seemed to be his lungs he met her. Mrs. Anderson was between
them, putting out a quick hand; the boy hardly saw her as he
took it. He saw the girl, and the girl did not look at him.
With her head up and her brown eyes fixed on Phelps gate-way she
hurried along--and did not look at him. He could not believe it--
that girl--the girl. But she was gone; she had not looked at him.
Like a shot animal he suddenly began to run. He got to his rooms;
they were empty; Baby Thomas, his "wife," known as Archibald
Babington Thomas on the catalogue, but not elsewhere, had been
taken for Scroll and Key; he was off with the others who were
worth while. This boy went into his tiny bedroom and threw
himself down with his face in his pillow and lay still. Men
and women learn--sometimes--as they grow older, how to shut
the doors against disappointments so that only the vital ones
cut through, but at twenty all doors are open; the iron had come
into his soul, and the girl had given it a twist which had taken
his last ounce of courage. He lay still a long time, enduring--
all he could manage at first. It might have been an hour later
that he got up and went to his desk and sat down in the fading
light, his hands deep in his trousers pockets; his athletic young
figure dropped together listlessly; his eyes staring at the desk
where had worked away so many cheerful hours. Pictures hung
around it; there was a group taken last summer of girls and boys
at his home in the country, the girl was in it--he did not look
at her. His father's portrait stood on the desk, and a painting
of his long-dead mother. He thought to himself hotly that it was
good she was dead rather than see him shamed. For the wound was
throbbing with a fever, and the boy had not got to a sense of
proportion; his future seemed blackened. His father's picture
stabbed him; he was a "Bones" man--all of his family--his