He felt that his appeal was irresistible, and his spirit was on a high wave of assurance. So high, indeed, that he decided to omit the personal claim upon the President’s gratitude. He had felt for some time that perhaps that would not be altogether fair.... He bundled up the papers along with his final suggestions and sent them back to his lawyer with orders to lick them into shape and forward them to the President without another minute’s delay. He wrote to Helen of the imminence of the crisis in their affairs, but of doubt or apprehension he did not speak. He told her of his decision not to appeal to her father’s sense of personal obligation. He exulted in his approaching triumph as if he had already apprehended and went into rhapsodies about the double prize it would bring to him: the shoulder-straps and her: a gentleman’s work in serving the flag, and a gentleman’s supremest guerdon—her love openly confessed and without reserve. Helen’s answer was brief but warmly sympathetic. She applauded his purpose to win on merit alone. His decision only confirmed her estimate of him. Her faith in his winning was fixed. A tender line closed the missive, and a laughing postscript besought him not to believe the half he saw in the papers about her. Ah, the postscript! It suggested a thing which Hayward had not thought of before. He began to read the society notes in the metropolitan dailies, with special reference to Newport and Bar Harbor gossip, and with more especial reference to Miss Helen Phillips’ doings thereat. He bought one or another of the papers at the village every day, and studied them religiously. In the very first was the interesting item that Mr. Harry Lodge was spending a time at Newport. So was Helen, as Hayward knew, though that paper did not say so. But the next day’s issue did: and he began to exercise his brain with a continuous problem of its own devising. The problem was to figure out in his imagination the details of Helen’s daily life. Some days the papers said nothing of her, and then there would be so much that her husband resented the intrusion upon the right of privacy which the correspondents so ruthlessly invaded,—but he welcomed the news of her. The President’s daughter was a public personage, and the great newspapers did not hesitate to treat her as such. Her comings and goings, her graces and beauty, her dresses and dances, her thoughts and her tastes, her wit and her charm were never-ending sources of supply for the bright young men who were paid by the column for their "stuff." Hayward read every word of it—though a Harvard man ought to have had more sense: and Mr. Lodge began to figure more and more largely in "the conditions of the problem."