[Illustration: He made our meeting something of a ceremony.]

Up to the time I met Beatrice I had never thought it possible to
consider a girl as a friend. For the matter of that, I had no friends
even among men, and I made love to girls. My attitude toward girls, if
one can say that a man of eighteen has an attitude, was always that of
the devoted admirer. If they did not want me as a devoted admirer, I
put them down as being proud and haughty or "stuck up." It never
occurred to me then that there might be a class of girl who, on
meeting you, did not desire that you should at once tell her exactly
how you loved her, and why. The girls who came to Cranston's certainly
seemed to expect you to set their minds at rest on that subject, and
my point of view of girls was taken entirely from them. I can remember
very well my pause of dawning doubt and surprise when a girl first
informed me she thought a man who told her she was pretty was
impertinent. What bewildered me still more on that occasion was that
this particular girl was so extremely beautiful that to talk about
anything else but her beauty was a waste of time. It made all other
topics trivial, and yet she seemed quite sincere in what she said, and
refused to allow me to bring our talk to the personal basis of "what I
am to you" and "what you are to me." It was in discussing that
question that I considered myself an artist and a master. My
classmates agreed with me in thinking as I did, and from the first
moment I came here called me "Masher" Macklin, a sobriquet of which I
fear for a time I was rather proud. Certainly, I strove to live up to
it. I believe I dignified my conduct to myself by calling it
"flirtation." Flirtation, as I understood it, was a sort of game in
which I honestly believed the entire world of men and women, of every
class and age, were eagerly engaged. Indeed, I would have thought it
rather ungallant, and conduct unworthy of an officer and a gentleman,