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"You mean I'm so idiotically in love——"

He had never loved her more than during the ensuing few minutes in the fraternity house. She sat enthroned on a window-seat, her gorgeous coat spread out around her like the background of a painting, her head tilted sideways—and without any visible effort whatever made a dozen blase young collegians her slaves. Her first faint lazy smile from the doorway had caught them, and the tentacles of her beauty and personality held them fast. "I knew it!" Jock gloated secretly. "She's knocking 'em cuckoo!" Every admiring glance that fastened on her, every guffaw elicited by things she said, every small compliment added its tithe to his exhilaration.

He said little. Talk effervesced around him, and he stood silent for the most part, looking and listening, and thinking, "Lovelier than ever. She caught a tan in California and it's becoming. Gosh, what a smooth get-up! That white fur. She always looks like a million dollars, anyway. And maybe she doesn't know her groceries! Poise. Says just the right things. Look at Fat Hastings, gawking. Bet he never saw such a girl in his life. Well, who has, for that matter? There never was such a girl! For God's sake, what did I do all these weeks without her? How did I stand it?" . . .

Suddenly he wanted her alone. Where he could feast his eyes upon her without fear that alien eyes would notice. Where he could take her in his arms. . . . He stood up and pulled her with him. "Come on, Yvonne," he said. "Enough of this rabble."

The worthies thus designated were reluctant to let Yvonne go. They voiced protests. Why go? Dull idea, checking out now. Stay to lunch or something. . . . But Jock, deaf to their entreaties, and full of the