during the last six months. 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