you understand!" he exploded, later in the day, before his room-mate.

Crowley looked up from the three open books on the table over which he was bent.

"Good for you!" he cried. "Gad; you're more apt to win it now than I am the Rome—the way the work is going."

"You'd better look to your laurels," was the bantering reply. "You just note your little Johnnie's smoke. If he doesn't make the rest of the bunch that's on the same scent look like thirty cents, a year from next June, he'll go jump off the dock; and upon you will devolve the cheerful duty of telegraphing papa!"

And the next day he began.

It was an Herculean task that confronted him and he realized fully the labor necessary to its accomplishment. He dove into the work with an enthusiasm that augured well for the achievement of the end he had in view. He outlined a system; he drafted a schedule of diversion and recreation, which he promised himself he would adhere to. It permitted of meetings with Florence on only two nights of the week. For a month he did not swerve a hair's breath from this plan of employment, but at the end of that period he sent her a brief note breaking an engagement to drive with her on the Sunday following. He beseeched Crowley to call upon her and explain, which Crowley did, while Houston, locked in his room, studied.

During that call Crowley suffered an embarrassment he had never before experienced in Florence's presence. The John Alden part he had been so summarily cast to act, he felt did not fit him. As for Florence, she perceived his discomfort and surmising something of its cause adapted herself to the situation delicately.

"Do you think he'll win?" she asked eagerly after Crowley had made the necessary explanations.

"Win!" he exclaimed. "He'll win or go clear daft, if he keeps on working like he's been doing the past three weeks. He's getting thinner, too," he added—"actually getting thinner; hadn't you noticed?" And he laughed with her at the thought of Houston wearing himself to a shadow over books of archeology. It was very absurd.

Understanding well that Florence had had some hand in the change of Houston's fortunes, he hesitated upon the point of asking her to tell him all about it. They had been very candid in the past. He recalled their walk by the river and the conversation of that afternoon bearing upon Jack's misdeeds. But, for some reason that he could not, for his dulness, fathom now, he did hesitate. Houston had never told him what was the precise relation between him and Florence, and for him now, he thought, in the event of a secret engagement, perhaps, to seek to learn from her what that relation might be—— It was too delicate, he concluded, altogether too delicate.

"I do hope," she said, "you won't let him get sick working so hard."

"Oh, you needn't worry," he replied, significantly, "I don't think there's any immediate danger."

After a moment she said, bluntly: "You haven't any real faith in him, even now, have you, Jim?"

He was a little startled by her question. Had she, he asked himself, been sitting there reading his mind as though it were a show bill, printed in large type? He felt, for the moment, decidedly uncomfortable.

"You haven't, have you?" she repeated.

"Why, yes," he replied, somewhat indefinitely. "Why yes I have, too."

She shook her yellow head and smiled. "I'm afraid not," she said quietly.

And that instant Crowley came nearer achieving a complete understanding of Houston's case than he was destined to again—until long after. He was glad to leave the little round room at the end of half an hour.

For months Jack and Florence had made plans for the Junior Hop of his third year, but the first of February came and with it a realization to Florence that her hopes were destined to be shattered. Jack explained to her, as best he could, that the three days' respite from work after the first-semester examinations could not be that for him.

"I'm up to my eyes, dear," he said—"besides I know you don't care much; you've been to a lot, and as for me I shouldn't care a snap to go over to the Gym. and dance all night. I'm going through the exams, great. I know, dear, I've worked hard, but I must work harder. You understand, don't you?"

Of course she understood. Hop? What was a Hop to her? Pouff! That for them! The same always; a great bore, usually, after one has been to three or four. That was what she said to him, but deep in her heart she was disappointed; not keenly perhaps, but disappointed, nevertheless.

Through the last semester she saw him less frequently, even, than she had during the earlier part of the year.

"I've decided to stay over for summer-school, dear," he said to her one afternoon in mid-June.

She was quite joyful at the prospect.

"We shall go on the river!" she cried. "We shall, shan't we?"

"Of course," he said, earnestly.

But not once did they go. From week to week the excursion was postponed, always by Houston, save once. Then Florence's mother was ill. He was quite prepared on that occasion and suffered some displeasure.

"Never mind, we'll go in the fall, when you come back," Florence said.

In order that he might work during the scant vacation permitted him he carried to his southern home, in August, a case of books.

"You'll write me, dear, often—awfully often, won't you?" he said to Florence the night before he left.

"Of course," she assured him.

And she kept her promise though his letters were infrequent and brief during the interval.

He met her in the little round room the first night he was back. He had carried away with him an impression of her in a soft, fluffy blue gown, but now it was autumn, and she was dressed differently. When she came into the room, his senses suffered a shock from which he did not immediately recover.

She seemed much older. He wondered if it might not be her costume. He could not recall ever before having seen her in gray. He caught himself, once or twice, regarding her curiously, somewhat critically, and marveled at the phenomenon.

She did not chide him for his neglect in not having written her oftener during the two months he had been away. He offered no excuses. It was as though, now, each had forgotten in the other's nearness. Leaving her, he felt that, on the whole, he had got through the evening rather miserably.

The weeks sped on fleet wings. He was deep in his work. He perceived that what, a year before, had appeared but a remote chance of winning the coveted scholarship had now resolved itself into a certain possibility; even more, he considered, with a sense of pride—a probability.

The campus saw little of him, the town scarcely a glimpse, save occasionally of a Saturday evening when he walked to the post-office for his mail. On such evenings he usually stopped at Florence's home on his way to his rooms. The conversation between them at these times was confined almost wholly to his work. All his efforts were concentrated upon the accomplishment of the task he had set before himself.

For the Christmas vacation he went home.

"Father's coming in June," he told Florence on his return. "Said he'd be here big as life and twice as natural—going to bring a cousin of mine—Susie Henderson—you've heard me speak of her."

"Oh...."

"What is it?" He was startled by her exclamation.

She laughed—"I didn't mean to frighten you," she said—"but I pricked myself with this pin"—and she flung upon the table the trinket with which she had been toying.

On his way to his rooms that night he reviewed,