George had a fancy that Mrs. Bailly guided her awkward husband away from Betty and him. Why? At least it was pleasant to be alone with Betty, gliding along near the bank, sometimes clasping hands at a half-seen, doubtful stretch. Betty spoke of it. "Where are my guardians?" "Let's go a little farther," he urged. "We'll find them easily enough." It didn't worry her much. "Why did you come back so soon?" she asked. He hesitated. He had hoped to avoid such questions. "I haven't been away." She glanced up, surprised. "You mean you've been in Princeton through the holiday?" "Yes, I feel I ought to go easy with what little I have." "I knew you were working your way through," she said, "but I never guessed it meant as much denial as that." "Don't worry," he laughed, "I'll make money next summer." "I wish I'd known. And none of your friends thought!" "Why should they? They're mostly too rich." "That's wrong." "Are you driving me into Allen's camp?" he asked. "You can't; for I expect to be rich myself, some day. Any man can, if he goes about it in the right way. Maybe Allen doubts his power, and that's the reason he's against money and the pleasant things it buys. Does it make any difference to you, my being poor for a time?" "Why should it?" she asked, warmly. "Allen," he said, "couldn't understand your skating with me." Why not tell Betty the rest in this frozen and romantic solitude they shared? He decided not. He had risked enough for the present. When she turned around he didn't try to hold her, skating swiftly back at her side, aware of a danger in such solitude; charging himself with a scarcely definable disloyalty to his conception of Sylvia. XXI He fancied Betty desired to make up for her thoughtlessness during the holidays when she asked him for dinner on a Saturday night. With that dinner, no matter what others might think of his lack of money and background, she had put herself on record, for it was a large, formal party sprinkled with people from New York, and drawing from the University only the kind of men Allen was out to fight. Wandel, George thought, rather disapproved of his being there, but as a result, he made two trips to parties in New York during the winter. Both were failures, for he didn't meet Sylvia, yet he heard of her always as a dazzling success. He answered Dalrymple's cold politeness with an irritating indifference. In the spring, however, he detected a radical alteration in Dalrymple's manner.