"Oh, here's your 'heart's dearest possession,'" she said with a laugh, and she pitched the little crimson flag down upon Hayward, who was making the boat fast.
The man looked up to catch the flag as it fell, and memory in that instant worked the magic which brought the scene on Soldiers Field clearly before Helen's mind. She knew him in that moment. She gazed at him without speaking. She looked at the flag and then at him—once, and again. All the incidents of the driving finish of that ever memorable football game came back to her, bringing to her pulses an echoing tremor of its tense excitement and wild enthusiasm and her unstinted girlish admiration for the player who had saved his college, her Harvard, from black defeat.
At last she remembered his words about the pennant which she had quoted to him a moment since. Her cheek flushed and she was in two minds whether to be offended or amused. Graham saw her look of surprised recognition, her glances at the pennant, and read the significance of her rising colour. He felt the presumption of his very presence, and, conscious and guilty, he looked abjectly out across the lake.
The man's humility went far to mollify Helen's anger or levity; but she could not spare him entirely.
"So you prefer another name to your own," she said. "Why is that?"
"Oh, no, Miss Helen. I am not ashamed of my name. There's no reason why I should be. I—"
"Then why use another?"
"My name is John Hayward Graham. I am using my own, but not all of my own."
"But why the masquerade? It doesn't look well. What have you done to be afraid of your full name?"
"Nothing, Miss Helen, I declare upon honour. I'll tell you the whole story. You have been kind to respect my wishes not to make known my services to your father, and I'll gladly tell you all about it. But I must go now, if you will excuse me? Mrs. Phillips ordered the carriage for five o'clock and it's nearly that time now."