e didn't say anything else.

XII

Often after those long, pounding afternoons George returned to his room,
wondering dully, as he had done last summer, why the deuce he did it.
Sylvia's picture stared the same answer, and he would turn with a sigh
to one of the novels Bailly loaned him regularly. Bailly was of great
value there, too, for he chose the books carefully, and George was
commencing to learn that as a man reads so is he very likely to think.
Whenever he spoke now he was careful to modulate his voice, to choose
his words, never to be heard without a reason.

The little fellow with the moustache whom the Goodhue crowd called Spike
met him on the campus one day after practice.

"My name," he announced in a high-pitched, slurred voice, "is Wandel.
You may not realize it, but you are a very great man, Morton."

George looked him over, astonished. He had difficulty not to mock the
other's manner, nearly effeminate.

"Why am I great, Mr. Wandel?"

"Anybody," Wandel answered in his singing voice, "who does one thing
better than others is inevitably great."

George smiled vindictively.

"I suppose I ought to return the compliment. What do you do?"

Wandel wasn't ruffled.

"Very many things. I brew good tea for one. What about a cup now? Come
to my rooms. They're just here, in Blair tower."

George weighed the invitation. Wandel was beyond doubt of the
fortunates, yet curiously apart from them. George's diplomacy required a
forcing of the fortunates to seek him. Wandel, for that matter, had
sought. Where George might have refused a first invitation from Goodhue
he accepted Wandel's, because he was anxious to know the man's real
purpose in asking him.

"All right. Thanks. But I haven't much time. I want to do some reading
before dinner."

He hadn't imagined anything like Wandel's room existed in college, or
could be conceived or executed by one of college age. The study was
large and high with a broad casement window. The waning light increased
the values Wandel had evidently sought. The wall covering and the
draperies at the three doors and the window were a dead shade of green
that, in fact, suggested a withdrawal from life nearly supernatural, at
least medieval. The half-dozen pictures were designed to complete this
impression. They were primitives--an awkward but lovely Madonna, a
procession of saints who seemed deformed by their experiences, grotesque
conceptions of biblical encounters. There wer