"Yes, I feel I ought to go easy with what little I have."

"I knew you were working your way through," she said, "but I never
guessed it meant as much denial as that."

"Don't worry," he laughed, "I'll make money next summer."

"I wish I'd known. And none of your friends thought!"

"Why should they? They're mostly too rich."

"That's wrong."

"Are you driving me into Allen's camp?" he asked. "You can't; for I
expect to be rich myself, some day. Any man can, if he goes about it in
the right way. Maybe Allen doubts his power, and that's the reason he's
against money and the pleasant things it buys. Does it make any
difference to you, my being poor for a time?"

"Why should it?" she asked, warmly.

"Allen," he said, "couldn't understand your skating with me."

Why not tell Betty the rest in this frozen and romantic solitude they
shared? He decided not. He had risked enough for the present. When she
turned around he didn't try to hold her, skating swiftly back at her
side, aware of a danger in such solitude; charging himself with a
scarcely definable disloyalty to his conception of Sylvia.

XXI

He fancied Betty desired to make up for her thoughtlessness during the
holidays when she asked him for dinner on a Saturday night. With that
dinner, no matter what others might think of his lack of money and
background, she had put herself on record, for it was a large, formal
party sprinkled with people from New York, and drawing from the
University only the kind of men Allen was out to fight. Wandel, George
thought, rather disapproved of his being there, but as a result, he made
two trips to parties in New York during the winter. Both were failures,
for he didn't meet Sylvia, yet he heard of her always as a dazzling
success.

He answered Dalrymple's cold politeness with an irritating indifference.
In the spring, however, he detected a radical alteration in Dalrymple's
manner.

By that time, the scheme discussed carelessly at the Alstons' in the
fall had been worked out. On good afternoons, when their work allowed, a
few men, all friends of the Alstons, drove out, and, with passable
ponies, played practice matches at polo on the field Mr. Alston had had
arranged. The neighbours fell into a habit of concentrating there, and
George was thrown into intimate contact with them, seeing other gates
open rather eagerly before him, for he hadn't miscalculated his ability
to impress with horses. When Mr. Alston had firs