as engaged in athletics--all the time I was in the University," he
refuted.

"The deuce you were! I never knew before--All right, I bit. How was that,
Darley?"

"Simple enough, I'm sure," drily. "I venture the proposition that I sawed
more wood and stoked more furnaces during my course than any other
student that ever matriculated. I had four on the string constantly."

Armstrong sank back in his chair lazily.

"All right, Darley," he accepted; "when you won't be serious there's no
use trying to make you so. I surrender."

"Serious!" Roberts looked at the younger man peculiarly. "Serious!" he
echoed low. "That's just where your diagnosis fails, my friend. It's the
explanation as well why I never did those 'other things,' as you call
them, that students do and so humanize themselves." Involuntarily his
eyes went to the girl's face, searched it with a glance. "It is, I
suppose, the curse of my life: the fact that I can't be different. I seem
to be incapable of digressing, even if I want to."

For answer Armstrong smiled his sceptical smile; but the girl did not
notice. Instead, for the first time, she asked a question.

"And you still think to digress, to enjoy oneself, is not serious, Mr.
Roberts?" she asked.

"No, emphatically not. I'm human, I hope, even if I haven't been
humanized. I think enjoyment of life by the individual is its chief end.
It's nature."

"But you said--"

"Pardon me," quickly; "I couldn't have made myself clear then. We're each
of us a law unto himself, Miss Gleason. What is pleasure to me, perhaps,
is not pleasure to you. I said I was never asked to join a fraternity.
It's true. It's equally true, though, that I wouldn't have joined had I
been asked. So with the social side. I wouldn't have been a society man
if I'd had a new dress suit annually and a valet to keep it pressed. I
simply was not originally bent that way. Killing time, politely called
recreation, merely fails to afford me pleasure. For that reason I avoid
it. I claim no credit for so doing. It's not consecration to duty at all,
it's pure selfishness. I'm as material as a steam engine. My pleasure
comes from doing things; material things, practical things. For a given
period of time my pleasure is in being able to point to a given object
accomplished and say to myself: there, 'Darley, old man, you started out
to do it and you've done it.' Is that clear, Miss Gleason?"

"And if you don't accomplish it, what then?" commente