ington explained, "trying to conduct themselves like full-grown
men." What right had he to condemn them because in their youth and
inexperience they had fallen below the standard older men had set? Had
he a right to expect them to search him out any more than they a right
to demand the same of him? "You drew me to you with irresistible force,"
Marian admitted, only to make the agony the more unbearable when she
added, "Then you repelled me by your intolerance of all those lighter
interests which were natural to youth of our age." Intolerance! That was
a form of injustice, and he had judged her guilty upon the same
indictment! "Each member of the Class measures up his fellow-members by
what they have done since they have left college," Huntington had said.
Every word seemed seared into Hamlen's brain as he put himself through
this fierce analysis. "What have you really accomplished?" was Marian's
question.

So Hamlen had struggled with himself during the intervening hours, and
now Huntington came to him as a classmate, as a friend, claiming kinship
and insisting upon recognition of his claim. If Monty Huntington had
been what Hamlen believed him to be in college, he would not now have
forced himself upon him in spite of his own rude disclaimers of any
present desire for recognition. If he had misjudged Huntington had he
not misjudged his other classmates, had he not misjudged the world at
large?

This was the doubt which had been raised in Hamlen's mind, and with it
came a sense of responsibility and the necessity of restitution should
that doubt turn into a certainty. Forty-eight hours earlier he had asked
Marian, "What do I owe the world?" and it was from Huntington he
received his answer. It was uncanny how closely the two opinions of the
case, made by persons widely separated in viewpoint and environment,
dovetailed each into the other. This interview with Huntington would
settle all doubt, he was convinced, and if the injustice proved to be
vested in himself alone, what was there left for him out of the wreck he
had made of life? What wonder that he was ill at ease; what wonder that
his heart beat more quickly as he realized that the moment of his own
conviction might be at hand!

They walked about the grounds, as the others had done, and Huntington's
exclamations were no less enthusiastic; yet it was obvious that this was
but a prelude to the real purpose of his visit. They paused for a moment
as they came back