They tried a dance or two in the crowded rooms, they strolled out into the gardens, they ate ices under the roses in a secluded arbor. The place, the time, the air had their influence on Van Dyke. He was from Montana, where the magnolias do not shed their waxen petals at Christmas, and the gold-of-Ophir roses sternly refuse to leaf until the Fourth of July. Perhaps he might have withstood all the seductive charms of the hour if he had not escorted Dolores home and essayed to bid her good-bye. There was a great clump of flaming poinsettia at the Payson gate. Dolores was dark, with a rich southern complexion; her dress was white. So she stood against the poinsettia. That is why there is more to this story. Van Dyke meditated as he went into town. She was the finest girl he had ever met. It was a hard graft, this playing one day in a live town where one could meet charming people, and being forced to take the train next morning for some uninteresting country place where they would have to lounge around a cheap hotel until concert time. Why couldn't the manager get up a schedule that would give them a day or so longer in a place like Los Angeles? This making a college trip with the sole idea of money-getting was degrading. He, for one, was willing enough to pay his share of the extra expense. On his way he stopped at a florist's. It was a habit he had acquired under similar circumstances. He was puzzled to know just what to send in a land where the highways and hedges run riot with flowers, but he finally selected some wonderful orchids of delicate lavender and mauve. Purposely, he put no card with them, feeling that she would guess the sender. He got into his dress clothes in rather an ungracious humor. Pomona was the next place, a fruit town further south. Oh, it was too bad! Well, at least he would see her again at the concert that night. He was grateful for this much. Her seat was on an aisle, she told him; he would be able to speak to her during the intermission; more than this, she had said, in her best convent manner, that he might ride home with her papa and mamma afterwards. Still, this was an unsatisfactory way of carrying on an affair of the sort, especially when it was the first really serious one he had ever had. Clean out of Van's mind had faded the memory of a Montana cow-girl, a San Francisco actress, a senior in the Lambda Mu sorority, a----but space forbids. He mussed three ties. Freshmen are petulant things. Perkins, who led the Mandolin Club, joshed him at dinner. "What's the matter, my boy; didn't you have a good time this afternoon?" "Of course he didn't," answered a guitar man. "You must have noticed his bored expression all through; that is, when you saw him at all."