The ball was lost and the last struggle of the day began. Two minutes more,
the score tied, and only one chance was left.

Since the night of the storm, Vic had known little rest.
His days had been spent in hard study, or continuous
practice on the field; his nights in the sick room.
And what was more destructive to strength than all of this
was the newness and grief of a blind, overmastering adoration
for the one girl of all the school impossible to him.
The strain of this day's game, as the strain of all the
preparation for it, had fallen upon him, and the half hour
in the rotunda had sapped his energy beyond every other force.
Love, loss, a reputation attacked, possible expulsion for assaulting
a professor, injustice, anger--oh, it was more than a burden
of wearied muscles and wracked nerves that he had to lift
in these two minutes!

In a second's pause before the offense began, Vic, who never saw
the bleachers, nor heard a sound when he was in the thick of the game,
caught sight now of a great splash of glowing red color in the grandstand.
In a dim way, like a dream of a dream, he thought of American Beauty
roses of which something had been said once--so long ago, it seemed now.
And in that moment, Elinor Wream's sweet face, with damp dark hair which
the lamplight from Dr. Fenneben's door was illumining, and the softly
spoken words, "I shall always remember you as one with whom I could
never be afraid again"--all this came swiftly in an instant's vision,
as the team caught its breath for the last onslaught.

"Victor, for victory. Lead out Burleigh," Trench cried to his mates,
and the sweep of the field was on; and Lagonda Ledge and the whole