for
himself, and he loved it, he loved it! He had no part any longer with
what had come before it. All these were in shadow, the people and things
of his bitter childhood. The fellows up there in the lighted rooms had
homes somewhere; there was a feed-box being opened even then, perhaps,
at some study table; they were thinking of vacation, most of them, and
of other places. But this was home to Mason, this wide, soft campus,
with the sandstone arching over it and bounded by shaggy hills, the only
place he could call his own. Most of the laughing people who lived here
with him were in a dream from which some Commencement Day would wake
them. To Mason it was reality. Yes, Frank Lyman was right. Jimmie was
glad he had asked him. The idea of going away had been a thoughtless
impulse, an immature judgment. He would stay--for the two years.

He took off his coat and opened a book under the lamp; but a face came
and settled between him and the page, a bloated face with irresolute
lips that would not move from the black and white before him, but
flickered there and mocked him, until finally he closed the book, and,
without looking out again on the campus, turned into bed.

II.

It was a quiet night outside. The last spring rain was over; the dry,
deadening California summer had begun its advance on the land. Already,
the green of the hills had faded into a lighter hue, a forerunner of a
yellow June and a brown July. The campus was astir with the movement of
a Friday night. Shadowy figures, in couples, came and passed down the
fairy-land vistas of the Quadrangle; the 'busses deposited the elite of
Palo Alto at the door of the Alpha Nus who had said that they would be
at home; noises of all kinds, from not unmusical singing to plainly
unmusical whoops, exhaled from every pore of the Hall. The piano on the
lobby was groaning out a waltz from its few attuned keys and the little
space between the big rug and the rail overlooking the dining-room was
packed with forms in various conditions of negligee, dancing earnestly
and painfully.

Only one room, and that generally the center of disturbance, "sported
the oak." Jimmie Mason sat in the knockery, with a book cocked up in
front of him, and made a pretense of studying, but his thoughts
wandered. Finally he threw his work aside altogether, and looked at the
little patches of starlight visible between the branches of the tree
outside. It was so plain, the thing he ought to do, in