"Yes, we settled it all very well; he didn't seem to care in the least, he is so good-natured." She looked as serene as the sky above her, although she was beginning to have biting suspicions. "So it's all right." Cap Smith's feet had become tangled in crawling; he kicked out recklessly. "No, it's not all right. I don't believe in a girl's treating a fellow like that, and I won't be a party to it." "Why did you ask me, then?" she challenged. "To tempt me because you happened to be president and a girl loves to lead?" "I'm not so mean as that. How could I know Perkins had asked you. He hadn't told me." "I suppose you told him about it?" "Yes, I thought that I ought to." "After telling me that I might arrange it. It was my business." "I knew how you would do it, and I wasn't willing that Ted should be cut that way." "What a lovely friendship!" said Lillian. She was much vexed. Smith did not reply at once. The beauty of his friendship with Perkins did not strike him very heavily at the moment. "At any rate, under the circumstances I don't feel that I can take you to the cotillion." "Don't flatter your--" Lillian was too angry to speak without crying, so she went into the Hall abruptly. With the approach of Washington's Birthday, the rage of Miss Arnold grew. Inasmuch as everyone took it for granted that she was going with Perkins, it was not likely that she would be asked again, instead, late beginners, running cards for themselves and other people, asked her for dances, and rather than admit her predicament she let them fill her card. The afternoon of the cotillion she went to bed and was ill for a day; then she appeared at the final rehearsal with a smiling face and a soul full of wrath. She had very little to say to Smith, but otherwise she showed no resentment, and her acting was as good as ever. One wiser than Cap Smith would have augured ill from her fair seeming, a less confident man would have been on his guard; but he had forgotten all that he had ever read about the fury of women scorned, and he went to his doom unconscious. The Gym had never held a bigger audience, and the opera, as usual, was proving itself the greatest success in the annals of Stanford theatricals; the show was so inoffensively proper, Connor declared with a sigh, that it was disgusting. No hitch or jar marred the perfect running of the performance, and the conductor, directing the scene-shifting between acts, stopped now and then to shake hands with himself. The borrowed scenery almost fitted; there was no wait of more than half an hour; very few of the chorus got out of tune; the costumes had been expunged by a board of lady managers and declared officially to have no _Said Pasha_ tendencies; the leading ladies were actually keeping their tempers; things moved on as smoothly as though the Fates were deadening suspicion in order to make the coming catastrophe the more overwhelming.