sharp wind had come up.
Bayliss twice suggested turning back, but his brother answered,
"Pretty soon," and drove on. He meant that Bayliss should have
enough of it. Not until Enid whispered reproachfully, "I really
think you ought to turn; we're all getting cold," did he realize
that he had made his sleighing party into a punishment! There was
certainly nothing to punish Enid for; she had done her best, and
had tried to make his own bad manners less conspicuous. He
muttered a blundering apology to her when he lifted her from the
sleigh at the mill house. On his long drive home he had bitter
thoughts for company.

He was so angry with Gladys that he hadn't been able to bid her
good-night. Everything she said on the ride had nettled him. If
she meant to marry Bayliss, then she ought to throw off this
affectation of freedom and independence. If she did not mean to,
why did she accept favours from him and let him get into the
habit of walking into her house and putting his box of candy on
the table, as all Frankfort fellows did when they were courting?
Certainly she couldn't make herself believe that she liked his
society!

When they were classmates at the Frankfort High School, Gladys
was Claude's aesthetic proxy. It wasn't the proper thing for a
boy to be too clean, or too careful about his dress and manners.
But if he selected a girl who was irreproachable in these
respects, got his Latin and did his laboratory work with her,
then all her personal attractions redounded to his credit. Gladys
had seemed to appreciate the honour Claude did her, and it was
not all on her own account that she wore such beautifully ironed
muslin dresses when they went on botanical expeditions.

Driving home after that miserable sleigh-ride, Claude told
himself that in so far as Gladys was concerned he could make up
his mind to the fact that he had been "stung" all along. He had
believed in her fine feelings; believed implicitly. Now he knew
she had none so fine that she couldn't pocket them when there was
enough to be gained by it. Even while he said these things over
and over, his old conception of Gladys, down at the bottom of his
mind, remained persistently unchanged. But that only made his
state of feeling the more painful. He was deeply hurt,--and for
some reason, youth, when it is hurt, likes to feel itself
betrayed.

Book Two: Enid

I

One afternoon that spring Claude was sitting on the long flight
of granite steps that le