ty little of their glow was shed on poker parties and
crap games. The college had begun to study.

When Hugh finally calmed down and took stock, he was horrified and
frightened to discover how far he was behind in all his work. He had
done his lessons sketchily from day to day, but he really knew nothing
about them, and he knew that he didn't. Since Morse's departure, he had
loafed, trusting to luck and the knowledge he had gained in high school.
So far he had escaped a summons from the dean, but he daily expected
one, and the mere thought of hour examinations made him shiver. He
studied hard for a week, succeeding only in getting gloriously confused
and more frightened. The examinations proved to be easier than he had
expected; he didn't fail in any of them, but he did not get a grade
above a C.

The examination flurry passed, and the college was left cold. Nothing
seemed to happen. The boys went to the movies every night, had a peanut
fight, talked to the shadowy actors; they played cards, pool, and
billiards, or shot craps; Saturday nights many of them went to a dance
at Hastings, a small town five miles away; they held bull sessions and
discussed everything under the sun and some things beyond it; they
attended a performance of Shaw's "Candida" given by the Dramatic Society
and voted it a "wet" show; and, incidentally, some of them studied. But,
all in all, life was rather tepid, and most of the boys were merely
marking time and waiting for Christmas vacation.

For Hugh the vacation came and went with a rush. It was glorious to get
home again, glorious to see his father and mother, and, at first,
glorious to see Helen Simpson. But Helen had begun to pall; her kisses
hardly compensated for her conversation. She gave him a little feeling
of guilt, too, which he tried to argue away. "Kissing isn't really
wrong. Everybody pets; at least, Carl says they do. Helen likes it
but..." Always that "but" intruded itself. "But it doesn't seem quite
right when--I don't really love her." When he kissed her for the last
time before returning to college, he had a distinct feeling of relief:
well, that would be off his mind for a while, anyway.

It was a sober, quiet crowd of students--for the first time they were
students--that returned to their desks after the vacation. The final
examinations were ahead of them, less than a month away; and those
examinations hung over their heads like the relentless, glittering blade
of a guill