"Will say, Morton, you did more than your share against those Crimson Freshmen Saturday."
George nodded without answering. He had found the object the room contained for which he had experienced a premonitory fear. On one of the two desks stood an elaborately framed replica of the portrait he himself possessed of Sylvia Planter. Its presence there impressed him as a wrong, for to study and commune with that pictured face he had fancied his unique privilege. Nor did its presence in this room seem quite honest, for Sylvia, he was willing to swear, wasn't the type to scatter her likenesses among young men. George had an instinct to turn on Dalrymple and demand a history of the print, since Goodhue, he was certain, wouldn't have placed it there without authority. After all, such authority might exist. What did he know of Sylvia aside from her beauty, her arrogance, and her breeding? That was it. Her breeding made the exposure of her portrait here questionable.
"What you staring at?" Dalrymple asked, sullenly.
"Is this your desk?" George demanded.
"Yes. Why?"
George faced him abruptly.
"I was looking at that photograph."
"What for?" Dalrymple demanded, sitting up.
"Because," George answered, evenly, "it happens to be where one sees it."
Dalrymple flushed.
"Deuced pretty girl," he said with an affectation of indifference. "Of course you don't know her."
"I have seen her," George said, shortly.
He felt that a challenge had been passed and accepted. He raised his voice.
"How about it, Goodhue?"
"Coming."
Dalrymple opened his mouth as if to speak, but Goodhue slipped into the room, and George and he went down the stairs and climbed into Goodhue's runabout.
"I didn't know," George said when they had started, "that you lived with Dalrymple."
"We were put together at school, so it seemed simple to start out here."
George was glad to fancy a slight colour of apology, as if such a companionship needed a reason.
It was a pleasant and intimate little dinner to which they drove. Mr. and Mrs. Alston recollected meeting George at the Baillys', and they were kind about his football. A friend of Betty's from a neighbouring house made the sixth. George was not uncomfortable. His glass had shown him that in a dinner suit he was rather better looking than he had thought. Observation had diminished his dread of social lapses. There flowed, however, rather too much talk of strange worlds, which included some approaching gaieties in New York.
"You," Betty said casually to him, "must run up to my great affair."
Her aunt, it appeared, would engineer that a short time before the holidays. George was vague. The prospect of a ballroom was terrifying. He had danced very little, and never with the type of women who would throng Betty Alston's début. Yet he wanted to go.
"Betty," her mother said, dryly, "will have all the lions she can trap."
George received an unpleasant impression of having been warned. It didn't affect him strongly, because warnings were wasted there; he was too much the slave of a photograph and a few intolerable memories. Sylvia would almost certainly be at that dance.
Wandel appeared after dinner.
"I tried to get Dolly to come," he said, "but he was in a most villainous temper about something, and couldn't be budged. Don't mind saying he missed a treat. I hired a pert little mare at Marlin's. If I can find anything in town nearly as good I'll break the two to tandem this winter."
George's suppressed enthusiasm blazed.
"I'd like to help you. I'd give a good deal for a real fight with a horse."
He was afraid he had plunged in too fast. He met the surprise of the others by saying he had played here and there with other people's horses; but the conversation had drifted to a congenial topic, and it got to polo.
"Because a man was killed here once," Wandel said, "is no reason why the game should be damned forever."
"If you young men," Mr. Alston offered, "want to get some ponies down in the spring, or experiment with what I've got, you're welcome to play here all you please, and it might be possible to arrange games with scrub teams from Philadelphia and New York."
"Do you play, Mr. Morton?" Betty asked, interestedly.
"I've scrubbed around," he said, uncertainly.
She laughed.
"Then he's a master. That's what he told dear old Squibs about his football."
George wanted to get away from horses. He could score only through action. Talking was dangerous. He was relieved when he could leave with Goodhue and Wandel.
The runabout scurried out of Wandel's way. The pert little mare sensed a rival in the automobile, and gave Wandel all the practice he wanted. George smiled at the busy little man as his cart slithered from side to side of the driveway.
"That's Spike's one weakness," Goodhue laughed as they hurried off. "He's not a natural horseman, but he loves the beasts, so he takes his falls. By the way, I rather think I can guess what he's up to with you."
"What?" George asked.
Goodhue shook his head.
"Learn from Spike. Anyway, I may be wrong."
Then why had Goodhue spoken at all? To put him on his guard?
"Wandel," George promised himself, "will get away with nothing as far as I am concerned."
Yet all that night the thought of the little man made him uncomfortable.
XIV
George watched his first big varsity game the following Saturday. It was the last of the season, against Yale. He sat with Goodhue and other members of the Freshman eleven in an advantageous part of the stands. The moment the blue squad, greeted by a roar, trotted on the field, he recognized Lambert Planter's rangy figure. Lambert's reputation as a fullback had come to Princeton ahead of him, and it had scarcely been exaggerated. Once he had torn through the line he gave the Princeton backs all they wanted to do. He kicked for Yale. Defensively he was the deadliest man on the field. He, George and Goodhue agreed, would determine the outcome. As, through him, the balance of the contest commenced to tip, George experienced a biting restlessness. It wasn't the prospect of the defeat of Princeton by Yale that angered him so much as the fact that Lambert Planter would unquestionably be the cause. George felt it unjust that rules should exist excluding him from that bruising and muddy contest. More than anything else just then he wanted to be on the field, stopping Planter, avoiding the reluctance of such an issue.
"We ought to be out there, Morton," Goodhue muttered. "If nothing happens, we will be next year."
"It's that fellow Planter," George answered. "He could be stopped."
"You could stop him," Goodhue said. "You could outkick him."
George's face was grim.
"I'm stronger than Planter," he said, simply. "I could beat him."
The varsity, however, couldn't. Lambert, during the last quarter, slipped over the line for the deciding touchdown. The game ended in a dusky and depressing autumn haze. George and Goodhue watched sullenly the enemy hosts carry Planter and the other blue players about the field. Appearing as if they had survived a disaster, they joined the crowd of men and women, relatives and friends of the players, near the field house. The vanquished and the substitutes had already slipped through and out of sight. The first of the steaming Yale men appeared and threaded a path toward the steps. Lambert, because he had been honoured most, was the last to arrive, and at that moment out of the multitude there came into George's vision faces that he knew, as if they had waited to detach themselves for this spectacular advent.
He saw the most impressive one first of all, and he stood, as he had frequently stood before her portrait, staring