Fresh from the keen exercise and the shower-bath, smart, immaculate, strong with the impulses of an untrained nature, the crowd faded into insignificance when Frances would glimpse him swinging down the street. He had ceased to ask permission to turn back with her; it was a matter of course. Their talk usually was of the lightest. "Had a nice drive?" he might ask. Frances would plunge into account of Starlight's misdemeanors. "It's lovely walking," he might say inanely when she had finished, looking down at the girl's cheek, red like a rose with a clear spot of white in the centre of the red--"the rose's heart," he told himself, watching the flicker of it. "Mr. Saunders played well to-day!" Frances would say enthusiastically, and they would plunge at once into a keen discussion of every point of the play, of the game, of the teams, and of the match games and of the first big one soon to be played on their own grounds. Lawson began to have a feeling he was playing for more than the victory of the team game. He grew more and more anxious about it each day, and more and more set in his resolve to win. Once only had he played a losing part in life and the thought of that when it touched him, filled him with sickening revolt. "We'll win!" he declared one afternoon, after a discussion of the other players. "You are sure?" "Quite!" They were standing at her door. The quadrangle was deep in twilight, the lights pricking the dusk here and there; some students were chaffing each other gayly far up the corridor, a negro lad was hurrying with a hod of coal for a belated fire he should have started an hour ago. Frances was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the door-knob. "It's well to feel confident!" she said lightly, fighting against something she heard in the tones of his voice. "Is it? Should one always be confident?" he asked eagerly. "It's not a safe rule always," she fended. She heard the little exclamation he made under his breath. "But it is a help generally," she added, foolishly striving to undo the hurt she scarcely comprehended. "And there's no rule for it, like everything else, but a blind follow-your-leader," he said bitterly. "If the leader be wise," laughing nervously. There was a second's silence, and in it they heard footsteps hurrying along the corridor. The quadrangle was not a secluded spot even at its quietest. Frances fumbled at the door-knob. "Let me open it for you!" His hand came upon hers in the dusk, held it closely, tightly. The shock of the joy of its touch, the sound of her hurried breath went to his head. He followed her into the hall and shut the door behind him leaning against it, looming masterfully against its darkness. The light from the globe overhead cast a white circle on the polished floor; they were outside it. Beyond the half-drawn portière they glimpsed the professor, back towards them.