"Depends on the kind of girl. If she is one of your high-steppers as to dignity and sense of honor, let him play mean and seem to do a few dirty tricks. If she's a stickler for manners and good taste, let him betray a few traits of boorishness or Philistinism; or if she has a keen sense of the ridiculous, let him make an ass of himself. I should say the last would be the surest cure and leave least of a sore place in her feelings, but it would be hardest on his vanity. Everybody knows that a man would 'rather seem a scamp than a fool.'"

"I don't believe there's a man in the world who would play the voluntary fool to save any woman's heart from breaking, though he might manage the scamp," remarked Mathewson. "And anyhow, Potts, I believe there 's no girl who would n't choose to be jilted outright, rather than be juggled out of her affections that way."

"No doubt she would say so, if you asked her," replied the imperturbable Potts. "A woman always prefers a nice sentimental sorrow to a fancy-free state. But it isn't best for her, and looking out for her good, you must deprive her of it. Women are like children, you know, our natural wards."

This last sentiment impressed these beardless youths as a clincher, and there was a pause. But Mathewson, who was rather strong on the moralities, rallied with the objection that Potts's plan would be deceit.

"Well, now, that's what I call cheeky," replied its author, with a drawl of astonishment. "I suppose it wasn't deceit when you were prancing around in your best clothes both literally and figuratively, trying to bring your good points into such absurd prominence as to delude her into the idea that you had no bad ones. Oh, no, it's only deceit when you appear worse than you are, not when you try to appear better. Strikes me that when you 'ye got a girl into a fix, it won't do at that time of day to plead your conscience as a reason for not getting her out of it. Seeing that a man is generally ready to sacrifice his character in reality to his own interests, he ought to be willing to sacrifice it in appearance to another's."

Mathewson was squelched, but Sturgis came to his relief with the suggestion:—

"Would n't a little genuine heartache, which I take it is healthy enough, if it is n't pleasant, be better for her than the cynical feeling, the disgust with human nature, which she would experience from finding her ideal of excellence a scamp or a fool?"

The others seemed somewhat impressed, but Potts merely ejaculated,—

"Bosh!" Allowing a brief pause for this ejaculation to do its work in demoralizing the opposition he proceeded. "Sturgis, you remember 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' and how Titania, on the application of Puck's clarifying lotion to her eyes, perceives that in Bottom she has loved an ass. Don't you suppose Titania suffered a good deal from the loss of her ideal?"

There was a general snicker at Sturgis's expense.

"Well, now," continued Potts gravely, "a woman who should fall in love with one of us fellows and deem him a hero would be substantially in Titania's plight when she adored Bottom, and about as much an object of pity when her hero disclosed an asininity which would be at least as near to being his real character as the heroism she ascribed to him."

"That 's all very well," said Merril dryly, "but it strikes me that it's middling cheeky for you fellows to be discussing how you 'll jilt your sweethearts with least expense to their feelings, when the chances are that if you should ever get one, you 'll need all your wits to keep her from jilting you."

"You are, as usual, trivial and inconsequential this evening, Merril," replied Potts, when the laughter had subsided. "Supposing, as you suggest, that we shall be the jilted and not the jilters, it will be certainly for our interest that the ladies should spare our feelings by disenchanting us,—saying, as it were, the charm backward that first charmed us. He who would teach the ladies the method and enlist their tender hearts in its behalf would be, perhaps, the greatest benefactor his much-jilted and heart-sore sex ever had. Then, indeed, with the heart-breakers of both sexes pledged to so humane a practice, there would be no more any such thing as sorrow over unrequited affections, and the poets and novelists would beg their bread."

"That is a millennial dream, Potts," responded Merril. "You may possibly persuade the men to make themselves disagreeable for pity's sake, but it is quite too much to expect that a woman would deliberately put herself in an unbecoming light, if it were to save a world from its sins."

"Perhaps it is," said Potts pensively; "but considering what perfectly inexhaustible resources of disagreeableness there are in the best of us and the fairest of women, it seems a most gratuitous cruelty that any heart should suffer when a very slight revelation would heal its hurt. We can't help people suffering because we are so faulty and imperfect, but we might at least see that nobody ever had a pang from thinking us better than we are."

"Look at Hunt!" said Sturgis. "He does n't open his mouth, but drinks in Potts's wisdom as eagerly as if he did n't know it was a pump that never stops."

There was a general laugh among those who glanced up in time to catch the expression of close attention on Hunt's face.

"Probably he 's deliberating on the application of the Potts patent painless cure to some recent victim of that yellow mustache and goatee," suggested Merril, with the envy of a smooth-faced youth for one more favored.

Hunt, whose face had sprung back like a steel-trap to its usual indifferent expression, smiled nonchalantly at Merril's remark. One whose reticent habit makes his secrets so absolutely secure as Hunt's private affairs always were is stirred to amusement rather than trepidation by random guesses which come near the truth.

"If I were situated as Merril flatteringly suggests, I should enjoy nothing better than such an experiment," he replied deliberately. "It would be quite a novel sensation to revolutionize one's ordinary rule of conduct so as to make a point of seeming bad or stupid. There would be as much psychology in it as in an extra term, at least. A man would find out, for instance, how much there was in him besides personal vanity and love of approbation. It would be a devilish small residue with most of us, I fancy."

The talk took a new turn, and the fun grew fast and furious around Hunt, who sat puffing his pipe, absorbed in contemplation. At about half-past nine, when things were getting hilarious, he beat a retreat, followed by the reproaches of the fellows. He was determined to administer the first dose of Potts's painless cure to his interesting patient that very evening, if she had not already retired. He was in high good humor. Potts was a brick; Potts was a genius. How lucky that he had happened to go up to college that night! He felt as if an incubus were lifted off his mind. No more pangs of conscience and uncomfortable sense of being a mean and cruel fellow, for him. Annie should be glad to be rid of him before he had ended with her. She should experience a heartfelt relief, instead of a broken heart, on his departure. He could n't help chuckling. He had such confidence in his nerve and his reticent habit that his confidence and ability to carry out the scheme were undoubting, and at its first suggestion he had felt almost as much relief as if he had already executed it.

On arriving home, he found Annie sewing alone in the parlor, and a little offish in manner by way of indicating her sense of his offense in leaving her to spend the evening alone.

"Really, Annie," he said, as he sat down and unfolded the evening paper, "I try to give you all the time I can spare. If, instead of sulking, you had taken a piece of paper and calculated how many hours this week I have managed to give you my company, you would scarcely have felt like repining because you could n't see me for an hour or two this evening."

That was the first gun