The girl flushed a little.
"I mean, you must have been," she added, a trifle inconsequently. "Boys always are. You had ambitions, then."
"Well, yes, and I gratified them. I wanted to be captain of my college team, and I was. We held the championship as long as I held the place. I wanted to make a record in pole-vaulting, and I did. It hasn't been beaten since. Then I wanted the Half-mile Cup, and I won that, too. I think those were my chief aspirations when I entered college, and when I came out there were no more worlds to conquer. Incidentally I carried off the honors for putting into American some of Mr. Horace's justly popular odes, edited the college paper for a year, and was valedictorian of the class. But those were trivial things. It was my prowess that gave me standing and will remain one of the old school's traditions long after this flesh has become dust."
The girl's eyes had grown brighter as he recounted his achievements. She could not help stealing a glance of admiration at the handsome fellow stretched out before her, whose athletic deeds had made him honored among his kind. Then she smiled.
"Perhaps you were a pillar of modesty, too," she commented, "once."
He laughed—a gentle, lazy laugh in which she joined—and presently she added:
"Of course, I know you did those things. That is just it. You could do anything, and be anything, if you only would. Oh, but you don't seem to care! You seem satisfied, comfortable and good-naturedly indifferent; if you were poor, I should say idle—I suppose the trouble is there. You have never been poor and lonely and learned to want things. So, of course, you never learned to care for—for anything."
Her companion leaned toward her—his handsome face full of a light that was not all of the fire.
"I have, for you," he whispered.
The girl's face lighted, too. Her eyes seemed to look into some golden land which she was not quite willing to enter.