h a
flashing smile. "The girls tell me that you're a born orator, as good in
your way as the genius in hers."

Betty rallied herself for one last effort. "Don't make fun of me,
Eleanor. Please let me come in and tell you about it. You don't
understand----"

"Possibly not," said Eleanor coldly. "But I'm going out now."

"Just for a moment!"

"But I have to start at once. I'm late already."

"Oh, very well," said Betty, and turned away to join Mary and Roberta.

Eleanor's mind always worked with lightning rapidity, and while she
dressed she had gone over the whole situation and decided exactly how
she would meet it; and in the weeks that followed she kept rigidly to
the course she had marked out for herself, changing only one detail. At
first she had intended to have nothing more to do with Jean, but she saw
that a sudden breaking off of their friendship would be remarked upon
and wondered at. So she compromised by treating Jean exactly as usual,
but seeing her as little as possible. This made it necessary to refuse
many of her invitations to college affairs, for wherever she went Jean
was likely to go. So she spent much of her leisure time away from
Harding; she went to Winsted a great deal, and often ran down to Boston
or New York for Sunday, declaring that the trips meant nothing to a
Westerner used to the "magnificent distances" of the plains. Naturally
she grew more and more out of touch with the college life, more and more
scornful of the girls who could be content with the narrow, humdrum
routine at Harding. But she concealed her scorn perfectly. And she no
longer neglected her work; she attended her classes regularly and
managed with a modicum of preparation to recite far better than the
average student. Furthermore her work was now scrupulously honest, and
she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness.
She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate,
and when Mary Brooks innocently inquired "what little yarn" she told the
registrar, that she could get away so often, Eleanor fixed her with an
unpleasantly penetrative stare and answered with all her old-time
hauteur that she did not tell "yarns."

"I have a note from my father. So long as I do my work and go to all my
classes, they really can't object to my spending my Sundays as he
wishes."

Betty observed all these changes without being in the least able to
reconcile them with Eleanor's new attitude towa