"You remember I was low in my mind after the football game. It let me down. I don't care what I wrote you before the game. I really did think it was going to be fine. I thought I'd get stirred by it and after it was all over the only things I remembered were Bill French sitting on the side-lines crying and Charlie Bullitt out on the field putting his lunch. You don't mind if I tell it this way--the long way." "Take your time." "Well, I know it sounds silly, but it seemed to me that I just had to go out and find something that was thrilling and beautiful too. I saw this girl--this woman--walking across Harvard Square. It was night and raining and blowing. The wind was almost carrying her along. You know it made her seem so alive." He paused again. Peter could not resist an impulse to break into the story. "She said to you, 'Come along' or a something like that," he suggested. "No, I spoke to her. I said, 'Why get wet?' It was dark and we sneaked up the stairs in Weld to my room. And then it wasn't beautiful at all." Pat buried his head in his hands. This time Peter did put his arm around his shoulders. "That's right," said Peter, "it wasn't beautiful. You couldn't know that. Nobody ever does. I didn't." Pat looked up and in the second he had snapped back to normal. The shame had gone somewhere; into Peter's protecting arm perhaps. He managed a smile. "Peter," he said, "there's something more I'm sorry about. I'm sorry for what I said about that football story. It was a good football story. A peach of a story--all but that part about Charlie Bullitt and Dr. Nichols." Peter grinned back at him. "That's my weakness. I can't help being a little yellow sometime." A sudden elation swept over Peter. Here at last was a secret shared just by him and Pat. Of course, the Dean of Harvard College and the proctor and the woman who walked in the rain knew about it, but they didn't count. "The proctor saw her when she was going out," Pat added just to finish up the story. There they left it and went on to talk of other things but presently Miss Nathan came in. "Mr. Neale," she said, "Mr. Twice wants to see you in his office." Peter got up. "No," she said, "it's Mr. Pat Neale he wants to see. He's been asking for him for a couple of days now. I told him that he was here this afternoon." "What's Twice want to see you for, I wonder?" "I know," said Pat. "I've just thought of it. He must have got the Dean's letter. Don't you remember it was Mr. Twice arranged about my going to Harvard before you got back? I suppose they think he's still my guardian." "Do you want me to come in with you?" "Never mind. Now that I've got it off my chest once I guess I can do it again." Pat was gone for almost three quarters of an hour. Peter walked up and down nervously. He wondered what was happening. From across the transoms of Twice's office he could hear just the rumbling of the editor's voice. Pat didn't seem to be saying anything. At last he came back.