Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/219

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propelled from the rear by half a dozen arms, beguiled from the front by a boy who danced along ahead of it, holding a tempting red apple for the radiator to sniff at.

He smiled after it mistily. "Humm," he said, "there goes college" . . . He choked, and swore under his breath, because oaths are man's poor substitute for tears.

V

Some time later he forced his loitering steps to take him to Eunice's bungalow. "Got to thrash this out," he told himself grimly, "one way or the other." College was finished. College lay behind him. But Eunice, who had so distorted the final precious months of it, was still ahead, an immediate stumbling-block across the new path of the future.

He fingered the doorbell; then as he heard it shrilf inside the house, he wished that he had not. "Wait a minute!" he muttered suddenly. "I haven't doped out what I'm going to say yet!" Since his last encounter with her his thoughts had been too chaotic for sane consideration, and he had formed no plan, Here he was on the threshold, blank. He had to conquer an almost overwhelming urge to turn and flee.

One of the living room windows went up, and Eunice popped her head out.

Unhappy Eunice! The hours of laborious tinting and curling with which for years she had prefaced Jock's visits—and he would always remember her only as she looked now, in this moment! With hair that hung dankly, with eyes that were narrowed to ugly