know it. So he would put his chin in his hand and
gaze at her as though the peculiarities of the Renaissance Poets were
his greatest concern. He laughed, too, about the joke itself, finding a
sort of painful relief in _double entendre_. Sometimes his mind
wandered, and when Katharine failed to reprove him, as in the earlier
days of the compact, he felt as though he had betrayed a confidence.
Once they had forgotten all about football practice, and it frightened
him; but she seemed not to have realized the gravity of the thing, and
he laughed the alarming incident away. During lectures, he tried to
reason himself out of the predicament. It was entirely possible that
this feeling toward her was but another instance of habit, a natural
affection for a chum, with some subtle influence of sex combining to
frighten him into thinking it more serious. But he was not entirely
comforted.

Crises occur properly at the end of a semester. On the evening of
Friday, the closing day, Roble gave an impromptu dance. Katharine made
Pellams come; it would be final evidence in their joke, since he was
known to dislike dances. He agreed to attend, adding his own emphasis to
the reason as stated. Katharine filled out his card for him, allowing
him three dances with herself. The evening began in misery for the
woman-hater, and ended in perturbation of spirit. There were girls,
oceans of them, and not one of them had any sense. Katharine was
different. These girls didn't know when they were joshed, and they
couldn't josh back. They were an uninteresting lot. She had filled his
card with them and he had to hunt them up and dredge his head for
conversation. It was an awful bore. Katharine was the only girl whom he
had ever seemed able to talk with easily, and he had only three little
dances with her. He was savage.

During the third dance, he was floundering through an absent-minded
conversation with a Freshman girl, whose eyelashes were pale pink, when
Cap Smith glided past him, waltzing with Katharine. They looked as
though they were having a very good time. Pellams felt that Cap, fine
fellow as he was, generally grew too familiar with girls. He noticed
with disapproval the man Katharine drew for the fourth dance, and she
had Cap again for the fifth. He went over after that dance and asked for
her program. Cap was down for two more dances. Pellams gave her back her
card. He laughed a joking sentence on another subject, then he slipped
down s