Somehow, somewhere in that procession of men and maids would be one man walking alone and searching the crowd eagerly, for all his air of careless assurance, for a young woman who walked briskly with shoulders well back and head in air, whose eyes were shining with health and content and whose lips were curving with happy thoughts, and though his life held bright days in spite of an old sorrow long past, and though there were bright days to come, there would never be any again with the intangible charm of the chilly afternoons faded well-nigh to dark, the evening star shining clearly in the pale green west, the tops of the tall trees rocking against the "primrose sky," and those two walking gayly along the paths of the University homewards.
Sometimes there was a moment's pause in the library, sometimes an evening visit; but strangely enough, Lawson with his hard training had settled down to hard study likewise, and was giving an unexpected turn to the Faculty's thoughts of him; for those with whom he had first come in touch feared the results of his wealth and good-natured easy comradeship and not altogether admirable ways of living, upon the younger men.
Through all his intercourse with Frances there was the most delightful comradeship, the girl yielding unconsciously to a friendliness from which she had always steadily held herself.
True, Lawson was fairly irresistible. The strength of his nature which had much savagery under its gloss, the beauty of his physique, showing better each day of regular hours and cleanly living, the indomitableness of his resolve which set itself on winning always the want of the hour, were a power could scarce be turned aside.
Fresh from the keen exercise and the shower-bath, smart, immaculate, strong with the impulses of an untrained nature, the crowd faded into insignificance when Frances would glimpse him swinging down the street.
He had ceased to ask permission to turn back with her; it was a matter of course. Their talk usually was of the lightest.
"Had a nice drive?" he might ask.
Frances would plunge into account of Starlight's misdemeanors.
"It's lovely walking," he might say inanely when she had finished, looking down at the girl's cheek, red like a rose with a clear spot of white in the centre of the red—"the rose's heart," he told himself, watching the flicker of it.
"Mr. Saunders played well to-day!" Frances would say enthusiastically, and they would plunge at once into a keen discussion of every point of the play, of the game, of the teams, and of the match games and of the first big one soon to be played on their own grounds.