"What's the use of a man's hanging fire when he knows?" he thought. "Now, I love her--love her." (Jack's hand stole into the breast of his jacket and crushed a bit of paper there; he smiled.) "Of course she does n't know, and won't know for a while, but it shan't be through any neglect of mine that she does n't; and when she knows--there 's the rub!--will she care for me, Jack Sherrill? I 've never done anything in my life to make a girl like that care for me.
"But there's one thing I 'd stake my life on--she would n't marry a man for his money. A man 's got to be loved for himself--not for what he can give a woman, or do for her, but just for himself, if it's going to be the real thing, and last. And what am I that a girl like that should love me--" Jack was growing very humble. He pulled himself together: "Anyhow, I'll send the flowers and the sentiment, I mean it; I don't care what she thinks!" Jack's courage rose as he began to feel something like defiance of Fate.
Just then his chum came in.
"There's no use, Sherrill," he said, flinging himself down upon the cushioned seat Jack had just vacated; "we can't have the theatricals unless you take the girl's part. It won't put you out any--smooth face and no scrub. You 've been it once, and it will be a dead failure if you aren't in it now."
"I don't see how I can," replied Jack, shortly, for this intrusion on his mood irritated him. "I told you, all of you, at the Club last year, that I would n't play after I was a Junior."
"Well, what if you did?" rejoined his chum, a little crossly. "You 're not so uncompromisingly steadfast in other things that you can't afford to change your mind in such a trifle as this."
"Come, don't be touchy," said Jack, good-humoredly. "Hit right out from the shoulder, old man, and tell me what you mean."
Dawns smiled, clasped his hands under his head, and raised his merry blue eyes to Jack, who was lighting up.
"They say over at the Club that you have thrown Maude Seaton over, but Grayson took up the Seaton cudgels and made the statement that she had thrown you over, and you won't take the girl's part in the play because she is coming on for it."
Jack hesitated. He hated to play at any comedy of love when his heart was throbbing with the genuine article. But, after all, it might be the best way to silence the Club's tongues as well as some others in Boston and New York.