She seemed to visualize all that protected her from him. He put his cheap suitcase down. "I'm glad I saw you," he said, deliberately. "I wanted to thank you for having me fired, for waking me up." She didn't answer. She stood quite motionless. The dog growled, straining at his leash toward the man in the road. "I've been told to get out and stay out," he went on, his temper lashed by her immobility. "You know I meant what I said yesterday when I thought you couldn't hear. I did. Every last word. And you might as well understand now I'll make every word good." He pointed to the gate. "I'm going out there just so I can come back and prove to you that I don't forget." Her colour fled. She stooped swiftly, gracefully, and unleashed the anxious bulldog. "Get him!" she whispered, tensely. Like a shot the dog sprang for George. He caught the animal in his arms and submitted to its moist and eager caresses. "It's a mistake," he pointed out, "to send a dog that loves the stables after a stable boy." He dropped the dog, picked up his suitcase, and started down the drive. The dog followed him. He turned. "Go back, Roland!" Sylvia remained crouched. She cried out, her contralto voice crowded with surprise and repulsion: "Take him with you. I never want to see him again." So, followed by the dog, George walked bravely out into the world through the narrow gateway of her home. PART II PRINCETON I "Young man, you've two years' work to enter." "Just when," George asked, "does college open?" "If the world continues undisturbed, in about two months." "Very well. Then I'll do two years' work in two months." "You've only one pair of eyes, my boy; only one brain." George couldn't afford to surrender. He had arrived in Princeton the evening before, a few hours after leaving Oakmont. It had been like a crossing between two planets. Breathlessly he had sought and found a cheap room in a students' lodging house, and afterward, guided by the moonlight, he had wandered, spellbound, about the campus. Certainly this could not be George Morton, yesterday definitely divided from what Old Planter had described as human beings. His exaltation grew. For a long time he walked in an amicable companionship of broader spaces and more arresting architecture than even Oakmont could boast; and it occurred to him, if he should enter college, he would have as much share in all this as the richest student; at Princeton he would live in the Great House. His mood altered as he returned to his small, scantily furnished room whose very unloveliness outlined the difficulties that lay ahead. He unpacked his suitcase and came upon Sylvia's photograph and her broken riding crop. In the centre of the table, where he would work, he placed the photograph with a piece of the crop on either side. Whenever he was alone in the room those objects would be there, perpetual lashes to ambition; whenever he went out he would lock them away.