“Oh!” said van Tuiver, and looked annoyed.
“You know him?”
“By sight. He has a bitter tongue.”
“No more bitter than you need, Mr. van Tuiver—if you are going to hear the truth about yourself.”
The other hesitated. “I really do want to win your regard—” he began.
“I don’t want you to do anything to win my regard! If you do these things, it must be because you want to do them. At present you’re just your money, your position—your Royalty, as I’ve come to call it. But I’m not the least bit concerned about your Royalty; your houses and your servants and your automobiles are a bore to me—worse than that, they’re wicked, for no man has a right to spend so much money on himself, to have a whole house to himself——.”
“Please,” he pleaded, “stop scolding about my house. I couldn’t change now, for it’s only a couple of weeks to Commencement.”
“It would have all the more effect,” she declared, “if you moved into a dormitory now. Here are the class elections, and your class split up——”
“You don’t realize my position,” he interrupted. “It’s not merely a question of what I want. There’s Ridgely Shackleford, our candidate for class president; if I deserted him and went over to the ‘Yard,’ they’d say I was a traitor, a coward—worse than that, they’d say I was a fool! I wouldn’t have a friend left in the college.”
“You really think it would be so bad?”