"All right. I'm not going stale if I can help it. I just felt a little faint over there; I got pretty tired."
Diemann stepped up closer to him beside the curving balustrade and looked the football man steadily in the eyes.
"You are playing more like Blake every day," he said.
"I wish I were."
"We are going to the Springs to-morrow," went on the coach, "and you can rest. By the way, if I were you I wouldn't say anything about your feeling faint just now. It would only trouble Lyman and the rest of the boys."
"What does it all mean?" Diemann mused as the palms bordering the bicycle path flashed by him. "There was something about him like Fred, in his way of speaking, and some of the things he said about the game, but it stopped there. With all my questioning, I never got a word that belonged to us two alone. I suppose I must admit that it is merely the memory of the subjective mind, a case of dual personality brought on by hyper-æsthetic conditions. Oh, if it were only the other thing, if I only could know! But it can't be; he would give me some clue, some sign. Then again the substitution has not come at a critical time, only after the practice, when Ashley is tired. If it were Fred, he would appear in the play, he would come at a time like that, if there is anything in it."
Diemann gripped his handle-bar tightly as he shot through the sandstone gates.
"Oh," he thought, "whatever it is, if it would only come stronger, if I could only be sure!"
On Thanksgiving morning when the long special runs up on the University track and stops between the Library and Encina, the flaming bunting looped along its sides starts the excitement of the day. Everybody is out on the walk, bristling with the College cardinal, from Professor Grind and his wife to the Jap who cleans house Saturdays. If there is anyone who cannot or does not want to go up to town to-day, he has hidden himself in grief or shame. The President wears a ribbon in his coat, and talks gravely with Professor Diemann, who has been at the Springs with the team. A knot of students have already determined to get the Doctor to lead the yell when he comes in to the grounds. They know he will do it; he is as full of the spirit of the day as any of them.