the firm to him; this to make her feel entirely comfortable about it
all.

As he went out into the street again a great sense of weariness came
over him. He had lived--how many years had he lived!--in experience
since he left the university at half past five o'clock? How little his
past life looked to him as he surveyed it from the height he had just
climbed. Life! Life was not all basket-ball, and football, and dances,
and fellowships, and frats. and honors! Life was full of sorrow, and
bounded on every hand by death! The walk from where he was up to the
university looked like an impossibility. There was a store up in the
next block where he was known. He could get a check cashed and ride.

He found himself studying the faces of the people in the car in a new
light. Were they all acquainted with sorrow? Yes, there were more or
less lines of hardship, or anxiety, or disappointment on all the older
faces. And the younger ones! Did all their bright smiles and eagerness
have to be frozen on their lips by grief some day? When you came to
think of it life was a terrible thing! Take that girl now, Miss
Brentwood--Miss R.B. Brentwood the address had been. The name her
brother had called her fitted better, "Bonnie." What would life mean to
her now?

It occurred to him to wonder if there would be any such sorrow and
emptiness of life for any one if he were gone. The fellows would feel
badly, of course. There would be speeches and resolutions, a lot of
black drapery, and all that sort of thing in college, but what did that
amount to? His father? Oh yes, of course he would feel it some, but he
had been separated from his father for years, except for brief visits in
vacations. His father had married a young wife and there were three
young children. No, his father would not miss him much!

He swung off the car in front of the university and entered the
dormitory at last, too engrossed in his strange new thoughts to remember
that he had had no supper.

"Hello, Court! Where the deuce have you been? We've looked everywhere
for you. You didn't come to the dining-hall! What's wrong with you? Come
in here!"

It was Tennelly who hauled him into Bill Ward's room and thumped him
into a big leather study-chair.

"Why, man, you're all in! Give an account of yourself!" he said, tossing
his hat over to Bill Ward, and pulling away at his mackinaw.

"P'raps he's in love!" suggested Pat from the couch where he was puffing
away at his pipe