t to myself! My last partner weighed a ton, at
least, and I'm fagged out. Got a scarf you can put round you if we go
and sit out?"

Darsie nodded, showing a wisp of gauze, and, laying her hand on Ralph's
arm, passed with him out of the main room into the flag-decked entrance.
For the moment it was empty, the dancers having made _en masse_ in the
direction of the refreshment-tables. Ralph looked quickly from side to
side, and, finding himself unobserved, took a key from his pocket and
opened a small door leading into the patch of garden at the back of the
hall. The moonlight showed a wooden bench fitted into a recess in the
wall. Ralph flicked a handkerchief over its surface, and motioned
Darsie towards a seat.

"It's clean enough. I gave it a rub this morning. You won't be cold?"

"Oh, no; not a bit." Darsie wrapped the wisp of gauze round her
shoulders, and prepared to risk pneumonia with as little thought as
ninety-nine girls out of a hundred would do in a similar case. The hour
had come when she was to be told the nature of Ralph's trouble; she
would not dream of losing the opportunity for so slight a consideration
as a chill!

Ralph seated himself by her side, rested an elbow on his knees, the
thumb and first finger of the uplifted hand supporting his chin. His
eyes searched Darsie's face with anxious scrutiny.

"You didn't hear anything about me before you left Newnham?"

"Hear what? No! What was there to hear?"

Ralph averted his eyes, and looked across the patch of garden. The
moonlight shining on his face gave it an appearance of pallor and
strain.

"Dan Vernon said nothing?"

"No!" Darsie recalled Dan's keen glance of scrutiny, the silence which
had greeted her own remarks, and realised the reason which lay behind.
"Dan is not the sort to repeat disagreeable gossip."

"It's not gossip this time; worse luck, it's solid, abominable fact.
You'll be disappointed, Darsie. I'm sorry! I _have_ tried. Beastly
bad luck being caught just at the end. I was sent down, Darsie! It was
just at the end of the term, so they sent me down for the last week. A
week is neither here nor there, but the parents took it hard. I'm
afraid you, too--"

Yes! Darsie "took it hard." One look at her face proved as much, and
among many contending feelings, disappointment was predominant--bitter,
intense, most humiliating disappointment.

"Oh, Ralph! What for? I hoped, I thought--you _promised_ me to be