nd neat as at the start of the evening.

"Had a good time, great person?" he asked as they drove off. "But then
why shouldn't great men always have good times?"

Wandel's manner suggested that he had seen to George's good time. What
he had actually done was to involve him in an open hostility with
Dalrymple. The others didn't mention that youth. Was there a tactful
thought for him in their restraint?

They left Wandel at an expensive bachelor apartment house overlooking
the park. George gathered from Goodhue, as they drove on, that Wandel's
attitude toward his family was that of an old and confidential friend.

"You see Driggs always has to be his own master," he said.

XVII

Because of the restless contrast of that trip George brought back to
Princeton a new appreciation; yet beneath the outer beauty there, he
knew, a man's desires and ambitions lost none of their ugliness. He
stared at Sylvia's portrait, but it made him want the living body that
he had touched, that was going to give him a decent fight. Already he
planned for other opportunities to meet her, although with her attitude
what it was he didn't see how he could use them to advance his cause;
and always there was the possibility of her resenting his persistence to
the point of changing her mind about telling.

He had decided to avoid Dalrymple as far as possible, but that first
night, as he drowsed over a book, he heard a knock at his door, not
loud, and suggestive of reluctance and indecision. He hid the photograph
and the riding crop, and called:

"Come in!"

The door opened slowly. Dalrymple stood on the threshold, his weak face
white and perverse. George waited, watching him conquer a bitter
disinclination. He knew what was coming and how much worse it would make
matters between them.

"It seems," the tortured man said, "that I was beastly rude to you last
night. I've come to say I didn't mean it and am sorry."

"You've come," George said, quietly, "because Goodhue and Wandel have
made you, through threats, I daresay. If you hadn't meant it you
wouldn't have been rude in just that way. I'm grateful to Goodhue and
Wandel, but I won't have your apologies, because they don't mean a damn
thing."

Dalrymple's face became evil. He started to back out.

"Wait a minute," George commanded. "You don't like me because I'm
working my way through college. That's what you shot at me last night
when you'd drunk enough to give you the nerve, but it's