"So I've heard." Hugh was frankly sarcastic. "Well, I am." Slade looked up defiantly. "I guess it's up to me to explain--and I don't know how to do it. I'm a dumbbell. I can't talk decently. I flunked English One three times, you know." He hesitated a moment and then blurted out, "I was looking for those bags myself." "What?" Hugh leaned forward and stared at him, bewildered and dumfounded. "_You_ were looking for them?" "Yeah... You see, I'm a bad egg--always been a bad one with women, ever since I was a kid. Gotta have one about every so often.... I--I'm not much." "But what made you stop me?" Hugh pressed his hand to his temple. His head was aching, and he could make nothing out of Slade's talk. "Because--because.... Oh, hell, Carver, I don't know how to explain it. I'm twenty-four and you're about nineteen and I know a lot that you don't. I was brought up in South Boston and I ran with a gang. There wasn't anything rotten that we didn't do.... I've been watching you. You're different." "How different?" Hugh demanded. "I want women just as much as you do." "That isn't it." Slade ran his fingers through his thick black hair and scowled fiercely at the fireplace. "That isn't it at all. You're--you're awfully clean and decent. I've been watching you lots--oh, for a year. You're--you're different," he finished lamely. Hugh was beginning to understand. "Do you mean," he asked slowly, "that you want me to keep straight--that--that, well--that you like me that way better?" He was really asking Slade if he admired him, and Slade got his meaning perfectly. To Hugh the idea was preposterous. Why, Slade had made every society on the campus; he had been given every honor that the students could heap on him--and he envied Hugh, an almost unknown sophomore. Why, it was ridiculous. "Yes, that's what I mean; that's what I was trying to get at." For a minute Slade hesitated; he wasn't used to giving expression to his confused emotions, and he didn't know how to go about it. "I'd--I'd like to be like you; that's it. I--I didn't want you to be like me.... Those women are awful bags. Anything might happen." "Why didn't you stop Carl Peters, too, then?" "Peters knows his way about. He can take care of himself. You're different, though.... You've never been drunk before, have you?" "No. No, I never have." Hugh's irritation was all gone. He was touched, deeply touched, by Slade's clumsy admiration, and he felt weak, emotionally exhausted after his little spree. "It's awfully good of you to--to think of me that way. I'm--I'm glad you stopped me."