shall buttress
the cause of morals. Rule A: if it’s immoral, then it must end
tragically. No continental writer is bound to any such false propaganda,
any more than the ancient Greeks were, or the best of the Romans. Their
concern is with life and their conscience is to reflect life as they see
it. But our prim little story tellers are afraid of the censors and
still more afraid of the market; for them it is either the wedding ring
or poetic justice and apt punishment, carefully manufactured for the
trade. They are the false prophets and weak bulwarks of a fake morality.
History is fairer. It recognizes that marriage is a modern makeshift,
not an eternal morality. It may be the most flagrant immorality. . . .
Forgive the pedant for bursting into a lecture. You brought it on
yourself.”

Ever personal, the woman said: “Was your marriage that?”

“Mine? It grew to be.”

“What did you do it for?”

“Well, it seemed a sort of safeguard to be married.” He added gloomily;
“It wasn’t.”

She said with an effort but with an unwavering regard upon him:

“Giff; has there been any one else in college, ever, but me?”

“_No!_”

“It’s silly of me but I’m glad of that.”

“There are temptations for a man in a woman’s college; special
temptations. I’ve always kept clear of them. I’ve had the feeling that
anything of the sort would be a betrayal of my job, of my capacity for
usefulness here; and that is a thousand times more to me than any
consideration of conventions or morality. That is my morality, the duty
of getting something done in the world that you can do better than the
other fellow. And I’m risking that now—and when I look at you I don’t
give a damn.”

“I think I’m glad that you feel that way. It makes it evener for us
both.”

At the door, as she was leaving he drew her back jealously into his
arms. “Sylvia, I want you to tell me something honestly.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Are you sorry?”

“Not a bit.” She gave voice to a typically feminine vaunt
incomprehensible to man’s more limited understanding. “I’m _never_ sorry
after a thing is done.”

He slipped through the door with her and spoke in a tone more moved,
more moving than she had ever heard from him. “My dear; somewhere out
there in the darkness is Something that men, in their own darkness, call
God. I don’t know whether It takes cognizance of our little mortal
fates. But if It does, I ask It as the one and only favor I have ever
asked, to make me responsible alone for what has happened between us
two.”

“He won’t,” said Sylvia with soft conviction. “He knows that women are
the enduring sex.”

His kiss was still warm on her young lips when she crept into Twenty.
Starr stirred in bed, sat up, and scowled at her.

“This is a sweet night to be hoboing around in.”

“It’s a _beautiful_ night.”

“Is that rain or is Momma a deaf-mute? Where do you get that ‘beautiful’
stuff? What’s biting you, girl?”

The truant considered the question and grinned. “Percy Bysshe Shelley if
you trace it back far enough.”

“And you’ve gone mad from the bite. Where’s your other overshoe?”

“Oh, Lordy! I forgot. It’s Vee’s and it’s stuck in the mud in Giff’s
yard.”

“_Giff’s?_ Are you crazy? Have you been serenading Giff?”

“You might call it that.”

Starr sat up in bed and stared at her roommate with a touch of panic.
“Syl Hartnett, what have you been doing?”

“I’ll dare you to guess.”

“Have you really been at Giff’s?”

“Yes.”

“Inside the house?”

“You wouldn’t expect me to stay outside, a night like this.”

“_All_ night?”

“All but what’s left.”

“Syl!”

The younger girl met the other’s eyes unflinchingly. Her half-smile was
tender, confident, betraying. “I don’t care. I’m terribly in love with
him and terribly happy, Starr.”

Starr began to cry.

“Don’t be a baby,” said the truant indignantly. “You did it first. Why
should you throw a fit about me?”

“I—never—did,” sobbed Starr.

Sylvia stared. “Why, you as good as told me. The night you stayed at
Lloyd’s with your Fritzie-officer.”

“I know. But I didn’t,” wept her friend. “I—I meant to but I got so
scared, and he was _sweet_ about it and he held me in his arms all night
on the sofa—and that was all.”

“Then why did you let me think you had?”

“Just boasting,” answered Starr in a small and dismal confessional
squeak. “I was ashamed of having crawfished after all my talk. I thought
you’d think I was yellow—and I guess I was. And now maybe you wouldn’t
have—have gone there to-night if you hadn’t thought I’d done it first.
I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Stop it! You’ll wake Vee up.”

“I never thought of any harm,” pursued the mourner. “I wish I had gone
through with it now. Then I wouldn’t—you wouldn’t——”

“What you did has nothing to do with what I did,” broke in Sylvia
sturdily. For all that, she felt a little shaken, a little alone in a
new and adventurous world. “And I’m not sorry. Not a bit.”

“That’s because you’re still drunk with it,” said Starr with unexpected
analysis.

“No. Because I’m in love with him. If you’d been really in love with
your Fritzie then it would have been yellow for you to back out after
you’d gone so far.”

“But what’s going to come of it?” wailed the other softly.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. But I wish I had Vee’s golosh back.”

“I’ll get up at daylight and get it,” promised the remorseful one, eager
to do something in the way of reparation.

At daylight no overshoe was there.


                             CHAPTER XVIII

Candor in a high degree marked the demeanor of “Only” Ida McKay as she
held up Verity in the hallway going to breakfast.

“Lost anything, Vee?”

“No.” The freshman did not care much for Ida.

“Oh! I thought maybe you had on account of the initials in it.”

“What’s got my initials in it?”

“Only a golosh that I found.”

“Don’t know anything about it. Haven’t had mine on for a week.”

She gave it no further thought until her return to Twenty when she
looked and found one lone overshoe. “What d’you suppose the answer is?”
she inquired of the other H.B.V.’s.

Starr’s concerned eyes sought Sylvia’s. “I snitched ’em last night for a
little prowl,” explained the latter, “and lost one in the mud.”

“Then I’ll get it from McKay.” Verity asked no question. She never asked
questions.

“Has Ida got any line on who wore them?” asked Starr as the door closed
behind the freshman.

“I thought I heard something stirring in her room when I made my sneak.”

“Oh, Syl!”

“Why the Ethel Barrymore voice, old girl? I’m due to be kicked anyway,
aren’t I, for the battle with old Shinbone?”

“Not necessarily. But if Ida knows and wants to be nasty . . .”

“It’ll certainly give her something to work on. The filthy little shrimp
must have trailed me. Swell for Giff!”

“I don’t care about Giff——”

“Well, I do. He’ll be kicked, too.” Sylvia laughed bitterly. “Trust him
to have the right slant on things. He told me; ‘I’ve got just as much at
stake as you have.’ No fake chivalry about him. He doesn’t chivvle for a
damn. That’s one of the things I love about him. Oh, Starr, I don’t
_want_ him mixed up in this.”

“What can you do?” said the other helplessly. “If you could think up
some good explanation for——”

“For McKay? Oh, sure! I’ll tell her I was practicing a roundelay on the
jewsharp under Giff’s window. She’ll believe that. Easy!”

Verity entered bearing the lost article. “What I want to know,” she
proclaimed, “is how that cat of an Ida knew this was mine.”

“Your initials, didn’t she say?”

“She did. And she lied. Find ’em.”

Starr whistled. “Deep river!”

“Not so deep,” retorted Sylvia sapiently. “She never thought it was
yours. She figured that when she put it up to you you’d say ‘That isn’t
mine; it’s Syl’s,’ which would be added proof for her case.”

“Then she didn’t actually see you there,” surmised Starr as Verity went
out. “But what is her case?”

“Simple enough. She’s due to flunk in History C and knows it. Giff is
ready to throw her out any day on her rotten class work. So if she can
get something on him, she thinks she can put it over.” She began to
chuckle. “I’d like to be there when she goes up against him. He’ll
murder her.”

“He’ll pass her,” contradicted Starr quietly.

“He will not. He couldn’t. I’d despise him if he did.”

“I’d despise him if he didn’t. He’s got to, to save you.”

“I don’t want him to save me,” said the other vehemently. “You don’t
know how he feels about academic integrity and honesty and those things.
It’s his religion. I’ve got to see him and warn him about Ida.”

“You’d better keep away from Giff,” warned Starr.

Sylvia’s face warmed. “I haven’t the slightest intention of keeping away
from him,” she answered with soft obstinacy.

“Oh, I don’t mean break it off; I didn’t suppose you would, though it’s
the only wise thing. But just as a matter of safety you oughtn’t to see
him for a while.”

Whatever Sylvia’s intentions, she had no opportunity of seeing Patterson
Gifford alone for several days. In fact, she suspected that he was
avoiding her for reasons which she attributed to caution. Coming and
going on her collegiate affairs, she enjoyed and ignored the hushed
consideration of the doomed. Few but believed that Prof. Shenstone would
insist upon expulsion, unless full apology were offered, so flagrant had
been the challenge to authority. Sylvia, believing her case hopeless,
was surprised to find that she was not vitally concerned about it. Her
experience with Patterson Gifford so filled her thoughts, her
imaginings, called upon her for such readjustment of theory and
tradition to life, as to delegate anything else to a secondary place.
But if she was expelled, how could she continue to see Giff? Some way;
of that she was certain. She couldn’t give him up now. Not yet anyway.
Perhaps later if it became too dangerous for him. . . .

Gwen Peters brought her a piece of news which might be interpreted as
indirectly hopeful in her own case. “Nixie is back.”

“Back in _coll_?”

“Not yet. But the chatter is that they’re going to ease her in.”

“How’s that?”

“The whole bacteriology bunch went to the front for her. With all her
fussing, Nixie did swell work in Bac. The little bugs just naturally
take to her like she was their long-lost sister. So she’s living at Mrs.
Terhune’s, off-campus.”

“She’ll have to watch her step.”

Gwen grinned. “Not while she’s there. Got a ground-floor room and old
Aunty Terhune’s as deaf as a post. She’s pulling parties and having a
swell time and working in the Lab on the quiet, unofficially, of course,
to keep up until they let her back. It’s a wonder to me how Nixie turns
the trick; up thicketing half the night and sleeping half the day and
then steps up and cracks an A in any class she’s interested in. The
point is, old deah, that if they let up on her, why shouldn’t they do
the same for you? You’re a lot more popular.”

“But I don’t crack many A’s.”

“’sall right. You’ve got friends in the faculty, too,” remarked Gwen not
too obscurely.

Something had evidently slowed up the wheels of justice, for Sylvia was
not summoned to the High Presence. Rumors of a conflict in Faculty
Meeting passed around. Such reports have a way of getting into currency
and are generally fallacious. But out of the swirl of rumor emerged
certain reasonably probable facts. Patterson Gifford, it appeared, had
at once constituted himself counsel for the absent criminal. Shrewdly he
had called for testimony, not from Sylvia’s friends, but from such
pillars of discipline as Prudence Chase and Esther Reynolds, and from
them had elicited the fact of Miss Shenstone’s insistence upon frank
expression of original opinion from the class. He pressed the point
that, having invoked the spirit of academic freedom, she could hardly
resent her pupils taking her at her word. One report had it that he had
indicated an intention of resigning in the event of the faculty adopting
a policy of suppression by making an example in the case. The outcome
was said to be that the offense would be passed over with light
penalties, upon suitable apology to the presiding genius of English
Five.

“I’ll be damned if I will,” said Sylvia, furious.

This defiance she repeated to Prof. Gifford later. It was Wednesday,
five days after what was already known to the college as “the Shelley
shenanigan,” and she was in his office by appointment.

“Not if I inform you officially that you must?”

“No.”

“Not if I ask you to, Sylvia?”

“Giff, how can I? It would be too beastly cowardly.”

“That _would_ be a pity, wouldn’t it!”

Amazed at the bitterness of his speech she said, “Do you want me to be
cowardly?”

“In this case, yes.”

“_Giff!_ I don’t understand you.”

“You understand that I want you to stay in college, don’t you?”

“Yes; I understand that.” Her eyes softened.

“Well, I have made the way for you. Now I ask you to take it.”

“But I was right. You know I was right,” she persisted.

“Even if you were, what of it?”

“Well, if you want me to be downright dishonest—”

“Don’t babble to me about dishonesty,” he broke in. “I’m a sweet example
of it myself.”

“You? Because you stood up for me?” Sylvia was floundering.

“No. I’d have done that anyway.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s that deprecating little writher, McKay.”

In spite of her stress of mind Sylvia could not but smile at the
characterization. “What has she done?”

“She has passed my course—with flying colors,” he stated with venomous
self-contempt.

“You’ve had to pass her?” faltered the girl. “Because of—us? Because
she knows?”

“She doesn’t know. How could she? But she suspects and she’s got enough
to go on to make an impossible scandal. Therefore I have accepted the
inevitable and hauled down my stainless colors. All the other half-wits
and mewling morons in the class get the same dispensation.”

“Why the others?”

“Call it the last remnants of a rotted conscience. At least I won’t give
it to one and not the rest. The class owes a vote of thanks to McKay.
Hereafter History C will be known as a soft snap, to be joyously elected
by the aspiring weak-minded. There’s a Kant phrase about a girl losing
her virtue. Well, I’ve lost mine, the only virtue I ever professed, my
boasted incorruptibility. And now do you think I’m going to lose you, to
let you leave college because of some cheap little schoolgirl pride
about apologizing?”

Sylvia’s eyes were tragic. “We’re paying for what we’ve done. And you’re
paying the most.”

“Never mind that; it’s worth it,” he said recklessly, “unless you leave.
If you do, it’s all a waste.” He leaned over to her. “Tell me it’s worth
it, Sylvia.”

Sitting across from him on opposite sides of the severe office table, as
she had that early morning when he had first kissed her, she sent her
mind, an obedient djinn, to summon back the memories which had burst
into flower only from the moment when, emerging from Trumbull at dead of
night, she had felt the warm incitement of the whispering rain on her
face. Every step, every thought thereafter she recalled with a vividness
which told her that she could never forget any of it while a woman’s
pulse throbbed in her veins. The physical memories were not the clearest
etched. There her mind dimmed in the half-blind fog of passion, to
emerge upon the clear remembrance of his face’s cameo beauty as they sat
together in the upper room, of the play of his fancy, the swift flame of
his thought lambent in terse and revealing phrase, the sense of his
courage and directness and surgical frankness, his disregard of unproven
traditions and conventions; of his eyes as they touched upon her hair,
her lips, her hands, her own eyes while they two sought omens in the
fire that whispered to the unquenched flame in their own hearts its
imperishable and inviolate secrets.

“Yes; it’s worth it.”

He said passionately; “I’ve never believed in love except as an
emotional masking of an eternal necessity. You made it something
different; something finer and higher.”

She said with sad clarity: “How can it be when it involves us in lies
and surrenders?”

“You haven’t lied,” he denied jealously.

“But I shall when I apologize to Prof. Shenstone.”

“Compromise,” he returned but with no conviction in his voice. “Life has
to be largely compromise.”

“Yes; when one has started that way.”

Compromise! Perhaps that was the word invisibly placarded on all side
doors.


                              CHAPTER XIX

“Paging Miss Clarke. Message for Miss Verity Clarke,” intoned Starr from
the inner room, hearing the Freshman enter Suite Twenty. “Letter for
Miss Clarke. Look on the mantel.”

Verity opened the envelope and gave a choked yelp which brought out her
roommate.

“Did it bite you?” She stared at the floor whither the contents had
fluttered from the recipient’s flaccid fingers. “What’s that?” she
demanded. And, as the Freshman only giggled helplessly: “_Will_ you tell
me what that is?”

“It’s—it’s the p-p-p-price of my shame,” gurgled Verity.

“Oh, it is, is it?” Starr picked up the five hundred dollar bill, crisp
as only a heavily denominational greenback can be. “I’ll say you got a
fair price.”

“As per invoice,” said Verity, whose Domestic Economy course included
business terms. She examined the envelope. “There’s no stamp. How did it
get here?”

“Gwen brought it.”

“_Gwen!_ Oh, of course.” She took the bill, began to stare at it
hypnotically and fell into self-contained ruminations, which is one of
the most infuriating methods of handling a mystery. “I’d forgotten all—
No, I hadn’t really forgotten, but—” Her voice sank to a mumble from
which occasional and useless words such as “he,” “I,” “never,” and “if”
projected.

“Do you want a nice hard sock in the ribs with a hockey stick?” inquired
her roommate after patience had ceased to be a virtue.

“I meant to tell you about it when I got back and then—well, it seemed
nicer,” said the other naïvely, “to kind of have it all to myself. Ouch!
I’m trying to tell you, aren’t I? Put that thing back.”

She gave a sketchy outline of the night on the island, Starr listening
with devout interest.

“Haven’t you heard from him since?”

“Not a word.”

“You didn’t let him know who you were?”

“No.”

“Why-ever not?”

“I—I liked it just as it was; a one-performance sort of thing. And I
thought he’d most likely forgotten—”

“Liar.”

“Of course I hoped he wouldn’t and at the same time I wasn’t going to
make any move to see him because I liked him quite a lot and didn’t see
any use in liking him any more.”

“That’s a putrid reason!”

“No; it isn’t.” Verity’s soft lips set in the line of obstinacy. “I know
you and Syl think I’m an idiot and sappy and all that, but I don’t care;
I’m not going to get excited over any other man till I’ve met up with my
Pullman Seven. I know I’m going to meet him.”

“He’s probably a hundred and seventeen years old.”

“He _is_ not. You know, for a minute I had the wild hope that my boatman
was the one. Something in his voice or manner or something.” She sighed.
“But he wasn’t.”

“How are you going to get the money back to him?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re going to _keep_ it?”

“I’m going to give it to Syl to lend to Sara La Lond. It’ll get her
through till she pinches the Alumnæ prize.”

“Hottentot baby! What’ll the donor think?”

“He hasn’t got a think coming. He committed himself to the proposition
of just yearning to help any worthy girl through college. Is Sara
worthy? I ask you.”

“Ask _her_ and get a thick ear. Why, even Esther Reynolds wouldn’t stand
being called worthy. Are you going to tell your noble islander?”

“I’m going to consult Gwen.”

Consultation with Miss Peters promised little at the outset. “Don’t know
a thing about it,” she replied to Verity’s cautious questions, “except
that Harvey mailed me a registered letter enclosing a sealed envelope
for you. Receipt, please. Sign in the space marked X. Thanks for the
dime.”

“Haven’t you seen him since?” inquired the visitor, disappointed.

“Since when?”

“Since I did.”

“That depends. I expect so, unless you’ve been meeting up with him
recently. I saw him last week.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Did he strike you as a deaf-mute?” retorted the other. She scrutinized
the unsuppressed interest of Verity’s flushed face. “What’s on? Has
little Cold-heart got warmed up all of a sudden? Yes; he did say an
earful—if you don’t care what you get in your ear. He asked if I knew
you and when I said yes he cut in and said that was all he wanted to
know; that if there was anything further you could furnish it yourself.
He’s a queer bird, Harvey.”

Fair play with a friend was in the very marrow of Verity’s bones. She
looked Gwen in the eye. “Gwen, do you want him?”

“Do I _want_ him? Who; Harvey Westfall?”

“Yes.”

“Why, he’s my uncle! A real one.”

“Your _uncle_? H-h-h-how old is he?”

“Thirty, I guess. Or maybe twenty-nine. You needn’t look so sore about
it. It isn’t illegal to have an uncle of thirty.”

“It’s unusual,” said Verity severely.

“Nobody can say it’s my fault. Anyway he’s a duck. Look here, do _you_
want him?”

“Certainly not,” retorted Verity with dignity.

“Then why all the uproar?”

“Just ordinary interest in a friend’s affairs,” was the airy response.
“’voir.”

What Gwen had not imparted to her visitor was Harvey Westfall’s
declaration; “That girl is a danger signal for any man with two eyes and
if she ever flashes a wigwag to me I’ll come out of the forest with a
leap. But it’s her move.”

Verity departed from the interview with a feeling of dissatisfaction
amounting to restlessness. Beneath her virginal aloofness of bearing,
she concealed a warm romanticism, just as Sylvia’s matter-of-fact and
inbred puritanism was tempered by potentialities of passionate
abandonment, and Starr’s lawlessness by a saving leaven of
self-preservative caution. “Woman,” as the sage and sainted Althea
Sperry once wrote in a privately preserved letter, “is not made all out
of one piece of calico.”

Starr and Sylvia held conclave over their roommate. “The kid has waked
up; there’s no doubt of that,” said the former.

“She’s a blazing beauty; that’s what she is. Nixie was right; a girl has
got to know she’s pretty before she can put herself over on the Great
World of Men.”

“Yes; but how to remove the Pullman complex?”

“Do you really think that’s on her mind or is it only a bluff?”

“No; she’s made a fetish of it. You know what an obstinate brat she is.
Look at that chin.”

“I think,” pronounced Sylvia, “that a major operation is indicated and
that this Westfall male is maybe the chosen instrument.”

“Wish we had a chance to size him up.”

“Why not get Gwen to have him down for the spring play?”

“Potent thought. But she says he hates fussy functions.”

“Then give him a dark tip that he’ll learn something to his advantage by
coming.”

“I positively _revere_ your originality of thought and expression,” said
Starr and expertly dodged a bed-slipper. “We can sound Gwen, anyway.”

“Shall we tell Vee?”

“No. Let her wait and see for herself. Shock might be useful in reducing
the Pullman yen.”

Gwen at once fell in with their plan and after a considerable effort of
strategy contrived to extract a half promise from the woodsman without
revealing the plot. Sylvia, who was on probation with all privileges cut
off as a result of the debate with Miss Shenstone, was put in general
charge of the campaign as having time on her hands, since all
extra-campus activities were prohibited to her. (Much she cared. She was
meeting Patterson Gifford two and three times a week in reckless
disregard of almost certain discovery, sooner or later, though Ida McKay
had abandoned the chase, having achieved her end.) Gwen made only one
stipulation.

“I won’t stand for his being used as an anise-seed bag. He’s a good
nunky if he is mine own.”

“He’s got to take his chances, hasn’t he, like any one else?”

“Oh, he can take care of himself. Just so long as the cards aren’t
stacked against him.”

“He’s up against Gallant Gale and a fond but fleeting memory. Do you
want a handicap for him?”

“Oh, go to hell,” said Gwen amiably. “How much shall I tell him?”

“Tell him nothing. We want a chance to give him the once-over, though,
before operations begin.”

Opportunity was arranged in the form of a small and intimate tea to
which Miss Verity Clarke was not invited. The two H.B.V.’s at once and
emphatically liked Harvey Westfall; his lean, long-jawed Yankee looks,
his imperturbable self-possession, his air of good-humored competence,
his refreshing abstinence from the prevalent mode of incessant
wise-cracking and double entendre; even the slouchy ease of his
well-made clothes. They secret-signaled each other “He’ll do” and set
themselves with all their art to making friends, which is quite a
different and rarer technic than that of fussing. They won.

“A pair of corkers,” was his verdict to Gwen, delivered with an
enthusiasm not common with him.

“They’re our best line of goods. Which one d’you think you’d fall for?”

“Neither. They’re grand. But they’re not my trouble.”

Next noon on the campus he encountered Miss Trouble, incarnate. There
was a rush of feet behind him, a breathless, excited call and he turned
to meet the eyes of Verity Clarke, widened in lovely and welcoming
surprise.

“Why, it’s my gay gondolier. Aren’t you going to shake hands?”

“I think I might safely go that far,” said he gravely.

“And say you’re glad to see me?”

“It is,” returned Mr. Westfall primly, “an unexpected pleasure.”

“Did you come to look after the investment?”

“What investment?”

“Well—me.”

“No.”

“Don’t be a grumptious gondolier. Anyway,” she added softly, “it was
sweet of you and I’ll tell you all about it some day. Are you coming to
the show to-night to see your little friend; the third-rate trouper, do
her stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe that’s what you came for.”

“No.”

“Well, for a line of sprightly conversation!” said Miss Clarke
indignantly. “Do they have to get you on an island to make you loosen
up?”

“When am I going to see you alone?”

“Oh, that’s different. One doesn’t get much chance at these campus
galas. Why didn’t Gwen let me know you were here?”

“Didn’t she?”

“Certainly not.”

“Neither did she let me know you were here.”

“There’s some deep plotting going on,” twinkled Verity. “I’ve got a
class. See you again.”

The forester walked downtown with a purposeful stride. On the way he was
sighted by the two H. B. V’s. “He has all the symptoms,” pronounced the
man-wise Starr, “of a swain on his way to a flower emporium.”

In that moment there was born to the mind of Sylvia Hartnett the Scheme
Magnificent. She seized her companion’s arm. “Starr, I’ve got an idea.”

“Unpinch me. And rid yourself of it.”

“A slinky idea! The slinkiest idea of this or any other semester, year,
century, or epoch.”

“Cease hating yourself and tell me.”

“It all depends on whether you’re right about the floral quest.”

They followed Westfall until he disappeared within the door of “Ye
Bouverie,” whereafter Sylvia spoke tensely for two minutes while her
companion listened and questioned and finally gave excited approval. At
the conclusion they entered and surprised Mr. Westfall supervising the
selection of the four dozen niftiest roses in the place. Him they
hailed, friendly wise, as Uncle.

“It’s too divine of you,” gushed Sylvia, “to be sending us those lovely
posies.”

“Don’t say they aren’t for us,” besought Starr.

The Westfall goat was not an easily attainable animal. Its proprietor
grinned. “Well, not this lot, exactly; but the next or Class B
assortment which I am now about to select with your kind assistance.”

“You are a good sport, Harvey-Uncle,” admired Sylvia, “and just for that
you get off free. Particularly as we’ll possibly get a whiff of this
bunch in Suite Twenty. Is that a rotten guess, I ask you?”

“Not so far gone in decomposition as to be unrecognizable,” he admitted.

“Then heed. Before that box gets its final wreath of smilax, look us
over. Carefully.”

“I see nothing to criticize,” was the cautious response.

“Do we appear reliable?”

“To outward view.”

“Would you trust your life, your bank account, your secret hopes and
ambitions and your untainted honor in our keeping?”

“Oh, in a minute!”

“Don’t be jaunty about it. This is fateful stuff. Will you or will you
not put in with the flowers a small parcel which we will furnish you?
It’s for your own good,” she added piously.

“Then God help me! I’ll do it. . . . Hey! Where are you escaping to?”

“To get the dynamite. Wait here.”

They delivered to him four minutes later a neatly wrapped package of
inconsiderable size and weight which he hefted instinctively before
dropping it into the box. He then picked it out again and attached his
card to it, a process which gave the two girls lively delight.

“Aren’t you going to ask any questions?” queried Starr.

“No.”

“You win _all_ the ribbons. I’m positively intimidated by such
composure.”

“I’m in the hands of my friends,” said Harvey Westfall, attempting
without too brilliant success, a docile expression. “Any instructions?”

“N-no. Your own brains have got to see you through the perilous crisis.
We can’t tell you anything without violating a confidence.” This from
Sylvia.

“That’s too unfair,” protested Starr. “He’s entitled to a start, at
least. Uncle-of-our-hearts, the danger point is Number Seven. If Vee
says anything about that—and she will—you say ‘Yes’ and do the best
follow up you——”

“She has, already.”

“She _has_?” “When?” “How?” “What did she say?” “What did you say when
she said it?”

“I said that I had a seven-toed cat. I think seven toes on a cat is
pretty good, myself, but she seemed disappointed.”

“Oh, you poor drip!” mourned Starr.

“Well, it’s bad but it might be worse,” amended Sylvia. “I’ll give you
one more pointer. If things get too thick your cue is to say, ‘There’s a
time for all things,’ and look owlish. And may your brains save your
life for we won’t be there to help. I’m betting on you, Unky.”

“Also me,” confirmed Starr.

“Well, if I never see you again, remember I died with my boots on,” said
he gallantly.

That evening Miss Verity got the second great shock of her young life
when she opened the box of roses and found among them, attached to the
card of Mr. Harvey Westfall, a small package containing two spoons
cupped together and bound with a length of ribbon. It startled her too
much even for a yelp.

The other two, entering with airy casualness, perfectly timed, found her
gazing frozenly upon the portent.


                               CHAPTER XX

Verity’s performance in the play was a near-flop. Never had she acted so
badly. Out in front Gallant Gale, looking somewhat seedy for him, and
his faithful satellite, Loyster, did their best for her, but soon the
support of her friends died down to the merely perfunctory plaudits that
mark a failure. She did not even care. Her mind was otherwise occupied.
After the final curtain she slipped away and sought refuge in bed.

There Starr, severe of countenance, found and arraigned her. “You’re a
swell hard-boiled virgin, I don’t think.”

“Lemme alone.” Verity buried her face petulantly into her pillow.

“I suppose you’re going to let him chase you off the campus.”

“Was he out front?”

“Of course he was. And he came back, looking for you.”

“Maybe I’ll see him to-morrow,” quavered the freshman.

“Why, you poor sheep! Wait till Sylvia sees you. You’ll get an earful.”

“Where is Syl?”

“She isn’t in yet.” Involuntarily Starr looked at her watch.

“Starr, I know all about Syl.”

“What do you know?”

“Everybody’s talking. Isn’t it awfully dangerous?”

“Of course it is.”

“Are they together now?” asked Vee in a low, shaken voice.

“I don’t know where else she’d be.”

“It must be wonderful to be in love that way—and terrible, too.”

“They’ll crash, sure as the world.”

“Maybe they think it’s worth it. Is it worth it, Starr?”

The older girl frowned. “I wish I knew. I didn’t think it was or—” She
left the conclusion in the air.

In the still upper room of the Gifford house, Sylvia slipped from the
chair to the floor, curling her arm over her lover’s knee. It was not
yet midnight. She had left the play early and crossed the deserted
campus unseen. Her voice was dreamy as she said:

“Sometimes I wonder how it all happened, Giff.”

“Naturally enough.” She knew, without looking up that he was smiling.

“Oh, yes! In a way. If any one had ever told me, though, that I’d have
an affair with a Faculty. . . !”

“How comes it that you’d never had an affair before?”

She stirred uneasily. “D’you think that’s so extraordinary?”

“In this adventurous age? A girl of your temperament?”

“But I haven’t got temperament. Except for you.”

“There’s enough masculine vanity in me to make me love to hear you say
it.”

“Isn’t it something more than vanity?”

His strong fingers swept lightly from her chin down along her throat.
“You know it is.”

“I’m glad it was you,” she whispered with soft vehemence. “It couldn’t
have been any one else, I expect.”

“How can you tell? You haven’t experimented.”

“But of course I have. Well, I mean I’ve tried necking and all that sort
of thing, just like any one else.”

“The scientific spirit.”

“Don’t be poisonous, Giff! I’ve never been a promiscuous petter.”

“No? Why?”

She shook her bright head. “It makes me feel like a porcupine, all
quilly. Until you kissed me. The first time you looked at me, that
way—if you laugh at me I’ll never forgive you, Giff—I knew that if you
really wanted me I’d come to you. I couldn’t help it.” She nuzzled her
cheek against his knee. “Not that I tried very hard. I didn’t try at
all. I just came. Am I a hardened character to talk so coolly about it?”

“You’re the clearest and most straightforward spirit I’ve ever known.”

She nestled to him. “Giff, let’s not ever have any remorse or anything
of that sort. Neither of us. No matter what happens. I want it all to be
like this always—when we remember it, I mean.”

“Don’t talk of remembering,” he whispered strongly. “I can’t think of a
life without you.”

“But it can’t go on forever.”

“No. It can’t go on forever.”

“If we don’t break it off ourselves, we’ll be found out sooner or later.
Won’t we?”

“I suppose so. People generally are. I’ve never blinded myself to that.”

“And then what?”

“There’ll be hell to pay.”

“You’ll have to leave, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t bear to think of that. Is it worth it, Giff?”

“What do you expect me to say to that?”

She laughed, reaching up to enfold and draw down his head, sealing her
warm lips to his. “I expect you to say, ‘Yes,’ of course.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a satisfying sort of person, Giff. You make me feel always that
you mean so much more than you say. Not that you say much!”

“I say what I most mean every time I speak to you or look at you.”

“I know,” she murmured sweetly. “I’m terribly in love with you, Giff,
and I love being terribly in love with you. But I don’t suppose I’d want
to marry you, if you were free.”

“Why not?” he demanded hotly.

With that sad, protective wisdom of women, so often miscalled intuition,
which is the gift of the gods for the reading of men’s souls and which
outruns experience or knowledge, she said: “You’d hate any woman that
you had to live with. Yes; even me. You couldn’t help it. While you’re
not bound to me you’ll love me. That’s all I want.”

“It isn’t all I want,” he began but she thrust a hand up against his
fiercely set lips and hushed them.

“Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not think of anything else except that
we’re together now.”

The lights had been out for hours in Twenty when Sylvia Hartnett ran
across the broad, dim lawn toward the rear of Trumbull, keeping
prudently to the line of the shadowing trees. Her blood sang in her
veins. Her lips were still soft with unforgotten kisses. She felt
herself above fear, above harm or danger. The form of a tree trunk
before her stirred and broadened into life. Sylvia stopped. A voice,
cracked with surprise, said; “It’s you. Don’t be scared. It’s me, Ralph;
Ralph Loyster.”

“Come over here,” she directed coolly, drawing him into the shelter of a
tall bush. “What’s it all about?”

“It’s you,” he reiterated dully. “I was waiting for Vee Clarke.”

“You mean that Vee had a date with _you_?” said the incredulous Sylvia.

“No. With Gale. Well, I don’t know that—You haven’t seen Sid Gale, have
you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Has Vee? Is she out with him?”

“Vee’s in bed.”

“How do you know? How do I know you’re not lying to me?” he asked
miserably. “You girls all stand together so. Lemme look at you.”

He moved closer and she gave a quick exclamation. One cheek was puffy
and discolored, his eye half closed, his chin blood-caked from a shallow
cut.

“What’s happened?”

“Fight,” he said briefly.

“Here? On the campus?”

“No. Outside the hotel. Sid beat me up.”

“What for?”

“He was half stewed and I tried to keep him from going out.”

“Why?”

Loyster hesitated. The traditional loyalty of college boy to his fellow
bound him. But his fiber was weakened by pain and anger and
apprehension. “When he gets that way,” he muttered, “there’s nothing he
won’t do to—anyone. He’s a devil. I was afraid he’d—get somebody—get
himself,” he amended, “into trouble.”

“You think he had a date with Vee Clarke?”

“He did with somebody. I was afraid it was her. He’s crazy about her.”
His voice trailed away. Sylvia felt an impulse of pity for the poor
slob.

“You’re pretty crazy about her, yourself, aren’t you?” said she.

“Yes. But I’d have tried to stop him no matter who it was. You don’t
understand.”

“No; I don’t. But as far as Vee is concerned you needn’t worry, m’lad.
That wise freshman isn’t taking any late-night chances with anybody,
specially the Gallus One. She handed him the atmosphere long since.”

“You wouldn’t have any idea where he is?”

“Not me. Would it cool you off any if I find little Vee safe in bed and
signal you?”

“Yes; it would,” said the grateful Loyster.

“What’ll you do then?”

“Look for him somewhere else.”

“Whatever for? Do you crave another beating?”

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I’ve got to find him.”

Sylvia marveled. “Guardian of the public morals, eh-wot? If you’re being
watchman to Gallant Gale you must have your hands full. I don’t get you.
You’re not drunk, are you?”

“No.”

“Well, if you must continue your quest”—she paused, debated with
herself, came to a decision—“try Nixie.”

“You think she’s still got sneakers for him?”

“Sure. He’s the first man that ever turned her down. She’d give the
ribbons off her shimmy to get him back. You’d better chase around
there.”

“Gimme the signal first. I gotta be sure about Vee.”

She found the freshman sound asleep. Her flutter of a handkerchief from
the window was answered and she saw the ungainly figure lope, with a
painful hitch, along the roadway. Sylvia’s memories, which she cherished
to sleep, turned to dreams into which intruded the absurd and chivalrous
Loyster, pitted in mortal combat against a venom-spitting monster with
Gale’s handsome face, in defense of a girl who was by turns Vee, Nixie,
and herself.

The ground-floor window of the Terhune cottage slid up softly. A
graceful figure leapt out, then bent, limp, its forehead bowed on the
high sill.

“Oh, God! God! God!” came from it in a whispered groan.

“Don’t Sid, dear,” Elsie Nichols’s hand fluttered at his chin, striving
to lift the bowed head. Her marvelous voice implored. “You mustn’t. It’s
all right.”

“You don’t know,” sobbed the boy.

“There’s nothing to make a fuss about,” she persisted. “You needn’t
blame yourself. I knew what I was doing.” She laughed softly. “It had to
happen some time. And I’m nearly twenty. And I wouldn’t have had it
happen first with anybody but you.”

He lifted a face from which the drink had died out, leaving it racked
and haggard. She kissed his lips. “Good-night, darling boy.”

“I’m afraid to leave you alone.”

“Silly! It’s all right, I tell you.”

The optimism of the spoiled darling came to his rescue. Maybe it was all
right. Maybe his luck was with him and it would turn out that way;
sometimes it did, he’d heard. Why worry until he knew? He kissed her
lingeringly—that was part of his technique—turned and hurried
lightfootedly away to face Ralph Loyster.

“I saw you.”

“Saw me where?” Gale played for time.

“Getting out of her window. How long you been in there?”

“None of your business. Not long.”

“You lie.”

“Do you want another beating?” But there was no conviction in the
threat.

“Did you tell her?”

“Mind your God-damned business,” whimpered the Don Juan.

Loyster dug into his waistcoat pocket and brought out a key which he
threw at the other.

“What’s that?” demanded Gale querulously.

“That’s the hotel key. I’m going back home.”

Gale, the gallant, collapsed. “Don’t leave me flat,” he implored. “I’m
afraid to be left alone, I didn’t mean—After I lapped that last drink
everything went queer. You know how I am when I get that way.” His voice
took on an accusing, exculpating whine. “Why didn’t you stop me? You
knew I was pickled. You ought to have—”

“You filthy pup!” said Loyster. He limped away.

Gale stared after him, then contrived a laugh. To hell with Ralph! Sore.
Jealous. No girl’d ever fall for him. Well, he’d come around in time. If
he didn’t, let him grouch and be God-damned! . . . Oh, if he could only
get a drink; just one. Then maybe he could think this thing out clearly.
What to do about Nixie! Why hadn’t he had the guts to—to—well, he’d
meant to. He insisted to himself that he’d meant to. Until she kissed
him and then he forgot everything. It was her fault as much as his. If a
girl wanted to take chances. She admitted herself, that it was her
fault. He’d phone her; or write her, no, that’d certainly be too late.
Well, he’d go to see her in the morning, when his head was clear and
tell her the whole damned thing. God! how he wanted a drink!

Before dawn Gallant Gale in his newspaper famed car with the college
colors, was on his way back at seventy miles an hour, which was yet too
slow to outdistance the pursuing furies of his fears.


                              CHAPTER XXI

Verity woke up possessed valuably of a feeling of righteous indignation
against Harvey Westfall. It gave her a confidence, a moral advantage for
the impending encounter. Her boatman, she decided, was far from all that
he should be. He had proved himself simply dumb, and stupidity is the
unpardonable among the seven cardinal sins of modern youth. So when he
cornered her at one of the teas she gave him a coolly friendly greeting
and said:

“Account for yourself. What brings you here?”

“Haven’t you heard about the big match?”

“At coll? No. What is it?”

“Our chess team—Princeton, you know—is playing yours.”

She should have been on guard, but she fell for his perfect gravity of
demeanor. “But you’re not in college now,” she objected, “and I’d never
have taken you for a chess player.”

“I’m cheer-leader for the team.”

“Reptile!” But Vee chuckled. “I suppose you really came up to see Gwen.”

“I’ve seen Gwen before. Often. That was an extraordinary performance you
gave last night.”

“I thought I was rotten.”

“That’s what I meant.” (Well, _what_ were you to do with a man like
that!)

“Is that what the roses meant? Condolences? Did I thank you for them?”

“Not that I recall.”

“I loved ’em. And the other reminder. That was a shock.”

So the battle was joined. Harvey felt like a boxer pitted, blindfold,
against an opponent who fought in the light of day. He must guide
himself by such clues as he could wangle her into giving him.

“If it’s a shock don’t you think you could withstand it better in the
open air?”

“We might walk,” she conceded, and they took their leave. “Now,” said
she, “are you going to explain?”

Her former word, “reminder,” had given him something to go on. “It was
intended to stir up a stagnant memory,” he ventured.

“Stagnant, yourself!” she retorted. “You’ve got your nerve. You’re the
one that forgot.”

“Never for a minute,” he denied with a fervor gallantly undiminished by
his lacking the faintest idea of what he had never forgotten.

“Then why did you flatten out so when I gave you the opening about Lower
Seven?”

Lower Seven! Here was a clue, indeed. It might also be a crisis. Caution
was plainly indicated. Sylvia’s phrase for use in time of peril came to
his lips. “There’s a time for everything,” he stated oracularly.

It served at least one useful purpose; it took her aback. She studied
him with a dubious regard while his mind quested wildly for meanings.
Lower Seven could indicate only one thing, a journey. A night journey.
On a sleeper. There they were supposed to have encountered each other.
But what kind of an encounter? Why hadn’t she at once recognized him and
he her? Had he (that is to say, whoever it was whose part he was
playing) rescued her in an accident when darkness and confusion rendered
recognition uncertain? Romantic but the best he could do at such short
notice. Pretty good, in fact; he wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’d hit
it first crack. Sherlock Holmes was becoming very pleased with himself
as a deducer when the bomb hit him.

“Why didn’t you speak to me the next morning?”

Well, why hadn’t he? Mr. Westfall’s harassed cerebral convolutions did
some rapid whirling, but to no immediate good purpose. (“There’s a time
for everything” didn’t seem to fit this situation at all.)

“Why didn’t I speak to you,” he repeated slowly and consideringly.

“Yes. Why didn’t you?”

“I got off.” (If that’s too raw—he thought—I can always climb a tree
and yell for help.)

“At Buffalo? I thought you probably had.” (Saved!)

“Of course I hated to,” he continued impressively. “But duty called.”

“Noble-hearted youth! But you did leave the spoons for me. That _was_
snappy.”

Spoons? Snappy? It sounded to the groping mind of Harvey Westfall like
pure insanity. In the name of St. Pullman what had spoons to do with
this bewildering and excited child? And why should he leave them for
her? Was it the booty of a shared robbery? He had to say something. “Oh,
do you think so?” murmured deprecatingly seemed reasonably safe.

“When I sat down in the diner (The scene’s shifted—thought Westfall.
Hope it isn’t going to be any mixeder) and the waiter put them down, I
nearly passed peacefully away. How could you tell him who to give ’em
to? S’pose they’d gone to the wrong person?”

With desperate inspiration he replied: “That was easy. I told him to
spot the prettiest girl in the car and give ’em to her. Some of these
waiters are very intelligent.”

“How could you tell I was pretty?” she challenged. “I don’t believe I
was up when you got off in the morning. You certainly hadn’t seen
me—well, before. (But why the blush?) You only heard me; and that was
mostly gasp. (Now what in the name of Mysterious Mike did that mean?)
And if you did see me, why didn’t you remember me when we met at
Risley?”

(Oh Lord! What was the answer to that one? “There’s a time for—” No;
no!) He countered with “Why didn’t you remember me, if it comes to
that?”

“What did I have to go on? Only your voice, and just a couple of stingy
whispers, at that. No, I don’t mean that! That was horrid of me,” and
she gave him a look so warm that his heart wiggled in its socket.
“Anyway, I did hope—I mean, suspect it was you. But you were such a
dumb bunny about it.”

Here was his opening again. “There’s a time for everything.”

“You said that before. But isn’t it the most marvelous coincidence that
ever was! I had the feeling that we were going to meet again, and in the
open, but I never thought it would be that way. You’re rather like what
I expected you to be,” she concluded shyly.

“I’m always like that,” he confided.

“You win the tin violet for the shrinking championship. There’s one
thing I insist on knowing, though.”

“Sure it isn’t something that no lady ought to know?” (Pretty good,
that! he congratulated himself.) “If so, dunt esk.”

“I will, too. You haven’t told me how you picked me for the spoons.”

Having won breathing space he had utilized the opportunity for a
splendid invention. “I heard a couple of undergraduate sheiks raving
about you in the diner early that morning.”

“Did they say it was the girl in Lower Six?” (That was a help!)

“Yes.”

“But there were two of us. It might have been Myrtle.”

“I had to take some chance. And there was a feeling about you”— He
paused, amazed and entranced by the warm and sweet color that came
flooding up her face at this innocently meant expression—“I mean, I had
an idea from the general effect that you were the original and
refreshing balm to the eye, and all that. . . . Is that a lake that I
see before me?”

“You crash an A in geography.”

“Boats on it?”

“Even so. Which reminds me. I never paid you for the other trip. How
much?”

“Fifty cents an hour is the regular rate. Four hours, I reckon it,” was
the business-like return.

“That’s two dollars. Not including the swim. I can’t bear yet to think
of your taking that risk. How could you do it?”

“You spurned my humble hospitality and insisted on going home,” he
pointed out, “and that was the only way I could think of. We strive to
please.”

“I haven’t got two dollars with me. Suppose I row you around our lake
for an hour on account.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Though we haven’t got an island here. How’s your nice, kind island?”

“It’s feeling lonely.”

“It’ll feel better when you get back to it.”

“I don’t believe it’ll ever be itself again until you come back.”

“Haven’t been asked.”

“You weren’t asked the first time.”

“Does the island want me to come back?”

“More than it’s ever wanted anything.”

She met his look and her eyes slid away from it across the sunny
ripples. “I don’t want your island to be too lonely. It was good to me.”

“The world is generally good to you, isn’t it, little Vee?”

“I suppose it is. I don’t know that I’ve thought much about it. You were
good to me—awfully good.”

“At fifty cents an hour, unpaid.”

“I wasn’t thinking of the island then. The other—er—occasion, that
you’ve forgotten.”

“Let’s forget it again,” he begged hastily. “Tell me about the rest of
the show trip. What a half-wit you must have thought me, taking you for
a trouper.”

They drifted about for an hour when the lowering sun apprised the
reluctant girl that she must get back. The landing was deserted when
they reached it. (Verity thought as he stretched out his hand to help
her—Now if I hold his hand one-half of one per cent of a second after I
get on the float, he’s going to kiss me. And I don’t want to be
kissed—yet. . . . Don’t I? Maybe I do, and it’s only that I’m afraid.
And why should I be afraid of him? I’ve been kissed before and it never
made me feel afraid. It never made me feel anything. But I think he
could. I know he could. P’raps that’s why I’m afraid.) She came out of
the boat in an easy spring and stood facing him with mischief in her
eye.

“When do you want your five hundred dollars back?”

“Who told you that I wanted it back? Am I not to be allowed to boost the
cause of higher education?”

“Sir! How dare you! I’m a very proper young person even if I do make
midnight trips to islands and I don’t take five hundred dollars from any
gent except as a loan.”

“At six per cent interest, I suppose.”

“If you want to grind the faces of the poor,” she said as they walked up
the path. “It’s being put to very good use, I can tell you.”

“All right by me. Play it on the ponies, if you like and have a good
tip.”

At the door of Trumbull the quirky light came back into Vee’s soft eyes.
“Boatman,” said she, “regard me the college clock.”

“Six thirty,” he read. “What of it? They can’t put you in jail for
that.”

“Keep on regarding it. I like your profile. . . . You’ve got to admit,
Harvey Westfall, late of Lower Seven, that to occupy the same berth with
a man and have him not even recognize you at the next meeting is—well,
just a touch enervating.”

His head came around with a jerk. His face, suddenly white and strained
under its tan, startled her as much as the tenseness of his voice.
“What’s that?”

“If you can’t stand a little teasing—” she began resentfully.

By an effort of will and brain, Harvey commanded his mental processes.
He was no Victorian in his ideas, but he was just old enough to retain
certain prejudices regarding the chastity of women which a generation a
trifle younger pretended to disdain. The threat of disillusionment—and
such a disillusionment!—in her lightly taunting words had brought to
him as nothing else could have done the realization that he was
hopelessly in love with this incomprehensible child. He said quietly;
“Of course. And, that being the case, can you wonder at my
disappointment when you wouldn’t stay on my island?” But as he laid his
trap he was ashamed of even that momentary failing of his faith. If
those eyes and that mouth did not mean innocence, then he never again
would trust the deceiving face of woman.

She said, with a wide look; “But that would have been different.”

With genuine inspiration this time he suggested; “As different as
accident from design.”

She nodded, and disappeared. Westfall’s long woodsman’s stride carried
him happily across the campus and past Starr and Sylvia without even the
tribute of a pause. Indignant, they pursued him.

“Stop and deliver. What luck?”

“We’ve had a very interesting conversation.”

“Gods! How I hate a demure man,” cried Sylvia. “What did you find out,
if any?”

“How much do you two know?” he countered.

“Everything.”

“Then I’ll tell you my theory. Vee and I seem to have bunked together in
a sleeper and left each other in the morning—No? Well, anyway, left
each other as we were when we met, to spare your blushes. The dark, I
take it, prevented any certain recognition.”

“The lad,” said Starr, “is clevaw.”

“But who was the profound sleeper in Lower Seven?”

“Nobody knows.”

“And, for the love of learning, what have the cock-eyed spoons got to do
with? . . . Laugh, darn you, laugh. I’ll tell the highly radiated air
one thing. That original Lower Seven guy is going to have a conflict on
his hands when he does turn up. And he’d better be pretty soon about it
or he’ll be too late. No lady can sleep with me and not make an honest
man of me!”

The two girls looked at each other, and raised each a hand. “Go to it,
with the blessing of the H. B. V’s.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ask Vee.”

He saw Vee only once more before he had to leave. She seemed a bit shy
though she did kiss him good-by (hardly more than sister-fashion) when
he left.


                              CHAPTER XXII

Gwen Peters lounged into Suite Twenty and made salaam. “Peace upon all
this household,” she intoned.

“And to you be peace, daughter of Allah! What’s the dirt?” Starr looked
up from a waist upon which she was operating with a particularly
malodorous cleansing fluid.

Gwen, who was by way of being a clearing house for all the news that
never reaches the college authorities, sat down and asked: “What’s the
matter with La Lond?”

“Nothing’s the matter with her that I know of.”

“Does she cop the Alumnæ or doesn’t she?”

“By a mile. Any one think different?”

“Yes; they do.”

“Why, who else has got a Chinawoman’s chance?” demanded Sylvia, tossing
her book into a corner.

“Ah; now you’re asking. All I know is that Sally Messmore and a couple
of other wise ones over in The Bulrushes are betting against her.”

There was a circle in the Sarah B. Moses Dormitory (known, by the
inevitable logic of college slang, as The Bulrushes) who esteemed
themselves hot sports and made book on all college events.

“That stringy little ferret! Who cares what she does?” But Sylvia’s
expression was less unconcerned than her words.

“She buys her clothes out of her bridge winnings. You don’t catch her
betting unless she’s got something to go on. They say she’s got a couple
of hundred on the field against La Lond.”

“That so? I think I’ll stroll over and have a talk with Ratty Messmore.”

“You might get something,” allowed the caller. “And then again you
mightn’t. She’s nobody’s pet moron.”

The girl thus complimented was sitting on her window sill studying out a
bridge problem when the emissary from Trumbull hailed her. Miss Messmore
of the senior class had a small, hard, alert, cheerful face and a slim
figure always snappily arrayed. She answered the call;

“Come up and set.” Then, as Sylvia appeared in the door; “Have a
Cemetery Special? The cork-tips are on the trunk.”

“I hear you’re betting against La Lond for the Alumnæ.”

“Got a couple down,” was the careless response. “Handling any Trumbull
money on it?”

“No. But I’d like to know why you’re betting against her.”

“Because I think she’ll lose.”

Sylvia smoked ruminatively—one of her own cigarettes. “Who’s going to
win?”

“Ah, I didn’t say who’d win. I’m betting La Lond loses.”

“And you’re not telling why?”

Miss Messmore directed a thoughtful look at her visitor. “Did she send
you here?”

“No.” Sylvia’s nostrils quivered. Her teeth bit off the monosyllable,
symptoms which were not lost upon the acute Miss Messmore.

“Ever push a girl out of a third-story window and see what happened?”
she inquired with a grin. “If not, don’t experiment on me.”

“All right, suh-weetie!” (Meaning—That’s what I’d like to do, but I’ll
wait and see what’s next.)

“Get me on this. It’s a straight business proposition with me. I’ve
nothing against La Lond personally.” She took three puffs and that kind
of deep inhalation vulgarly known in Sperry as a toe-nail-tickler.
“Except a hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Would you take more?”

“I could place it, I guess.”

“You appear to be pretty sure, Messmore.”

“Instead of taking your easy money I’ll give you a tip for yourself and
La Lond. Your entry had better withdraw quietly and quick.”

“Don’t make my blood run cold,” begged the visitor.

“All right. But I’ve seen the letters.”

“What letters?”

“Oh, cut the bluff,” invited Miss Messmore wearily. “You’re her
side-kick; you ought to know what letters. Maybe you don’t know, either,
that she’s got an amant.”

“Don’t be sil-lay,” besought Sylvia languidly.

Sally Messmore eyed her steadily. “All right. I’ve played poker, myself.
If the Faculty or the Self-Guv ever sees those precious documents—and
you don’t have to read between the lines to get what’s in ’em—La Lond
will lose more than the Alumnæ and Sperry will lose the honor of La
Lond’s presence.”

“That’s your little game is it?” said the caller thoughtfully.

The other became suddenly and volubly defensive. “You needn’t think I’m
doing it. I haven’t got the letters; don’t even know where they came
from. Didn’t have a thing to do with it and I’m not going to have. I’m
no blackmailer. But as long as I’m in on the knowledge, why shouldn’t I
make my bets accordingly? At that, I don’t want to see any girl get in
wrong and I’ll go this far with you; if she quietly drops out, on
account of her health or something, I’ll see if it can’t be fixed. What
say?”

Sylvia said nothing. She rose, went to the dresser, took therefrom a
whiskbroom and retired to a spot just outside the doorway. There she
brushed herself from head to foot with the elaborate particularity of
one who suspects an infestation of vermin. Insult in dumb show could go
no further. But the effect was sadly weakened by her slamming the whisk
violently to the floor as her parting gesture.

“I’ll give you a week,” the unabashed sport called after her.

Stratagems and plots were not natural to the straightforward Sylvia. Her
first impulse was to take counsel with the other H. B. V’s, but she
abandoned it. This was a matter too intimately touching Sara to be
discussed with any one. Should she warn the threatened girl? To what
purpose? It could do no good, and would only distract her mind from her
work in these last important weeks when she should be consolidating her
advantage. But at least, she must be put on her guard as to any further
risks. Sylvia interrupted her friend at her late-night studies.

“Seen Mark lately?”

The scholar looked up impatiently. “No.”

“Expect to see him?”

“He wants me to come down. I can’t afford the time.”

“You’re hearing from him, then.”

“Of course. What’s it all about, Hartnett?”

“Just that you can’t afford to take any chances now.”

“I’m not.” Sara fell into one of her moods of analysis. “We’re funny
creatures, we women. There are stretches when I hardly think about Mark
at all, except to be fond of him when a letter calls him to mind and to
wish I didn’t have to answer it. I don’t answer half of ’em. Then again
I’ll suddenly be wild to see him and be with him and want to take the
next train to New York and have him tell me that I’m beautiful and
adorable—and believe it.” She laughed. “At that, he isn’t as important
as the Alumnæ. Aren’t I the cold-hearted lizard!”

“Is that what you call it? Well, I just wanted to tell you; if you can’t
be good, be careful.”

“I can be both until exams are over.”

“That’s all right, then.”

But it was far from all right. Sylvia, taking the problem for a walk,
could see no way out. Not until she was emerging from a troubled dream
that night did the great, the grand, the bitterly luminous idea come to
her. As a side issue to it with a promise of malicious and vengeful
satisfaction, she proposed a plan to her roommates in the morning.

“Got any sporting blood, you two?”

“What’s up?” inquired Starr. Verity simply waited.

“Possessed of any spare cash?” was the next query.

“That’s different.”

“No; it’s the same. Golden opportunity, wenches! Never knocks twice at
the same door. How much could you raise at a pinch, Starr?”

“I’ve got a hundred and twenty-five that isn’t going to stir out of the
old sock till it sees the gown it wants for Commencement.”

“Bet it does. And you, Vee?”

“I’ve still got two hundred of the price of shame.”

“Well, we can use it. I’ll dig up a hundred and we’ll bet Ratty Messmore
and her pals stiff on Sara.”

“But Gwen thinks they’ve got something.”

“And so do they. But I know different. We can clean up four or five
hundred.”

“I’d be afraid,” said Vee. “If it was my own money——”

“Did I ever give you a wrong steer, Freshman?”

“No; but——”

“_Lend_ me the two hundred, then. I’m going to put my chemise on Sara.”

“Oh, well; if you feel that way about it.”

Together they made up a purse that staggered the sports of Sarah B.
Moses dorm, but when the taunt went forth that Trumbull was ready to
back them off the boards, they covered the money. Sally Messmore’s tip
was being quietly circulated.

Just after the week’s grace allowed by the Messmore was up, Sylvia was
summoned by Sara. “Syl, the J.B. has sent for me.”

“Know what it’s for?”

“No. General summons. I expect it’s the letters. What else could it be?”
said the scholar despairingly.

“When’s the hearing?”

“To-night.”

“Stand pat. I’m going to see Prudence Chase.”

“What can you do? I might as well pack up my things and get out.”

“Don’t be an ass! Keep your mouth shut. I’m in charge of this show.”

As head of the Self-Government, Prudence Chase, so Sylvia reasoned,
would have all the evidence in the case. She went to the senior’s study,
and made a frontal attack, the best method with the straight-dealing
Prudence.

“Has some one been making cracks about Sara La Lond, Chase?”

“What do you mean by cracks?”

“Complaints, then. Sneak-stuff. To the Self-Guv.”

“If they had, I couldn’t tell you. You ought to know that.”

“Sure! I know. The sacred secrecy of the Self-Guv and all that hooey.”
Sylvia was always flippant on the subject. “But I’ve got reason to think
that somebody is trying to do Sara dirt.”

“What is your reason?”

“We won’t get anywhere this way,” decided Sylvia, “as long as we both
want to ask questions and neither wants to answer. Here’s one more,
before I begin to tell you things. Haven’t you had an anonymous letter
about La Lond within a couple of days?”

Prudence’s firm lips were silent; her eyes steady and uncompromising
upon her interlocutor.

“Enclosing parts of two other letters?”

Still no reply from the student official. Sylvia was beginning to get
angry.

“Oh, well! I know you have. One sheet of each. A typed one and one
written in a man’s hand. That ought to tell you I know what I’m talking
about—since your high and lofty body is going to deal in secret and
anonymous stuff and stolen letters.”

At this Prudence flushed. “They were sent to me. I laid them before the
J.B. as a hypothetical case, giving no names, and they unanimously
decided to make an investigation.”

“On an anonymous statement that it was La Lond?”

“There were confirming details. In the enclosed letters.”

“Exactly. One was about the hitch-hike, wasn’t it? And one about a date
in New York. I’ll even give you the date; the 24th.”

“What does that prove?”

“It proves that I know enough to have a right to be heard.”

“Are you telling me this officially?” Prudence was plainly troubled.

“Make it as official as you like.”

“I don’t like any of it.”

“Maybe you’ll like it less when I tell you that a betting crowd in The
Bulrushes is engineering the whole thing.”

“But if there is no truth in the charge what harm can it do to have La
Lond up before the Board?”

“I’ll tell you what harm it can do,” asserted Sylvia heatedly. “It can
stir her up so that she’s liable to blow all to bits on her exams for
the Alumnæ. You know how high-strung she is. How do you think she’ll
take it if you get her up there and say; ‘We’ve got an anonymous letter
saying that you stayed with a man in New York——’”

“The anonymous letter didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what it amounts to, isn’t it?”

Prudence hesitated before replying; “There is enough in the other two
letters, the one written to her and the one written by her——”

“How do you know it was written by her? It’s typed, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, is it signed?” (This was the crucial point; Sara had not been
absolutely sure that she had not signed it. If she had, then Sylvia’s
plan was worthless.)

“No.”

“And the other letter doesn’t give any name?”

“No; it doesn’t. But I’m afraid that it fits in too well with known
facts. I never would have let the matter go this far if it hadn’t.”

“Let me see the letters, Chase.”

“How can I do that?”

“There’s every reason in the world. I can tell you the facts and save
you from making a hell of a mess of the whole business. Haven’t I told
you enough already to show that I know what I’m talking about?”

“As a material witness I suppose you might be authorized to see them,”
concluded the official after reflection. “I’ll take a chance.” She
unlocked an iron box, lifted out some papers neatly docketed, and handed
two sheets to the other. One was in Mark Rainger’s bold writing. A
sentence stood forth to her sight:

“I have seen your eyes flame and forget under my kisses, and how shall I
put you out of my heart now? You hold love too cheap in asking it.”

Sylvia felt a little pang of sorrow for Mark; he was so much more in
love with Sara than she with him. The typed sheet was more definitely
damning, with its plans for a week-end stay in New York over the 24th
and its warnings of caution.

She folded the letters and put them in her pocket. Her end was gained.

Prudence Chase stepped to the door and set her sturdy back against it.

“You will not get out of this room with those letters.”

“Yes, I shall. And you’ll let me.”

“Try and see.”

“They’re my letters.”

“_Yours!_”

“Certainly,” was the cool return. “Where did you ever get the wild idea
that they were Sara’s?”

“All the confirming circumstances. I’ve checked up on them.”

“Well—what?”

“The hike in the blizzard. Every one knows she was on that.”

“So was I.”

“And didn’t get in till next morning.”

“Neither did I.”

“Three weeks later she was away over a week-end.”

“Moi aussi.” (Sylvia had been away over most week-ends until her
interest in Patterson Gifford kept her on the campus.)

“Of course I wasn’t checking up on you. But the week-end date in this
letter matches with La Lond’s green slip for the 24th.”

“Look again. You’ll find another green with Hartnett on it.”

Prudence Chase studied her with a curious expression. “Sylvia Hartnett,
I think you’re not telling me the truth.”

“What right have you to say that to me?”

“None at all.” There followed a heavy silence. “Well, perhaps you are.
Are you in love with the man?”

Instantly her lover leapt to Sylvia’s mind. By even so much as the idle
word she could not be unfaithful to her love for him. “Does one have to
be in love,” she retorted coolly, “to take a flyer?”

“And now I _know_ you’re lying.”

“Is that official?” Sylvia shot back.

“None of this has been official, has it?”

“All of it as far as I’m concerned. And so is this.” She snatched the
incriminating sheets from her pocket, tore them to fragments, and thrust
them out of the window where an obliging wind dispersed them beyond
hope.

After an involuntary motion Prudence said, in a low voice; “And where
does that leave me? I’ve trusted you with the evidence and you’ve
destroyed it.”

“You don’t need the evidence. I’m leaving coll.”

“That’s pretty stiff . . . I won’t say I’m sorry, for I judge that you
know what you’re doing.”

“Perfectly. I’ve got—other reasons for leaving, even if the letters
hadn’t been found. And after all I’ve got about as much out of Sperry as
I ever could get.”

The other said thoughtfully; “La Lond is a very fine scholar; the best
we’ve had here in my time. But even at that——”

“Leave La Lond out of it.”

“Yes; that can be managed, too. If you’re leaving college——”

“I am. Just as soon as I can notify my parents.”

“Then I can promise you that it will never get any further than a brief
statement to the Board. Just enough to let La Lond out. And, by the way,
if you’ve a fortnight to spare this summer why not run up to the island
and put it in there?”

Sylvia flushed. No invitations in Sperry were so much prized as the rare
ones to that almost fabulous river barony which had been in the Chase
family through many proud generations. And this was more than an
invitation; it was Prudence’s way of testifying that she understood and
admired. Sylvia would have loved to accept, when the intrusive thought
of Giff checked the eager words. If Prudence knew of that! The Chase
principles were legendary in Sperry where the mother had been succeeded
by five daughters, all of them important figures in college life and
important influences in college standards. No; not that front door for
Sylvia. Side doors! So she had chosen. She would play fair and pay the
price.

“Thanks ever so. But I think I’ll be in Europe.”

“Some other time, then.”

The successful emissary nodded and left.

    “Dear—darling,” (she wrote to Gifford that evening). Please
    don’t blame me. You would have done it yourself. I couldn’t let
    Sara be ditched. She counts for so much more than I do, and coll
    means so much more to her. And the best possible thing is for me
    to leave, now, before we are found out. You say, yourself, that
    we are bound to crash if we keep on—and we’d always keep on as
    long as we are here together. Your life is here. You’ve got your
    standards to live up to, and your religion of scholarship, and
    if I have been able to make that my religion, too, and do
    something for it by keeping Sara here, that makes me happy. I
    know it will be hard for both of us; terribly hard. But it had
    to come sooner or later and this is the best way. Please always
    remember that I’m not sorry, that I wouldn’t have it any other
    way if I had these past weeks to live over again and that I
    always want for you everything good that life can give you. For
    I love you.

                                                                 S.

    P.S. Let’s not try to see each other again. That would only make
    it harder.


                             CHAPTER XXIII

Solemn conclave of Suite Twenty had decided that there should be no
moaning of farewell when Sylvia Hartnett put out to sea from the happy
precincts, but such a party as should fittingly celebrate the past good
times they had had together. Impromptu it had to be, for she had packed
up and was leaving at once. She did not want to see Giff again. Not
then, anyway; not on the campus. Perhaps later, somewhere somehow. . . ?

All the ruling class of Trumbull was at the party, but the spirit was
lacking. Sylvia was going to leave a big hole in the community life.
Moreover there was a feeling of restriction, of mystery; nobody really
knew what it was all about for the girl had jealously guarded her secret
lest some inkling of it get back to Sara La Lond who, as she well knew,
would never have permitted the sacrifice. The last thing that Sylvia
desired was the pale glory of the martyr. For public consumption it was
given out that Miss Shenstone was the agency of her being “kicked.” It
was a damned outrage. Opinion upon this point was unanimous. It would
have been equally unanimous no matter how well justified the penalty had
been.

“Where’s La Lond?” asked Gwen Peters after the party had got under
rather languid way.

“Working,” Starr supplied the explanation.

“What’s the good of her killing herself,” said Helen Quigg. “She’ll cop,
won’t she?”

“Sure, she’ll cop,” said Pink Delavan, who had more money on the event
than she could well afford to lose.

“Tell it to the Bulrushes.” Celia Forsythe was skeptical.

“They’re scared now. Messmore’s closed her book.”

“We’ve bet ’em to a standstill,” remarked Starr.

“I hear she had a session with Prexy about gaming—what ho!” from Gwen
Peters.

“Small loss _she’d_ be,” opined Roxy Ann Merrick, whereupon there fell a
dismal hush, for the stressed word brought to them all the imminent loss
of their companion.

To relieve the silence Golden Ruehl turned to Verity. “When do the
Caravanners start their summer tour?”

“Two weeks after Commencement.”

“Gallant Gale going?”

“He’s dropped out, I hear.”

“They say he’s dropped out of a lot of things,” said Roxy Ann. “Baseball
and track. He sure isn’t cutting the ice he used to.”

“He certainly hasn’t been so prevalent around here lately,” observed
Helen.

“Lost his taste for Sperry,” suggested some one.

“Since Vee flattened him.”

“Oh, he’s off me. Nixie’s his bet,” said the freshman calmly.

“Nixie isn’t going so strong, either, lately,” put in Golden Ruehl.

“Wasn’t there some kind of ruckus last time Gallant came down? I heard
there was a scrap at the hotel.”

“Don’t know anything about it,” answered Verity, as this seemed to be
directed at her.

“He’s sure the village cut-up when he’s jingled.”

“Nixie must be out after an A,” said Celia. “She’s spending most of her
time in the Lab. Even evenings.”

“That the reason she isn’t here?”

“The reason she isn’t here,” pronounced Starr, “is the sound social
reason that she wasn’t asked.”

“Yes, she was,” contradicted Sylvia. “I asked her. She said she was
feeling kinda rotten——”

“She always says that.”

“——and she thought she’d try to work it off.”

There was a knock at the door. “Verity Clarke there?”

“Yes.”

“A gentlemanly voice desires your presence at the phone.”

“What’ll you bet it isn’t Gallant Gale?” conjectured some one as the
freshman left.

“Think he got our thought-waves and called up?” grinned Helen Quigg.

“He’s been kinda in the air to-night,” said Celia, who dabbled a bit in
the mystic. “Look how we’ve been talking about him.”

“Don’t we always? He’s the day’s best topic of light conversation at
Sperry.”

Verity returned and slipped into her place trying to look unconscious of
the fact that everybody was regarding her.

“Put us out of our misery,” besought Roxy Ann. “Was it Gale?”

“Only the ice man,” was the demure reply, “calling up for next winter’s
order.”

“I’ll bet that’s warm ice,” whispered Gwen to Sylvia. “Look at her
eyes.”

The gossip danced on. Presently Vee edged into her own room. When she
emerged she had on a hat and a heavy coat. The roomful of girls
exchanged glances but no words. Starr followed her into the hall.

“What’s the idea, kid?”

“Motoring.”

“Where?”

“Dunno.”

“When’ll you be back?”

“Same answer.”

“Oh, _all_ right!”

“Don’t be sore, Twinklestar. It _is_ all right. It’s Lower Seven, the
Prince of Pullman.”

“_Who?_ You mean the—” Starr bit her lip. She had nearly given herself
away.

“Harvey, of course. Who else would I mean?”

“Of course. Dumb bunny me!”

Hurrying across campus by a main path, for it was not yet after hours,
Vee vaguely felt herself pursued. A glance backward disabused her.
Patterson Gifford’s normal pace was swift enough to overtake any one,
but that was obviously not his present purpose. He was merely taking one
of his nocturnal tramps. He would pass her, unseeing, unnoting,
unspeaking unless——

“Professor Gifford.” She had not fully formulated what she wanted to
say; the call had come to her lips instinctively.

He stopped short and peered at her. “Yes, Miss Clarke?” said he
uncertainly.

“Yes. Oh, Giff—Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” She broke off, horrified
at herself.

“It doesn’t matter. Has anything happened?”

“Don’t let her go,” she begged incoherently. “You can stop her. Can’t
you? I know you can.”

“Let who go where?” he said sharply. “What are you talking about?”

“Sylvia Hartnett.”

“Where is she going?”

“She’s leaving college. Didn’t you know?”

“No. I’ve been away. I’ll send for her to-morrow.”

“To-morrow she’ll be gone,” said Vee desperately.

“On the early train?”

“Yes. The six-twenty.”

“Thank you, child,” he returned gravely, lifted his cap and went on.

For Vee it was as good as a promise. Half fearful, half glad over what
she had done, she scurried along. At the corner of Blair a dim figure
brushed past, turned and called after her excitedly. Impatient, Vee
hardly checked.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Ida,” the figure answered in a shaking voice.

“It seems to me you’re always in the wrong place,” shot back the
freshman severely as she resumed her course.

Ida waved a newspaper wildly in the air. “Wait! I’ve got something——”
But the fugitive Verity was already beyond earshot of anything less than
a screech.

Ida, balked but undiscouraged, sped toward Trumbull and up the stairs,
her sure instinct guiding her to the spot where her sensation would have
the most effect. For once in her deprecatory career she burst in upon a
party (to which she had not been invited) without her preliminary knock
and timorous announcement, and stood, chittering with excitement.

“What’s on fire?” Gwen, who was seated near the door, held her up.

“Gallant Gale!” gasped the newcomer.

“Well, I always thought he was a hot bird, but I didn’t suppose he’d go
up in spontaneous combustion.”

“_Don’t!_ He’s dead.”

The word dropped into an appalled stillness. Somebody said “Gee!” in a
sibilant and incredulous exhalation.

“What did I tell you!” said Celia, triumphant, and began to snivel.

“Shot. This afternoon. In his room.”

“Was it murder?” “Who did it?” “Who told you?” “When did you say—” “Are
you _sure_?”

“It’s all in the paper.” Exulting in her success she unfolded the sheet
with its spread of blackly sensational type. “I got it on the trolley.”

The details, padded over three columns, were meager of fact but fairly
definite. It was plainly a case of suicide. After getting his morning’s
mail, Gale had left the breakfast table and gone to his room. He was
there only a short time, left the fraternity house, drove downtown in
his car and tried, unsuccessfully it was said, to get some one on long
distance. He cut all his morning classes, and there was some evidence
that he had driven around the country for several hours, returning after
luncheon. At three o’clock he was found by a classmate sitting up in his
armchair with a bullet through his head and the revolver beside him.
There was no note but some papers had been burned in the fireplace.

Ida McKay shook herself out from beneath an overarching billow of eager
femininity. “Isn’t it too ghastly!” she said gustfully. “Lemme have my
paper, girls.”

“Where are you going with it?” demanded Sylvia suspicious.

“Only to tell Nixie.” Her eyes were brilliant and humid with the fierce
lust of sensation-mongering.

Sylvia exchanged looks with Starr. “You _are_ not,” declared the latter.

“Why aren’t I?” whimpered poor Ida. “It’s my paper, isn’t it?”

“Syl, you’d better go,” said Starr. “You’re nearer to this thing than
any one else. Don’t let her out, girls.”

The miserable Ida was hemmed and herded in. Sylvia hesitated. She
dreaded the ordeal of facing Nixie with her grim news, though perhaps
Nixie knew it already. That would be only less bad. Well, somebody had
to do it, and Sylvia Hartnett was no shirk.

“All right,” she accepted.

Out of the darkness through which she hurried, thoughts flitted and
hovered like bats; suspicions, theories, imaginings, vague and monstrous
and insufficient. What had happened that night when Gallant Gale had
beaten up the clumsy and chivalrous botcher, Ralph Loyster? The obvious
answer did not suffice to explain a tragedy so swift and final. Surely
if it was _that_ (and how could there be any certainty in the matter so
soon?) some way out could have been found.

Elsie Nichols had been received back into college and was now rooming,
alone, as always, in Cunningham Dorm. On her way, Sylvia stopped at the
Lab but there was no light there, and in cutting across she tripped over
a wired path and peppered one hand with painful gravel. The shock and
physical smart steadied her. Where she had been half-hoping that Nixie
would be out, it was now a relief to see a light in her room. She ran up
the stairs and knocked. Nixie’s voice, velvety even in the brusque
monosyllable, said:

“Busy.”

“It’s Sylvia Hartnett. I want to speak to you.”

The other opened the door and stood in it, grotesquely outlined in the
hard light. She was haggard. There were bloodless circles beneath the
glamorous eyes, and her face was haunted. But not by fear; it was
something beyond fear. Later Sylvia knew it for what it was, a deadly
disgust. But now she thought:

“She knows.”

“Come in if you want to.” The rich and gracious tones gave a false
warmth to this grudging permission.

Entering, the visitor felt her feet clogged by clothing littered
everywhere about the floor, surrounding a trunk which was riotously
half-packed. All the photographs had been taken from the wall except
one. Sidney Gale’s face still smiled confidently, invincibly from above
the mantel. The eyes seemed to flash into Sylvia’s their familiar
challenge of gayly expectant seduction, and then to grow dim. The room
dimmed at the same time.

“What’s the matter?” asked Nixie. She noted Sylvia’s hand. “Hurt? Has
there been a spill?”

“No. It’s nothing. I’ll—I’ll just wash it off.” If she could get cold
water on her wrists and face she could go ahead. She turned from the
blatantly smiling beauty of that face, so fearfully alive against the
blankness of the denuded walls. Why had it alone been left there?

She cleansed her abraded palm, sloshed her face with water and reached
toward the towel rack.

“Wait!” said her hostess sharply. “I’ll get you a fresh towel.”

“This one’s all right.”

“_Let it alone._” Surprised at the vehemence of the command, Sylvia
retracted her hand. Having dried her face with the substitute she found
herself again, as it were, mesmerized into silence by the photograph.

“You don’t seem pleased with my cutie,” commented Nixie. “I left him out
to burn him. The others go with me.”

“Go? Where?” Sylvia felt stupefied.

“Haven’t decided yet. I’m leaving college.”

“Nixie! What for?”

“Well, if any one inquires of you, you might say that I’ve broken a
rule.”

“Rot! We all break rules.”

“We don’t all break this rule.”

“Have you been called about it?”

“No; and I don’t intend to be.” Nixie’s smile was bitter,
uninterpretable, sardonic.

All through the quick dialogue Sylvia’s mind was questing, whirling with
conjecture. Had Nixie heard or hadn’t she? Under her calm there was
evident a nerve-strained tension. It seemed impossible that she could be
taking it so calmly if she did know. But you never could tell with
Nixie. Maybe she wanted to get away from the campus before the whole
college knew. Well, there was only one way now; go straight to it.

“Nixie, do you know about Sidney Gale?”

“I know all that I need to know.” The deep eyes suddenly blazed. The
ungainly little figure straightened, tautened. “What do _you_ know?”

“It’s in the paper to-night.”

“In the _paper_?” Uttermost amazement froze the speaker’s face into
momentary immobility. “It couldn’t be,” she breathed.

“It is. They found the body at three o’clock.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” returned Nixie stupidly.

“You haven’t heard? Oh, Nixie! Gallant Gale’s committed suicide.”

The troll-face quivered. The eyes opened very wide, then closed slowly
and as slowly opened again. “Don’t touch me, please.” For Sylvia had
feared that she was going to faint. “I hate to be handled. . . . Killed
himself,” she murmured. “Just what he would do. Sneaked out of it.” She
walked over to the mantel, took down the portrait and held it before
her. “Yellow. Yellow all through.” Deliberately she spat twice in the
smiling face, then shied it into the grate where it wedged and stuck,
slantwise and still smiling out upon a world of passion and turmoil and
grim reckonings wherewith it had finished forever.

Sylvia gave a little gasp and cry. “_Don’t_, Nixie!”

“Tell me what you know about it,” directed the other, disregarding.

Sylvia gave the best report she could. The listener caught at one point.
“Burned letters? You say there were burned letters? Was anything left?”

“It just said ‘papers.’ Nixie! Had you written him? Was it a letter of
yours that——”

“Not exactly a letter. A—well, you might say an unofficial report.”
Again that frozen and inexplicable smile.

“Could it be traced?”

“That’s the trouble. It might be if enough were left of it. Not directly
to me, but to Sperry.”

“If you want me to, I’ll go down to the hotel and try to get Ralph
Loyster by telephone. He might know.”

“No. That’d only get you into it. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be gone
to-morrow.”

“But why were you going if you didn’t know about this?”

“Other reasons.”

“I don’t know what they are and I don’t want to pry. But if it’s what I
think it is I—I—isn’t there some way I could help?”

The large head shook in slow negation. “You think I’m going to have a
baby. Well, I’m not. At least, not that I know of.” She laughed
gratingly. “That _would_ be the limit.”

“Then I don’t see why you’re leaving. Wait for a little while anyway.
The year’s nearly over.”

“It is over for me.”

“But coming right after Gallant Gale’s suicide, everybody will say——”

“It doesn’t matter what they say. I’ve _got_ to leave.”

Sylvia considered. “The girls know that I’ve come over here. What shall
I tell them about your leaving?”

The haggard face grew grimmer. “I don’t know what you’ll tell them. But
if you want to know for yourself, look up Rule Eighteen, unless you
happen to remember it. And—good-night.”

Rule Eighteen! Rule Eighteen! Out in the darkness of the campus Sylvia’s
half-numb brain tried to remember, but vainly; tried to collate the
hints and clues and strange secrecies of that interview, but to no more
purpose. Lights were out when she got back to Trumbull. Ida’s grisly
news had dispersed the party. Verity had not returned and Starr was in
bed.

Sylvia began a search for the Book of Regulations. It was nowhere to be
found. They never are. More and more frenetic grew her quest. A voice
interrupted her. Starr stood sleepily in the doorway.

“What are you throwing things around for?”

“Where’s the Reg?”

“How should I know? What do you want of it?”

“I want to look up a rule.”

“Come to bed. It’s too late to break any more rules to-night,” yawned
Starr.

“Starr, what’s Rule Eighteen?”

“Eighteen? Search me. Oh, lemme think, though. Isn’t that the one about
reporting to the Doc? Any student suffering from an infectious or
contagious disease must at once report— What’s the matter, Syl?”

Sylvia had gone to the window, thrown it wide, and was gulping in the
fresh air.

Enlightenment had come to her in an intolerable blaze. She felt sick and
soiled.


                              CHAPTER XXIV

Tabitha of the Seven Toes shinned up a tree the better to observe an
object moving across the ripples of Lake Risiquara. Undeniably it was a
boat, and unquestionably it was headed for the island. The long, easy
sweep of the oars suggested the stroke of Harvey Westfall. Tabitha was
pleased. She was perfectly competent to maintain herself indefinitely on
the chipmunks and field mice of the terrain, but she craved human
companionship.

Tabitha purred, somewhat prematurely as it proved. For the boat had
stopped. The rower was resting on his oars.

“There,” said he to his passenger, “lies the island home.”

“I never expected to see it again,” murmured the passenger.

“When didn’t you ever expect to see it again?” he queried.

“Never,” was the reply which, as embodying an extra negative, might be
taken either one of two ways. Mr. Westfall interpreted it to suit
himself.

“You mean that there never has been a time when you didn’t expect to see
it again.”

“Is that what I mean? Probably it is,” she admitted, whereupon the two
young and joyous idiots laughed as if at the most consummate humor of
the ages. “Anyway,” pursued Verity, “I never expected yesterday
afternoon at this time that I’d be here this afternoon at this time.”

“Fair enough. I did.”

“Oh, you did! I like your nerve.”

“I rather like it myself. It’s done very well for me so far. What’s your
view as to my coming back there to kiss you?”

“Don’t rock the boat,” she returned severely. “There’s a time for all
things—as a well-known authority once stated.”

“That reminds me.” He dropped the oars which he had resumed upon her
veto. “Half way across Lake Rubicon Cæsar paused, lit a cigarette, and
recalled something that had slipped his mind.”

“The Rubicon. Is that what you call this?”

“Well, isn’t it appropriate? There lies the shore we’ve just come from.
I’m only the boatman. If you tell me to turn and row back——”

“Isn’t it a little late for that?”

“Depends on the angle of view. You’re free, white, and getting on for
twenty-one.”

“I’m not! Do _you_ want to go back?”

“Not in a million years.”

“What was it Cæsar recalled after his cigarette got going?”

“An unfortunate—I mean fortunate misunderstanding. What did those two
spoons mean?”

Vee’s firm little chin fairly sagged with amazement. “What did they
_mean_? You’re the one that ought to know. I don’t suppose you’ve
forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten because I never knew.”

“See here, Harvey Westfall, did you or did you not send them to me with
the flowers?”

“I believe I did. I further believe that there was some deeply esoteric
symbolism attached to them. And I’d like to know what it is.”

“Are you joking?”

“Never was more serious in my melancholy young life.”

“If you didn’t hear what I said to you in Lower Seven——”

“Never was in Lower Seven in my untravelled young life,” he interrupted
cheerfully.

“You—never—were—in—Lower—Seven?”

“Not that I remember. I always start at the last minute and usually draw
Upper Twelve.”

“Then who was the man?” she demanded wildly.

“Haven’t the remotest idea.”

“It must have been you. If it wasn’t, how did you know?”

“Intuition,” was the airy reply. “Plus a little outside help from a
couple of good fairies.”

“Sylvia and Starr,” she interpreted. “They gave me away. What swine! I
hate them, and I hate you, and——”

“In the words of your own inspired sentiment, isn’t it a little late for
that?”

“You cheated.”

“I admit it. I’d do it again to rescue you from the Unknown Demon of the
Pullman.”

“He wasn’t a demon. He was a—a duck. And if I ever come across him——”

“I’ll shoot him,” said Mr. Harvey Westfall pleasantly. “Then there can’t
be any further confusion.”

“I never would have believed that you—that any one could be such
a—such a——”

“You’ll be able to believe much more after dinner, as the White Queen
said. There’s Tabitha waving her tail in welcome from that rock, and you
may have heard that it’s very bad luck to disappoint a seven-toed cat,
so I really think, as she’s expecting us to dinner we’d better hurry.
_Roas_beef_roas_porkamaneggs_boiled_tripe-
tcornlimabeansanallkindsapieteercoffee.”

Verity laughed helplessly. “You’re going to be a disgustingly hard
person to keep angry with; I can see that. But I can manage it after
dinner.”

He took up the oars. “‘Forward, legionnaires!’ cried Cæsar, beating it
for the further bank, ‘Victory is ourn.’”

Tabitha welcomed them with rapture.

“Do you recognize this rock, darling?” inquired the proprietor of the
island as he helped his passenger ashore. “This is where you
deliberately pushed the boat off so as to com——”

“I didn’t!”

“This time I’ll make it fast in case we should ever want to go back.”

“I’m going back right after dinner,” said Verity with dignity.

“In that case I’d better go out and get some firewood.” With Tabitha as
escort he did this, built and lighted a fire while Verity undid the
various bundles brought with them in the boat.

“Now,” she directed, “you may sit down and watch.”

“But I thought you told me last time that you couldn’t cook.”

“I couldn’t then. I’ve taken a domestic science course since.”

“I see. On purpose.”

“Certainly _not_—pig!”

“It’s a natural inference though,” he blandly pointed out. “I distinctly
remember telling you that I needed a cook to spoil me. And here you
are.”

“Don’t be so poisonously conceited.”

“It’s a corking good supper,” he was pleased to concede an hour later.
“Practically as good as I could do myself.”

“I owed you that. It isn’t all I owe you, either. I expect to return the
money you lent me as soon as I get back.”

He grinned his cheerful grin. “Does this mean that all is over between
us?”

“It means that I expect to make a lot of money with your money.”

“And how, if one may ask?”

“On a bet. A sure thing.”

“Whoops! Have I fallen in love with a gambler?”

“I hope so. No, I don’t. I don’t care. I’d forgotten that you aren’t
even the right man.”

“Still sore at me for not being Lower Seven?”

“Furious.” (She didn’t sound it.)

He rose and went into the inner room. “There’s a perfectly good lock on
the door,” he pointed out. “And there’s Gwen, perched on the mantel for
a perfectly good chaperon. Me, I’m going to take Tabitha on a stroll
around the estate while you think it over.”

When he and the Seven-Toed got back the inner room was dark. The outer
room was dim and singularly lonely. Harvey turned up the light and
looked at the closed and forbidding door. He turned his eyes away from
it and there was manifested to his surprised gaze a portent.

The picture of Gwen the Chaperon had been transferred from the mantel of
the inner room to the mantel of the outer room. Harvey blew out the
light.

“Good-night, Tabitha,” said he courteously to the Seven-Toed.

Over the breakfast, cooked and set out by Mr. Harvey Westfall, it being
his turn, there was that familiar domestic scene, a discussion.

“But I’ve got to get back Harve. Why, Commencement’s next week.”

“Well, of course, if you’re so anxious to go——”

“I don’t want to go a _bit_. But you don’t want to see me kicked from
coll, do you?”

“N—no.”

“That’s what’ll happen unless I catch that train.”

“I’ll tell you,” said he with an air of inspiration as fresh as if he
had not been making the same suggestion in various forms for the past
hour. “Let’s stay here for lunch; then I’ll row you back and we’ll pick
up the car and I’ll run you back in that.”

“But I’ve told you I’m afraid. We’d be sure to run into somebody we
know, on the road.”

“I’ve been studying out a back roadway. Land you safely at a trolley
terminus within seven miles of the campus.”

“I ought not to,” she wavered. “But I’d so love to. Oh, _all_ right! I
don’t care.”

At eight o’clock that evening Mr. Harvey Westfall’s car, suffering from
some obscure form of locomotor ataxia was stalled beside a large, soft
mud puddle on one of those back roads which he had mentioned with such
confidence.

“We walk,” he decided penitently after futile explorations within the
hood.

“Where to?”

He consulted a map. “There’s an inn at Graeme, less than two miles from
here.”

“But Harve, darling, we can’t stay at an inn.”

“Why not?”

“There’s too much risk of being seen.”

“Not so much at this time of night. We certainly can’t spend the night
here. It’s coming on to rain.”

“Isn’t there any way I can get to college?”

“I might be able to hire a car somewhere. But at that, we couldn’t make
it before two or three A.M.”

“No good.” Vee surrendered. “I’m awfully tired. I’ll have to telephone
Starr to fix things up for me. I guess she can work it. They get a
little careless and easy around commencement time.”

Two muddied and weary young people arrived at the Graeme Inn. While
Harvey Westfall was registering (in a somewhat imaginative manner) Vee
got her roommate on long distance. She returned with news.

“Sara La Lond has won the Alumnæ. And I’ve won a lot of money. So now I
can pay you back.”

“Isn’t it a little late for——”

“Hush yourself up,” said the girl softly.

Mrs. Hildegarde Protheroe, Organizer, President, and Itinerant Lecturer
of the White Lily League of Purity, stood in the courtyard of the Graeme
Inn preparatory to making an early morning start. Her eye, sweeping the
façade of the ancient building, was arrested at an open window on the
second floor. Any eye might have paused there and with pleasure, for the
face in the window was laughing out upon a day of June glamour no more
lovely and fresh and joyous than itself. The laughter faded, stricken
cold by the chilling gaze of propriety incarnate in the person and glare
of Mrs. Hildegarde Protheroe. The face, dismayed, hastily withdrew. Mrs.
Protheroe marched back into the inn.

“Oh, Harve!” said Verity, breathless.

“What’s up?” asked the owner of the name through a haze of lather.

“Mrs. Protheroe. I’m sure she saw me.”

“Who’s Mrs. Protheroe?”

“The lecturer. You know. Babe Protheroe’s mother.”

“That leaves me cold, too. Who’s Babe Protheroe?”

“She’s a Sperry Junior.”

“Does Mommer Protheroe know you?”

“I met her once at a reception. When she lectured at coll. I don’t
believe she knows who I am.”

“Then what’s the alarm?”

“She looked as if she were trying to remember me.”

“Well, I don’t see how any one that had once seen you could forget you,”
said Harvey more flatteringly than reassuringly. “At that, you’ve got a
right to shelter at an inn.”

“Ye—es. But—Harve, please be a darling and wipe your face off and go
down and see what she’s doing.”

“Anything to oblige.” He returned presently with a discomforting report.
“She was holding high debate with the clerk and studying the register.”

“I told you!” mourned Verity.

“Well, she won’t get much out of that.”

“Is she there yet? Maybe she’s waiting for me.”

“No. She’s gone. In a car.”

“Probably going straight to Sperry,” prophesied the girl dismally.
“And,” she added acidly, “she’s a nice one to make trouble! After the
way her own daughter behaves.”

“How does she behave and when?” queried Harvey mildly.

“I’d hate to tell you! She’s the wildest speeder on the campus.
Everybody knows about Babe. She’s practically one-of-them-things.”

“Meaning not precisely a vestal, I suppose. It sometimes works that
way,” philosophized Mr. Westfall. “Rebound from early repressions and
all that. But there’s no immediate worry about the gorgon. Her car was
going in the opposite direction when last seen.”

“I don’t care,” fretted Verity. “I’ve got to get back just as soon as
ever I can.”

A rented car landed her at a trolley line. As she stepped on the
platform Harvey Westfall called after her:

“Oh, Vee!”

“What?”

“I nearly forgot. What was it about those spoons?”

“You’ll never know. Never!” answered the girl with great determination
as the car bore her away.


                              CHAPTER XXV

Four deep-drawn, laboring puffs the locomotive gave, getting under way
the reluctant train in one of whose coaches sat reluctant Sylvia. They
seemed to the girl like thick sobs, the dry, thick, slow sobs of some
one forcing herself to abandon a loved place. Then came a flurried,
panting outburst as the wheels spun and the cars jerked forward.
Blessedly alone—there were but half a dozen other passengers in the
car, none of whom did she know—she huddled in the corner, propped her
tired head on her hand and stared out into the grayness. It was a murky
day. The trees dribbled moisture. The earth was draggled and sodden. She
closed her eyes against it.

Some one standing over her, after a time, an indeterminate time. The
conductor. Her ticket; what had she done with it? She fumbled at her
bag. A voice said “Sylvia!” Giff’s voice, imperative, yet gentle and
grave.

“Oh!” she said. “Why have you come?”

“I heard just in time.”

“I thought you were away,” she returned stupidly. There was refuge in
the commonplaceness of the words.

“I have been.” He sat down beside her. The conductor came on his rounds.
Sylvia found her ticket. Gifford’s was to a town an hour down the line.
She thought back to another, fateful meeting on a train.

“It’s just like the first time, isn’t it?” She smiled faintly at him.
“When you sat down by me and asked me if I’d ever been drunk. The time
when it all began.”

“It began long before that.”

“Did it? I suppose it did. I was afraid of you before that, Giff. I
think I—I’m a little afraid of you again.”

“Sylvia, you must come back.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Rot!”

“Truly, I can’t, Giff.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.” Her eyes pleaded with him not to ask any more.

“See here, Sylvia; if I’ll keep out of your way, not see you for the
rest of the term——”

“That wouldn’t make any difference. It isn’t that.”

“Then what in the name of all that’s imbecilic is it?” he demanded in
exasperation.

“I wrote you a note to tell——”

“I didn’t get it.”

“No, of course not. It wasn’t mailed till last night. Stupid of me. My
head feels funny, Giff. And my heart; that feels funny, too. . . . What
are you going to Bartonsville for?”

“Nothing. I took the train because I knew you were on it.”

“How did you know? If you didn’t get my——”

“Never mind how. I’m not going to let you go.”

“You’re making it awfully hard,” she murmured sorrowfully.

“If it’s that damned Shenstone woman——”

“Oh, no! It’s more serious than that. Much.”

He looked at her, imperious, insistent. She answered the look.

“Do I have to tell you, Giff?”

“Did you expect that I’d let you go without?”

The eternal feminine sprang to life within Sylvia, the impulse to test
her lover’s faith in her. “Suppose it were something I’ve done.
Something I’m ashamed to tell you?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

In spite of her misery for herself and for him she laughed. It was so
absolutely Giffish, that retort.

“Just the same I’d have been kicked if I hadn’t got out.”

“Will—you—kindly—tell—me—why?”—in the rigid, measured tone of one
sorely tried, yet maintaining his temper against severe pressure.

“There was a note found. It was lost the night of the fire drill.”

“Well?” he barked.

“It was traced to me.”

“Signed?”

“No. It was typed. But there were references that were easy to trace. So
I—owned up to it.”

“What was in it?”

“The references? One was to a hike——”

“No, not the references. Damn the references. What was in it that you
owned up to.”

She said carefully: “There was a secret date. For a week-end with a man,
in New York.” For the moment she found it an impossible effort to lift
her eyes to his. What would she read in that intent look of his? Shock?
Wrath? Jealousy? Bewilderment? Hurt?

She wrenched her own gaze up and read—laughter.

“You’re a most inept little liar, my dear,” he said. “Better give it
up.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Nobody would believe you who wasn’t a born fool.”

“Do you trust me as much as that, Giff dear?”

“Absolutely.” Their hands slipped together, curved into each other.

“That makes it easier,” she murmured. Then, with a little, smothered
cry: “No. It makes it harder.”

“Don’t you think you’d better tell me the truth now?”

“I can’t. It wouldn’t be— It wouldn’t do any good.”

“Because you’re shielding some one else. I see I shall have to figure it
out for myself from what information I now have. That shouldn’t be very
difficult. Given a compromising note lost, shortly before a scholarship
contest with heavy betting on it, a reversal in the betting odds——”

“Don’t, Giff!”

“——in spite of the fact that La Lond was morally certain to win unless
there was some unknown factor against her——”

Her fingers tightened on his in a spasm of strength that checked his
words. She began to speak, low, hurriedly, pleadingly, as to a judge.
“Giff, I was no good here, anyway. I didn’t matter. Sara does. She
matters more than any one. You said that, yourself. You’d have done the
same thing, yourself, in my place. You know you would. If they’d pinned
it on Sara it would have meant the end for her. With me it only
means——”

“The end for us,” he said with such bitterness that she winced away from
him. “Well, doesn’t it?” he challenged savagely.

“It had to come anyway, a separation,” she whispered. “How could we keep
on as we were?”

“How are we to keep on without each other? Have you thought of that?”

“Have I thought of anything else!” It burst from her. “I’ve thought
until I can’t think any more. That’s why I’m going.”

“Where?”

“Abroad. For all summer. And when I come back I’m going to get a job
somewhere. Perhaps in New York. There are front doors to jobs.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, puzzled.

“Nothing,” she answered hastily. “I was just thinking. After I’ve
settled down somewhere away from you, maybe I’ll be able to think it all
out and find out what this really is that has happened to us.”

“I know now,” was his dogged response.

“We think we know.” Suddenly she felt older than he, wiser, more
understanding, more capable of facing this overmastering force that had
them in its whirl. “But it’s been too sudden, too tremendous,
too—possessing. We’ve got to get to one side and look at it. If we
don’t see each other for three or four months——” Her voice died
woefully.

After a time he said: “Shall I write to you?” Any one else she knew
would have said: “Will you write to me?”

“I’d rather you wouldn’t.”

“Then I won’t.”

“You’ll know, when I come back.”

“Yes; I’ll know.” (What did that curiously assured tone of his mean?)

He got up. “This isn’t your station,” she cried in quick alarm, for he
had risen.

“This or the next—what does it matter?” he answered. “Will you come
with me—just to the platform?”

She followed him down the aisle. Amidst the squealing of the breaks she
said: “Giff, there’s one thing you’ve got to tell me. You’ve _got_ to.”

“What is it?”

“You’ve got to say that you know I was right about Sara.” (For, without
that, how should she save her belief in him, in his loyalty to the only
religion that he professed?)

“Yes. You were right.”

Then for a swift, reckless, unheeding moment she was in his arms, his
lips seeking and finding her soul. The train jolted them apart, moved
on. She stared through the window and saw him standing straight and
slender and as she knew now with a pang and a thrill, unforgettable in
the gray rain and the mist.


                              CHAPTER XXVI

Once again Suite Twenty was in crowded session. Summer vacation had come
and gone with that inexplicable swiftness known grievously to all
collegians. Returning, the clans of Trumbull Hall repaired at once to
the lair of the H.B.V.’s as the natural exchange for gossip, opinion,
and prospects. Starr alone was in domicile on this, the opening day of
the semester. Zigzags of conversation flew through the air like flashes
from overcharged clouds, to be enhanced as each newcomer put in an
appearance.

“Hail, Sorores!”

“Hail, yourself.”

“Everybody back?”

“Pretty near.”

“Too early to count noses yet.”

“Good vacation?”

“Grand.”

“Putrid.”

“Wouldn’t give it better than a C.”

“Wish there was three months more of it.”

“Not me; I’m glad to be back.”

“Good li’l scholar! Gonna win all the prizes, huh?”

“——private car party took us in on the crest——”

“Why elect trouble? That’s the meanest course——”

“——certainly looked like hell in that hat, if you ask——”

“And get a thumb in the eye? I’ll stick to hockey, thanks.”

“—fourteen pounds off the old tummy in less than six wee——”

“She told her family it was measles.”

“Two semesters of back Latin; that’s what wrecked my——”

“Wide open as a frog’s mouth and cocktails only fifty cents apiece.”

“But her clothes would daze you.”

“Here’s Gwen.”

“’lo, Gwen!”

“Now we’ll get the dirt.”

“Hello, children. Not from me, you won’t. I’ve been roughing it all
vake.”

“You look it.”

“Thanks or not, as the case may be.”

“Haven’t you seen any one?”

“Yep. Saw Nixie in the station at New York.” At this there was a
concentration of interest.

“What’s Nixie doing?”

“Entering Johns Hopkins. Special.”

“Was there anything in that story about her being—that she was going
to——”

“Bunk!” said Miss Peters vigorously. “She’s no more that way than—than
old Shinbone.”

“Be respectful,” warned some one with a giggle.

“If there was nothing in it, why did Gallant Gale kill himself?”
demanded Jessamine Dahl.

“I met up with a Williams man at a house-party”—this from Roxy Ann
Merrick—“and he told me it was all over college that Gallant had got an
official looking envelope from Sperry that morning.”

“Official document,” jeered Gwen. “I suppose you think in those cases
that the President and Faculty of Sperry College for Women have the
honor to inform, and so on, et cetera.”

“Nixie quit the next day,” pointed out Golden Ruehl. “There must have
been some sort of tie-up.”

Celia Forsythe from her seat in the window said: “This place isn’t going
to seem the same without Sylvia.”

“Oh, shut _up_!” snapped Starr.

“Where is she?”

“Got a job in New York.”

“Well, that isn’t so far from Sperry,” murmured a voice and Celia added:

“Speaking of the devil, there goes our Giff with his war club.”

“Why who said anything about Giff?” queried Nell Dana innocently,
thereby provoking ribald mirth. Nell never knew what was going on until
the rest of the circle had discarded it as stale news.

Helen Quigg joined the lookout in the window seat. “He looks kinda old
and tired, don’t you think?” she observed. “Hasn’t got the old spring in
his gait.”

“Maybe Syl ditched him,” suggested somebody. “She sure hit him hard and
then they say she got a case on another man.”

“Was that the one whose letters were found?” asked Jessamine Dahl.

“I heard that only Ida McKay picked ’em up in the hall and sold ’em to
Sally Messmore for twenty dollars and a tartan blouse.”

“If that’s true,” said Starr grimly, “I don’t think Ida will have a very
happy life in this house this year.”

“Messmore’s out. Prexy had a little heart-to-heart with her and she
decided not to come back.”

“There isn’t much going on that slips past our Prexy. Is he foolish?
Yes; like a fox!”

“Well, I understood that Sara La Lond was mourning some lost love lyrics
that same night of the fire alarm.”

“Gee! The halls must have been full of pash! No fit place for a young
thing like me,” snickered Helen Quigg.

“La Lond’s boat gets in Saturday. She should worry! With the Alumnæ
Scholarship tucked in her jeans.”

“Who’s coming into Twenty in Syl’s place?”

“I have that honor,” answered Gwen magniloquently.

“And who’s taking Vee Clarke’s room?”

“What’s that about Vee?” Starr’s query cut across the babble.

“She isn’t coming back, is she?”

“Of course she’s coming back. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Well, don’t bite me. I only picked up some gas about her having ducked
out just before Commencement. They say she was on a double tour.”

“Who says that?” demanded Starr.

“Olga Tremwich is spreading it.”

“Tremwich!” Starr’s echo of the name was fiery with scorn. “You know how
that kind are when they turn on any one.”

“What’s her grief?”

“Jealous. That’s all there is to her. She probably made it up.”

“No. She got it from Babe Protheroe’s mother.”

“Is _she_ here?”

“Yep. Spending a few days with her angel daughter to make sure that she
doesn’t get into any wrong associations for the new year.”

“Omigod!” said Gwen.

In her ear Starr muttered: “That doesn’t look so good. I wish Vee would
show up.”

On the following noon Vee appeared looking radiant. She was full of the
Caravanners’ summer trip on which she had made a distinct hit. When
Starr failed to respond to her enthusiasm Vee’s own zest simmered down.
“What’s the gloom about, Twinklestar? Missing Syl? So’m I.”

“Vee, did Mrs. Protheroe see you anywhere just before Commencement?”

The light went out of the alluring face. “I’ll say she certainly did.
Why?”

“She’s here. And she’s been talking.”

Verity whistled long and low. “I told Harve”—The other looked up
quickly at the name—“that she had spotted us.”

“Us?” repeated Starr.

“Yes; us,” returned Verity quietly. “In a second story window.”

Pink Delavan blew into the room like a gale and gave greeting, “Hello,
Vestals! Vee, what hellment have you been up to now?”

“Nothing that you haven’t heard about, most likely,” replied Starr for
the other.

“Don’t get rancid at _me_. I’m not responsible.”

“Who is?”

“Mrs. Hildegarde Lilywhite Protheroe. She’s been to Prex.”

“What about? Me?” asked Vee.

“About the general degraded morals of Sperry. She can’t bear the thought
of her pure young Babe associating with girls of loose character. Babe!
Wouldn’t that frizzle your liver?”

“Did she tell Prexy that I was a girl of loose character?”

“She wasn’t sure who it was, but she saw some girl that she recognized
as a Sperry stoo-jent in a hotel room, with a lathery face in the
background. It seems to have been the Protheroe’s idea that young ladies
don’t lather their faces in the morning and therefore the other party
must have been a gent.”

“Fair enough,” admitted Vee coolly. “What’s she going to do about it?”

“Oh, she thought it would be nice if Prexy would hold a review of the
whole coll so she can pick out the guilty wretch.”

“Fetching little fancy!” commented Starr. “Did she actually spring that
on our Billy B.?”

“So I understood.”

“What’d he say?”

“What would you suppose? Told her to go to hell, of course, in that
old-school, unimpeachably courtly way of his.”

“I’d love to have been there,” yearned Starr.

“I’m going there,” announced Vee. “Now.”

“Lay off,” counseled Pink. “That is, if there’s anything in it. They
haven’t got a thing on you if you can just keep away from the
Protheroe.”

“Tremwich has been spilling something about it,” put in Starr.

“Probably looked up the green cards and found that Vee was off,”
surmised the visitor. “That’s just the sort of thing she would do.” She
looked at Vee hesitantly. “Of course there was a bunch of you in the
room,” she said. “Only the old cat didn’t see the others. Better leave
it lay.”

“I’m going to see Prex,” declared Vee.

Her chin was out. Starr knew better than to attempt dissuasion. The girl
set out for the office of President William B. Cressline, the wise, the
grave, the gentle, the humorous (without humor where would he have been,
a lone man riding and controlling the storm-currents of a sea of
feminine emotions, rivalries, loyalties, jealousies?), the open-minded
and close-mouthed old head of Sperry College for Christian Gentlewomen.

In an hour she was back, her eyes abnormally bright.

“What did he say?” demanded the waiting Starr.

“Enough. Starr, you’ll have to get another H.B.V. I’m officially
disqualified.”

“Oh, _Vee_! Are you kicked?”

“If you cry I’ll beat you up. I’m not kicked. I’ve resigned.”

“Then he did know about you and Harvey.”

“We—ell, he had a line on it.”

“That stinker of a Protheroe woman!”

“What she told him wasn’t so much. I told him the rest. You have to play
straight with Prex. He’s such an old duck!”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I was married.”

“And I suppose he believed it,” jeered her roommate. “Couldn’t you think
of a funnier one than that?”

“Lots of ’em,” was the cheerful reply. “But this one happens to be
true.”

“Mar—Vee! To Harvey?”

“Who did you think it was to? Lucky Lindbergh?”

“I don’t believe it. Is it legal?”

“I hope so,” said Vee demurely.

“Aren’t you going to tell me about it?”

“Yep. The night I sloped from the party here—when I got the telephone
message, you know—Harve was waiting in Lovers’ Lane. The minute I set
eyes on him—well, maybe not that very minute but pretty darn soon
afterward—I knew it was all over for little Vee. It hits some people
that way,” she added naïvely.

“It’s never hit me that way,” murmured Starr. “I’d never feel sure.”

“Then don’t go ahead,” advised the younger girl from the heights of her
superior experience. She continued: “He had his car waiting off-campus.
He said ‘I’m going to take you back to the island.’ And I said, ‘All
right,’ just as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be
taking all night trips to a lonely island with a man. It seemed
perfectly natural—with Harve. After we’d gone about forty or fifty or
ten miles he said ‘If you know any reason why this man and this woman
should not be joined together in the bonds of matrimony by our friend
Jim Bascover, Justice of the Peace for the town of Risley Centre, speak
now or forever after hold the thought.’ And I said ‘Not as far as I’m
concerned if that’s the way you feel about it.’ And that’s all there was
to it.”

“That’s a vurry, vurry pretty li’l story,” observed Starr. She felt
muddled and dulled and couldn’t think of anything better to say.

“It isn’t quite all, either. On the way to the island he fessed up about
Lower Seven and the spoons, and I was so sore that I nearly declared a
lock-out on him. But I didn’t—quite. Just the same I think you and Syl
are a pair of perjured swine.”

“Where’d you be now if we hadn’t removed that Pullman inhibition?”
retorted the other and answered herself: “Looking for a man with a
gentle whisper and a forbearing nature and a preference for sleep
over—over—adventure.”

“Don’t make me blush,” said Vee. “I’m a respectable married woman.”

“Then what did you come back for?”

“That’s what Harve says. He’s been chasing the Caravanners around this
summer, on and off, like a stage door Johnnie. I came back because I did
want to go on with my course. Through Sophomore, anyway; especially in
drama. Oh, well! No luck. I don’t know that I care so much, though.” She
turned upon her roommate a peaceful smile. “Sperry’s a grand old joint
and a monument to learning and the hope of American womanhood and all
that bunch of noble sentiment, but it isn’t such a swell place to have a
baby in, d’you think, Twinklestar?”

That night when Starr, feeling lonely and lost, came back to Suite
Twenty, a ghost sat in the window seat smoking a Camel. The ghost spoke
in a cool, soft voice.

“Hello, Starr.”

“_Syl!_ You duck!” There was a sudden tangle of girlhood out of which
rose Starr’s rebuking words. “You _perfect_ idiot! Don’t you know better
than to show a light directly in front of a window?”

“Pardon, Cæsar,” laughed the other. “I’ve been free and independent so
long that I just forgot.”

“How did you get here?”

“Landed at Halifax and thought I’d drop off over a train. Little touch
of the homesicks.”

“Oh, Syl! It’s going to be ghastly without you—and Vee, too.”

“Vee? What’s happened to our chee-ild?”

Starr told the story at length. “Swell stuff! I guess we’re some
plotters,” exulted Sylvia. “We sure eliminated the Pullman hunch.”

“You’re going to stay the night, aren’t you?”

“Can’t. Got an anxiously waiting job. I’m taking the midnight-plus
train.”

“I think that’s rotten. . . . What about Europe? Not married—or
engaged—or anything?”

“No.” Sylvia leaned out of the window to drink in the soft air. A breeze
shuffled the boughs of the near-by tree, parting the leaves. The girl
sighed.

Starr sympathetically interpreted the long look and sigh. “No light now
in the tower room. There wasn’t, after you left.”

“I’m glad,” said Sylvia in a shaken voice.

“Is it as bad as that?”

“Yes; it’s as bad as that.”

“Then—if you’ll bend down and look through the other window, low—where
they’ve cut out that fuzzy bush that used to occupy the bend—you can
see Giff’s office window.” She stooped, herself, peering. “There’s a
light there now. He’ll be working there half the night.”

“Will he?” The expatriate’s voice was carefully unconcerned. “Give me
the latest bulletins on the crowd. I’m news-hungry.”

They talked eagerly until eleven struck; then the visitor showed signs
of becoming distrait, inattentive. It was hardly a quarter after the
hour when she rose.

“It isn’t nearly train time yet,” protested Starr. “More than an hour.”

“I know. But I’m—restless.”

Starr stole a glance at her friend. Sylvia’s eyes were wide and bright.
Her breath was eager through the soft curve of her lips. Again Starr
bent to look out into the night.

“Is the light still there?” whispered Sylvia.

“Yes.”

“Good-by, Starr, dear.”

“Good-by, Syl. Will you come back sometimes?”

“Yes. I think I’ll come back—sometimes.”

Starr, left alone, turned over the framed motto of Suite Twenty and fell
into revelry before it. What was the answer to it all, this disrupting,
commanding impulse which had swept her companions before it like a
conquering wave? Was it a mere localized phenomenon, an exaggerated
tendency due to a super-feminized environment? Or was it only that girls
of the post-adolescent period developed a sort of mob-psychology of
self-recognition and self-realization? Surely, women in the outer world,
workers or idlers, did not let this one motive bulk so large in their
more complex lives. She remembered a book by a German, furtively read,
whose thesis it was that woman is a body without a soul, with thoughts,
desires, plans, instincts directed to the sole end of love and
reproduction, and all that was romantic in her revolted. Yet, how much
he could find at Sperry, at any woman’s college, to support his cynical
and dogmatic grossnesses. She thought of the events of the year past,
outgrowths of that explosive motivation; Nixie’s sly lecheries, so long
unfulfilled, so mysteriously terminated or perhaps only transferred;
Sara La Lond’s hardy acceptance of the implications of her womanhood and
her temperament: Babe Protheroe’s crude and calculated harlotry; Verity
with her face of a vestal who had answered the call with as blind a
race-instinct as any butterfly; Sylvia Hartnett, the chastest-minded of
all of them who had asked of love only that it be love and had given
herself with no hesitation of surrender nor with any taint of the
huckstering advances and recoils of which Starr was shabbily conscious
in herself; and amidst the turmoil of compliances and repressions,
Prudence Chase moving on her course of life, cool and sweet and serene,
a shepherdess of the sheep of her own white and wise thoughts.

Veritys come and Veritys go. Sylvias and Giffords gamble with their good
repute in a fateful trial against the bank of public opinion and face
the imminent loss unshrinking, or perhaps only unthinking; Sara La
Londs, clear-eyed and with a sad sincerity, match flesh against mind and
win or lose as the spirit is steady or vacillant; Nixies follow the path
of passion; Babe Protheroes and the Balch Hall saleswomen go into the
furtive market place and sell for the price of excitement, of adventure,
or of a new bauble for their bodies; and ever the impatient quest of the
new womanhood, inspired of the ancient and unslaked curiosities,
answering the demand of imperious nerve-centers to know to the full, to
be to the full, presses to the goal of vague or temporary or
illuminating satisfactions, and damn the torpedoes!

Starr, in her young, opulent, tremulous, unfulfilled beauty standing a
little on one side. Dubious. Hesitant. Expectant. Wondering. What was it
all about?


                                THE END




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

[The end of _Unforbidden Fruit_, by Warner Fabian (ps. of Samuel Hopkins
Adams).]