"You'll find Apollo Nemesis, little man, unless you learn to say what you mean in words of one syllable." And the discussion of the clubs went on, breeding enmities but determining no radical reform. The struggle at Princeton was over. George looked often at the younger men, who didn't have to prepare themselves minutely for the greater struggle just ahead, envying them their careless play, their proneness to over-indulgence in beer and syncopated song. While he worked with high and low prices and variations in exchange he heard them calling cheerily across the campus, gathering parties for poker or bridge or a session at the Nassau. Goodhue, even Wandel, found some time for frivolity. George strangled his instinct to join them. He had too much to do. In every diversion he took he wanted to feel there was a phase personally valuable to him. He counted the days between his glimpses of Sylvia, and tried not to measure the hours dividing his meetings with Betty. If only he dared let himself go, dared cease battle for a little, dared justify Sylvia's attitude! Even Goodhue noticed his avoidance of Betty. He encountered Sylvia in New York; asked her to dance with him; was refused; cut in when she was, in a sense, helpless; and glided around the room with a sullen, brilliant body that fairly palpitated with distaste. Even during the summer he ran into her once on Long Island. Then he was always missing her. Perhaps she had learned to avoid him. He shrank each morning from his paper, from any bit of rumour connecting her with a man; and Blodgett, he noticed, was still making money for a bachelor bank account. He came to conceive a liking for his flabby employer, although he was quite sure Blodgett wouldn't have bothered with him a moment if he hadn't been a prominent college man with such ties among the great as Blodgett hadn't been able to knot himself. What was more to the point, the stout man admired George's ambition. He was more generous with his surreptitious advice. He paid a larger salary which he admitted was less than George earned during that summer. George, therefore, went back to Princeton with fuller pockets. Again Mundy was loath to let him depart. "You know more about this game than men who've worked at it for years." His face of a parson grimaced. "You'd soon be able to hire me, if you'd stick on the job instead of going back to college to get smashed up at football." George, however, didn't suffer much damage that year. He played brilliantly through a season that without him would have been far more disastrous than it was. When it was all over Squibs sat one night silently for a long time. At last he stirred, lighted his pipe, and spoke. "I ought to say to you, George, that I was as satisfied with you in defeat as I was in victory." "I outplayed Planter, anyway, didn't I?" Bailly studied him. "Did that mean more to you than having Princeton beaten?" "It kept Princeton from being beaten worse than it was."