"And that your daughter isn't one bit to blame!" persisted the boy. "Not one bit! And for the rest of it——" he cried out desperately. "What am I expected to say? What ought I to say? For God's sake what do you want me to say? Oh, of course, I've read yarns," he flushed. "French novels and all that sort of thing, but when it comes down to one's self and a—and a girl you know——Why—what's the matter with everybody?" he demanded 11 furiously. "A fellow isn't rotten just because he's a fellow! And it isn't even as though I had wanted to be rotten but wasn't! I never thought of being rotten!" Hotter and hotter the red shame flared in his face. "It's a nasty, dirty, evil-minded world!" he stormed. "Why you'd think to hear Miss Merriwayne talk that——"
"Miss who?" said the older man.
"Miss Merriwayne," said the boy. "Claudia Merriwayne—the president of the college, you know."
"No, I didn't know," said the man.
"She's a fiend!" said the boy. "An utterly merciless——" In a hectic effort to regain his self-control he bit the sentence in two and began to repace the room. "There—there was a dance at the college that night," he resumed at last with reasonable calmness.
"I don't go in much for that sort of thing. I don't live in town, you see, but miles and miles outside. I'm just a 'farmer,' you know," he confided with his first faint ghost of a smile. "My brother and I have a bit of a ranch outside. We're trying very hard to be 'scientific farmers.' It's the deuce of a job! And 12 whenever there comes a night that I've got 'pep' enough to stay awake I'd rather ride somehow than fuss around with people. Sometimes I ride all night! I've got a horse named Brainstorm! And he's some devil!" In the instant's transfiguring glow he was all young god again, superb, defiant. Then as though with a spasm of pain his young mouth tightened to a single determinate line. With the air of one suddenly very tired he stopped his restless pacing and backed into the supporting angle of the bookcase.
"But on this particular night—that I was telling you about," he resumed unhappily, "I had a sort of a feeling somehow that I'd like to go to the dance. It isn't always easy, you know," he confided with unexpected ingenuousness. "After the long day's work, I mean, with your back broken and your arms sprained, to come in and round up your own hot tub and your own shaving things and your own supper and the evening clothes you haven't even seen for six months. And I forgot the supper," he smiled faintly. "We haven't any woman at the house just now. But after 13 you get to the dance you don't mind!" he brightened transiently. "It's so bright and sweet-smelling! So many lights and colors! And so many funny dresses! And the music certainly is bully! And then all of a sudden at some silly hour like eleven o'clock everything shuts down and you have to go home! Why you'd only just come! Just got into your step, I mean! Just met the girls you wanted to meet! Just begun to laugh! Just begun to fool! That's the trouble with college parties," he frowned. "They're so darn institutional! No hanging round afterwards to forage in the kitchen and help put the house to bed, no nice jolly dawdling about on the front steps to look at the moon, no funny, bumpy walk home through a plowed field with a girl in high-heeled shoes and a lace tidy over her head! Just zip! Like that! 'Eleven o'clock! Everybody get out!' All that fun and prettiness and everything snuffed out like a sour candle just because some old dame wants to go to bed! It's too—it's too abrupt!" said the boy.
"So you felt?" prodded the man.
"Felt?" cried the boy. "Why at five minutes of eleven I felt 14 so fit I could have run nine miles to help put out a fire. But at eleven I was so mad I'd have run twenty just to start one!"
"So what did you do?" said the man.