skly along, accompanied by a vicious-looking bulldog on
a leash. Her head was high and her shoulders square, as she always
carried them. Her eyes sparkled. Then she saw George, and she paused,
her expression altering into an active distaste, her cheeks flushing
with tempestuous colour.

"I can't go back now," George thought.

She seemed to visualize all that protected her from him. He put his
cheap suitcase down.

"I'm glad I saw you," he said, deliberately. "I wanted to thank you for
having me fired, for waking me up."

She didn't answer. She stood quite motionless. The dog growled,
straining at his leash toward the man in the road.

"I've been told to get out and stay out," he went on, his temper lashed
by her immobility. "You know I meant what I said yesterday when I
thought you couldn't hear. I did. Every last word. And you might as well
understand now I'll make every word good."

He pointed to the gate.

"I'm going out there just so I can come back and prove to you that I
don't forget."

Her colour fled. She stooped swiftly, gracefully, and unleashed the
anxious bulldog.

"Get him!" she whispered, tensely.

Like a shot the dog sprang for George. He caught the animal in his arms
and submitted to its moist and eager caresses.

"It's a mistake," he pointed out, "to send a dog that loves the stables
after a stable boy."

He dropped the dog, picked up his suitcase, and started down the drive.
The dog followed him. He turned.

"Go back, Roland!"

Sylvia remained crouched. She cried out, her contralto voice crowded
with surprise and repulsion:

"Take him with you. I never want to see him again."

So, followed by the dog, George walked bravely out into the world
through the narrow gateway of her home.

PART II

PRINCETON

I

"Young man, you've two years' work to enter."

"Just when," George asked, "does college open?"

"If the world continues undisturbed, in about two months."

"Very well. Then I'll do two years' work in two months."

"You've only one pair of eyes, my boy; only one brain."

George couldn't afford to surrender. He had arrived in Princeton the
evening before, a few hours after leaving Oakmont. It had been like a
crossing between two planets. Breathlessly he had sought and found a
cheap room in a students' lodging house, and afterward, guided by the
moonlight, he had wandered, spellbound, about the campus.

Certainly this could not be George Morton, yesterday defini