should say not!" he echoed, as if the idea in connection with such
an indelibly distinct young woman were preposterous.

"But you have such a queer way of expressing yourself. At first I
thought you were talking of upsetting everything."

"I? Mercy, no. I've no idea of upsetting anything. I'm only hoping I
can help straighten a few things that have been tumbled over or turned
upside down."

Gradually, as they walked and talked, her own affairs--Dumont's and
hers--retreated to the background and she gave Scarborough her whole
attention. Even in those days--he was then twenty-three--his
personality usually dominated whomever he was with. It was not his
size or appearance of strength; it was not any compulsion of manner; it
was not even what he said or the way he said it. All of these--and his
voice contributed; but the real secret of his power was that subtile
magnetic something which we try to fix--and fail--when we say "charm."

He attracted Pauline chiefly because he had a way of noting the little
things--matters of dress, the flowers, colors in the sky or the
landscape, the uncommon, especially the amusing, details of
personality--and of connecting these trifles in unexpected ways with
the large aspects of things. He saw the mystery of the universe in the
contour of a leaf; he saw the secret of a professor's character in the
way he had built out his whiskers to hide an absolute lack of chin and
to give the impression that a formidable chin was there. He told her
stories of life on his father's farm that made her laugh, other stories
that made her feel like crying. And--he brought out the best there was
in her. She was presently talking of the things about which she had
always been reticent--the real thoughts of her mind, those she had
suppressed because she had had no sympathetic listener, those she
looked forward to talking over with Dumont in that happy time when they
would be together and would renew the intimacy interrupted since their
High School days.

When she burst in upon Olivia her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks
glowing. "The air was glorious," she said, "and Mr. Scarborough; is SO
interesting."

And Olivia said to herself: "In spite of his tight clothes he may cure
her of that worthless Dumont."

VI.

"LIKE HIS FATHER."

Scarborough soon lifted himself high above the throng, and was marked
by faculty and students as a man worth watching. The manner of this
achievement was o