would have recognized.

Nobody guessed as much. He was adjudged to be delightful, cordial,
"and not a bit stuck-up, not spoiled at all, you know." To appear this
was the talisman with which he banteringly encountered the universe.

But John Charteris, as has been said, was in reality a trifle fagged.
When everybody had removed to the Gymnasium, where the dancing was to
be, and he had been delightful there, too, for a whole half-hour, he
grasped with avidity at his first chance to slip away, and did so under
cover of a riotous two-step.

He went out upon the Campus.

He found this lawn untenanted, unless you chose to count the marble
figure of Lord Penniston, made aerial and fantastic by the moonlight,
standing as it it were on guard over the College. Mr. Charteris chose
to count him. Whimsically, Mr. Charteris reflected that this battered
nobleman's was the one familiar face he had exhumed in all Fairhaven.
And what a deal of mirth and folly, too, the old fellow must have
witnessed during his two hundred and odd years of sentry-duty! On
warm, clear nights like this, in particular, when by ordinary there
were only couples on the Campus, each couple discreetly remote from any
of the others. Then Penniston would be aware of most portentous pauses
(which a delectable and lazy conference of leaves made eloquent)
because of many unfinished sentences. "Oh, YOU know what I mean,
dear!" one would say as a last resort. And she-why, bless her heart!
of course, she always did. . . . Heigho, youth's was a pleasant
lunacy. . . .

Thus Charteris reflected, growing drowsy. She said, "You spoke very
well to-night. Is it too late for congratulations?"

Turning, Mr. Charteris remarked, "As you are perfectly aware, all that
I vented was just a deal of skimble-scamble stuff, a verbal syllabub of
balderdash. No, upon reflection, I think I should rather describe it
as a conglomeration of piffle, patriotism and pyrotechnics. Well,
Madam Do-as-you-would-be-done-by, what would you have? You must give
people what they want."

It was characteristic that he faced Pauline Romeyne--or was it still
Romeyne? he wondered--precisely as if it had been fifteen minutes,
rather than as many years, since they had last spoken together.

"Must one?" she asked. "Oh, yes, I know you have always thought that,
but I do not quite see the necessity of it."

She sat upon the bench beside Lord Penniston's square marble pedestal.
"And all the