rymple was
doomed. The important men went back or ceased writing. Then Wandel
slipped Rogers into the charmed circle--the payment of a debt; and
George laughed and left the meeting, saying:

"You can elect anybody you please now."

Cynically, he was tempted to try to force Allen in.

"You're not honest even with your own group," he said afterward to
Wandel.

The club lost its value as a marker of progress. Besides, he didn't
look forward to eating with that little snob, Rogers, for two years. Nor
did he quite care for Wandel's reply.

"You've enough class-consciousness for both of us, heroic and puissant
Apollo."

For the first time George let himself go with Wandel.

"You'll find Apollo Nemesis, little man, unless you learn to say what
you mean in words of one syllable."

And the discussion of the clubs went on, breeding enmities but
determining no radical reform.

The struggle at Princeton was over. George looked often at the younger
men, who didn't have to prepare themselves minutely for the greater
struggle just ahead, envying them their careless play, their proneness
to over-indulgence in beer and syncopated song. While he worked with
high and low prices and variations in exchange he heard them calling
cheerily across the campus, gathering parties for poker or bridge or a
session at the Nassau. Goodhue, even Wandel, found some time for
frivolity. George strangled his instinct to join them. He had too much
to do. In every diversion he took he wanted to feel there was a phase
personally valuable to him.

He counted the days between his glimpses of Sylvia, and tried not to
measure the hours dividing his meetings with Betty. If only he dared let
himself go, dared cease battle for a little, dared justify Sylvia's
attitude! Even Goodhue noticed his avoidance of Betty.

He encountered Sylvia in New York; asked her to dance with him; was
refused; cut in when she was, in a sense, helpless; and glided around
the room with a sullen, brilliant body that fairly palpitated with
distaste.

Even during the summer he ran into her once on Long Island. Then he was
always missing her. Perhaps she had learned to avoid him. He shrank each
morning from his paper, from any bit of rumour connecting her with a
man; and Blodgett, he noticed, was still making money for a bachelor
bank account.

He came to conceive a liking for his flabby employer, although he was
quite sure Blodgett wouldn't have bothered with him a moment i