ths. She'd hardly have minded the boil before
to-day.

Six months ago, he had been a very wonderful person to her. There had
been a succession of pleasant--of really thrilling discoveries. First,
that he'd rather dance with her than with any other girl in the
university. (You're not to forget that he was a celebrity. During the
football season, his name was on the sporting page of the Chicago papers
every day--generally in the head-lines when there was a game to write
about, and Walter Camp had devoted a whole paragraph to explaining why
he didn't put him on the first all-American eleven but on the second
instead--a gross injustice which she had bitterly resented.)

There was a thrill, then, in the discovery that he liked her better than
other girls, and a greater thrill in the subsequent discovery that she
had become the basis of his whole orientation. It was her occupations
that left him leisure for his own; his leisure was hers to dispose of as
she liked; his energy, including his really prodigious physical prowess,
to be directed toward any object she thought laudable. Six months ago
she would not have laughed--not in that derisive way at least--at the
notion of his going back and beating up the professor.

There had been a thrill, too, in their more sentimental passages. But at
this point, there developed a most perplexing phenomenon. The idea that
he wanted to make love to her, really moved and excited her; set her
imagination to exploring all sorts of roseate mysteries. The first time
he had ever held her hand--it was inside her muff, one icy December day
when he hadn't any gloves on--the memory of the feel of that big hand,
and of the timbre of his voice, left her starry-eyed with a new wonder.
She dreamed of other caresses; of wonderful things that he should say to
her and she should say to him.

But here arose the perplexity. It was her imagination of the thing that
she enjoyed rather than the thing itself. The wonderful scenes that her
own mind projected never came true. The ones that happened were
disappointing--irritating, and eventually and unescapably, downright
disagreeable to her. There was no getting away from it, the ideal lover
of her dreams, whose tenderness and chivalry and devotion were so highly
desirable, although he might wear the half-back's clothes and bear his
face and name, was not the half-back. She might dote on his absence, but
his presence was another matter.

The realization of th