let
you be. The road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and
bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot,
but drying under your eyes in the morning sun. The boy's brooding face
did not change as he walked, but his shoulders straightened themselves,
and lost their patient look, and his lean young body gave itself more
gayly to the swing of his pace and looked strong and free, alive with
the unconscious strength of youth that must be caught and harnessed to
make the wheels of the world go round before it can be taught what its
purpose is.

Whether it troubled him or not--his face did not tell--all that his
mother had hinted was wrong with his world, and more. No outsider had
ever won a place like Neil's in Green River High School society so far
as the unwritten history of it recorded. Charlie Brady in his time, and
Dan after him, had been extra men at big dances, hard worked and
patronized in school entertainments, more intimate with the boys than
the girls. Charlie, deep in a secret love affair with Lil Gaynor, had
still called her Miss in public, and treated her as respectfully as he
did now that the affair was forgotten and she was Mrs. Burr and one of
the Everard circle. Charlie and Dan had only looked over impassable
barriers. Neil had been really inside--included in small, intimate
parties, like week-ends at Camp Hiawatha, openly favoured by Natalie, if
not Judith--inside and he would soon be shut out.

There were new signs of it every day. The long, friendly winter, when he
had been safe in that intimate fellowship, was over. The girls were
planning their gowns for college commencement dances. Willard came back
from a week-end at the state university pledged to a fraternity there
and refusing to discuss minor subjects. God-like creatures in amazing
neckties condescended to visit him, and Natalie was beginning to collect
fraternity pins. Rena and Ed were engaged, and under the impression that
it was a secret, and a place was being made for Ed in the bank. In one
way or another, the world was opening to all of them, and closing to
Neil.

And with the spring, the Everards had come back to Green River. The big,
over-decorated house had not been open a week, but already they pervaded
the town. Their cars whirled through the splashing spring streets, and
ladies not upon Mrs. Everard's calling list peered at the passengers to
see who was in her favour. The Colonel was turning the Hia