I
George left Princeton with a sense of flight. The reception of a diploma didn't interest him, nor did the cheers he received class day or on the afternoon of the Yale baseball game when, beneath a Japanese parasol, he led the seniors in front of admiring thousands who audibly identified him for each other.
The man that had done most for Princeton! He admitted he had done a good deal for himself. Of course, Squibs was right and he was abnormally selfish; only it was too bad Betty couldn't have thought so. He had tried to make her and had failed, he told himself, because Betty couldn't understand selfishness.
He avoided during those last days every chance of seeing her alone; but even in the presence of others he was aware of an alteration in her manner, to be traced, doubtless, to the night of his difficult confession. She was kinder, but her eyes were often puzzled, as if she couldn't understand why he didn't want to see her alone.
He counted the moments, anxious for Blodgett and the enveloping atmosphere of his marble-and-mahogany office. That would break the last permanent tie. He would return to Princeton, naturally, but for only a day or two now and then, too short a time to permit its influences appreciably to swerve him.
Without meaning to, he let himself soften on the very edge of his departure when the class sang on the steps of Nassau Hall for the last time, then burned the benches about the cannon, and in lock step, hands on shoulders, shuffled slowly away like men who have accomplished the interment of their youth.
A lot of these mourning fellows he would never meet again; but he would see plenty of Goodhue and Wandel and other useful people. Why, then, did he abruptly and sharply regret his separation from all the others, even the submerged ones who had got from Princeton only an education taken like medicine and of about as much value? In the sway of this mood, induced by permanent farewells, he came upon Dalrymple.
"There's no point saying good-bye to you," George offered, kindly.
Of course not. They would meet each other in town too frequently, secreting a private enmity behind publicly worn masks of friendship. George was wandering on, but Dalrymple halted him. The man was a trifle drunk, and the sentiment of the moment had penetrated his narrow mind.