alone in the moonlight and the scent of flowers, walking side by
side across grass, beneath the heavy branches of trees.

"See here, Betty! I've no business to call you that--never have had.
Without saying anything I've lied to you ever since I've been in
Princeton. I've taken advantage of your friendship."

She paused. The thick leaves let through sufficient light to show him
the bewilderment in her eyes. Her voice was a little frightened.

"You can't make me believe that. You're not the sort of man that does
such things. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Thanks," he said, "but you're wrong, and I can't go away without
telling you just what I am."

"You're just--George Morton," she said with a troubled smile.

He tried not to listen. He hurried on with this killing that appealed to
him as necessary.

"Remember the day in Freshman year, or before, wasn't it, when you
recognized Sylvia Planter's bulldog? It was her dog. She had given him
away--to me, because she had set him on me, and instead of biting he had
licked my face. So she said to take him away because she could never
bear to see him again."

Betty's bewilderment grew. She spoke gropingly.

"I guessed there had been something unusual between you and the
Planters. What difference does it make? Why do you tell me now? Anything
as old as that makes no difference."

"But it does," he blurted out. "I know you too well now not to tell
you."

"But you and Lambert are good friends. You dance with Sylvia."

"And she," he said with a harsh laugh, "still calls me an impertinent
servant."

Betty started. She drew a little away.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Just that," he said, softly.

He forced himself to a relentless description of his father and mother,
of the livery stable, of the failure, of his acceptance of the privilege
to be a paid by the week guardian on a horse of the beautiful Sylvia
Planter. The only point he left obscure was the sentimental basis of his
quarrel with her.

"I _was_ impertinent," he ended. "She called me an impertinent servant,
a stable boy, other pleasant names. She had me fired, or would have, if
I hadn't been going anyway. Now you know how I've lied to you and what I
am!"

He waited, arms half raised, as one awaits an inevitable blow. For a
minute she continued to stare. Then she stepped nearer. Although he had
suffered to win an opposite response, she did what he had forced Lambert
Planter to do.