"Nor eat, nor sleep!" said the boy. "Yes, that's just it," whispered the girl. "That's just the way he was on the train--miles and miles it must have been--from the engine to the last car--all the time I mean--night and day--stalking up and down--up and down!" "Little Stupid!" said her father. "Who?--I?" gasped the girl. For a [10] second bewilderment she stared from the man's face to the boy's. "O--h!" she cried out in sudden enlightenment. "You _asked_ him to sit down, didn't you?" And fled from the room. With a shiver of relief the boy turned squarely then to meet the man. The quizzically furrowed lines around the man's mouth still held their faint ironic humor but the boy's face in the full light showed strangely stark. "Well--Lad," said the man very softly. "What have you got to tell me about it?" "Why that's just it!" cried the boy. "What is there to tell except that I've been a thoughtless cad,--a----" "How--thoughtless?" said the man. "And that your daughter isn't one bit to blame!" persisted the boy. "Not one bit! And for the rest of it----" he cried out desperately. "What am I expected to say? What ought I to say? For God's sake what do you want me to say? Oh, of course, I've read yarns," he flushed. "French novels and all that sort of thing, but when it comes down to one's self and a--and a girl you know----Why--what's the matter with everybody?" [11] he demanded furiously. "A fellow isn't rotten just because he's a fellow! And it isn't even as though I had wanted to be rotten but wasn't! I never _thought_ of being rotten!" Hotter and hotter the red shame flared in his face. "It's a nasty, dirty, evil-minded world!" he stormed. "Why you'd think to hear Miss Merriwayne talk that----" "Miss who?" said the older man. "Miss Merriwayne," said the boy. "Claudia Merriwayne--the president of the college, you know." "No, I didn't know," said the man. "She's a fiend!" said the boy. "An utterly merciless----" In a hectic effort to regain his self-control he bit the sentence in two and began to repace the room. "There--there was a dance at the college that night," he resumed at last with reasonable calmness. "I don't go in much for that sort of thing. I don't live in town, you see, but miles and miles outside. I'm just a 'farmer,' you know," he confided with his first faint ghost of a smile. "My brother and I have a bit of a ranch outside. We're trying very hard to be 'scientific farmers.' It's the deuce of a [12] job! And whenever there comes a night that I've got pep enough to stay awake I'd rather ride somehow than fuss around with people. Sometimes I ride all night! I've got a horse named Brainstorm! And he's some devil!" In the instant's transfiguring glow he was all young god again, superb, defiant. Then as though with a spasm of pain his young mouth tightened to a single determinate line. With the air of one suddenly very tired he stopped his restless pacing and backed into the supporting angle of the bookcase.