Armitage's eyes fell and he fumbled with the wrench.
"Thank you," he said, dubiously.
"Not at all, McCall," she said sweetly. "Listen," speaking rapidly, "I have always been crazy over football. Father was at Yale, '79, you know." She studied his face again, and then nodded. "When I was a girl, still in short dresses, father took a party of girls in Miss Ellis's school to Annapolis in his private car to see a Harvard-Navy game. A cousin of mine, Phil Disosway, was on the Harvard team. They were much heavier than Annapolis; but the score was very close, particularly because of the fine work of one of the Navy players who seemed to be in all parts of the field at once. I have forgotten his name,"—Miss Wellington gazed dreamily over the hills,—"but I can see him now, diving time after time into the interference and bringing down his man; catching punts and running—it was all such a hopeless fight, but such a brave, determined one." She shrugged her shoulders. "Really, I was quite carried away. As girls will, I—we, all of us—wove all sort of romantic theories concerning him. Toward the end of the game we could see him giving in under the strain and at last some coaches took him out. He walked tottering down the side lines past our stand, his face drawn and streaked with blood and dirt. I snapshotted that player. It was a good picture. I had it enlarged and have always kept it in my room. 'The Dying Gladiator,' I have called it. I wonder if you have any idea who that girlhood hero of mine was?"
"Was he a hero?" Armitage was bending over the carburetor. He waited a moment and then as Miss Wellington did not reply he added; "Now that you have placed me, I trust I shan't lose my position."
"I always knew I should see you again," said the girl as though she had not heard Armitage's banality. "I know now why I spoke to you on the General and why I wrote you that note in church." Her slipper beat an impatient tattoo on the door. "But why," she began, "why are you willing to enter service as a physical instructor, or motor car driver? I don't un—"
Armitage interrupted.
"Your mother asked me if I had been in college. I told her I had, but that I preferred not to say where, or why I left."
"Oh!" she said, and her eyes suffused with pity. "I am so sorry. But you must tell me one thing now. Was your leaving because of—of anything—that would make me sorry I had found—" she smiled, but looked at him eagerly—"the subject of the Dying Gladiator?"
"I hope not."
"You are not certain?"