Presently loyalty flared up. If Don fell short of the standard perhaps the standard was wrong.... It would not do, even as he thought of this excuse, he knew it would not do. He was aware of a streak of iron in his soul. An idol might sweep away the warmth and color of life by its fall--let them go then! No warping of standards could keep it on its pedestal. But the real sorrow in his heart drove him to try to find excuses for Don. Great Scott! it _was_ hard to lose! How could you blame anybody for not coming up to such a terribly high standard? Anybody on earth would naturally feel sore at being beaten in such a.... Even as he tried falteringly thus to lower his ideal to fit his affection, he was aware of something stern and relentless within him. The gallant face of the defeated player in the photograph stood out beside Don's startled, angry resentment at a wound to his vanity. Nine generations of Puritan forebears would not let Neale abandon his ideal because it hurt him. He passed into a condition of acute amazement at the others. How could they take it so light-heartedly? Perhaps they didn't care. Or perhaps they felt themselves obliged to pretend since they were still in Don's house. Yes, of course, he ought to pretend too. Smarting, he sprang up at a new word of command. "How about a little rag-time?" Don was crying in his role of master of ceremonies. "Polly, you to the piano. Get the old banjo, Dick. Clear the floor, boys. Oh, pitch the rugs out of the window, a little rain won't hurt 'em." For through the open windows came the steady voice of a summer downpour. The musicians struck up "Whistling Rufus," couples were formed and racketed noisily to and fro from the dining-room to the sitting-room and back, with much bumping and giggling at the congested doorway. Neale danced absent-mindedly with a girl whose name he could not remember, and whom he exchanged for a similarly anonymous girl when the tune changed to the "Georgia Camp-meeting." He went on thus, setting his body to do the decent thing, while his spirit lay prostrate within him. They were dancing harder than ever now, racing long-leggedly from one end of the room to the other, the boys carrying the girls bodily off their feet at some of the turns, the girls abandoning themselves like romping children to the whirlwind of the insistent rhythm, which they marked by shouting out as they danced, "Oh, la la, la, la-la, la la la! There'll be a _hot_ time in the _old_ town _to-night_!" Neale danced on with the rest. Under his grimly silent exterior, something fine and high and deeply wounded, cried out silently to the others, and received no answer.