"Oh, I suppose you'll have to then," she said disconsolately. "You're entered." "But suppose I break the Western Intercollegiate?" he suggested. "Wouldn't you like that--now, frankly, wouldn't you?" She did not reply, so he went on. "I'll tell you what. That race will settle it. If I'm beaten I'll never run again--never. I'll--I'll--give you my running shoes as a souvenir of my Mercurial days!" She laughed and said: "But if you _win_--if you _break_ the record?" "It shall be just the same--I'll never run again. Under those circumstances I should be afraid to--afraid I couldn't do it a second time. I'll keep my record all to myself that way, don't you see?" "Oh Bunny!" she cried suddenly as she gave his arm a little squeeze; "I've been more than half teasing you. Run if you want to. Run all the time. _But if you don't break the record I'll never speak to you again as long as I live!_" He stopped and looked down at her, into her eyes, and saw the laughter lurking there. That instant he thought nothing in the world would be so much to the purpose--nothing at least that he could do--as to take her in his two big hands and shake her until her bronze hair fell about her shoulders. But he did no such thing. She said, "Well?" "You'll see," he answered and they walked on. They sat on her porch for an hour and talked of other things. They did not hear the bells in the library tower as they rang out quarters, halves, three-quarters of the hour. In her room, after he had gone, her eyes chanced to fall upon his picture fixed with many others on a tennis-net ingeniously draped between two windows, and she said to the picture: "You're a great, tall, awkward, foolish old dear! There...." But Bunny, in the solitude of his own alcove, lay awake half the night floundering in that tossing sea of doubt. With the morning however, came resolve. "What's the use," he muttered as he lathered his chin before the little square mirror tilted against the window at the height of his eyes. He would run once more--only once. And then---- Could she have meant it, he wondered, when she told him she would cut him from her list of friends if he failed to break the record. He smiled at the soaped reflection of his long, thin face in the little mirror. Ten seconds was a tiny lapse of time but it was the record. A hundred yards in ten seconds. That was ten yards a second. That was.... Well, approximately, ten feet at a stride--no, eight. A rather wide stride, to be sure, but _his_ legs.... Now if he could stride nine feet what would that bring it? Two and two---- Bunny found himself of a sudden involved in so deep a morass of mathematics that he gave up in disgust--and cut himself.