What he was trying to act up to was his sense of fairness.  Hard as it was under the circumstances, he was more anxious to be fair to this girl than to any other living being.

“I mustn’t spoil her afternoon, just because my own mind is so dizzy!” he thought reproachfully.

So, a moment later, he became merrier than ever—–­on the surface.

It was Laura’s turn to take a covert look at his face.  She wondered, for she felt that Prescott’s assumed gayety had an almost feverish note.

“How much further are you going to drive?” she asked presently.

“The only pleasure I recognize in the matter, Laura, is yours.  So I am wholly at your command.”

He tried to answer lightly and gallantly, yet felt, an instant later, that his words had had a strained sound.

The same thought had struck the girl.

Yet, instead of asking him to turn the horse’s head about, Laura ventured: 

“Gridley must be pleasant, as your home town, yet I fancy you are already looking forward to getting back to your ideals at West Point?”

“Is she tired of having me around?” wondered Cadet Prescott, wincing within, as though he had been stabbed.

“I’m keener for West Point, every day, Laura,” he answered quietly.  “Yet, even in the case of such a grand old place as the Military Academy, it is worth while to get away once in a while.  If it were not for this long furlough, midway in the four years’ course, many of us might go mad with the incessant grind.”

“Oh, you poor Dick!” cried Laura Bentley, in quick, genuine sympathy.  “Yes; I think I can quite understand what you say.”

And then a new light came into her eyes, as she added, very softly: 

“We in Gridley, who hope for you with your own intensity of longings, must take every pains to make this furlough of yours restful enough and full enough of happiness to send you back to West Point with redoubled strength for the grind.”

“The same Laura as of yesterday!” cried Dick with sincere enthusiasm.  “Always wondering how to make life a little sweeter for others!”

“Thank you,” she half bowed quietly.  “Yes; I want to see your strength proven among strong men.”

Again she looked frankly into Prescott’s eyes, and he, at the same moment, into hers.  His pulses were bounding.  What was to become, now, of his resolution to hold back the surging words for at least two more years?

Yet resolutely he stifled the feelings that surged within him.  He was a boy, though the training at West Point was swiftly making him over into a man.

“I may lose her,” groaned Cadet Prescott.  “I may have lost her already—–­if I ever had any chance.  But a soldier has at least his honor to think of, and no honorable man can ask a woman to give herself to him, and to wait for years, when he isn’t reasonably certain he is going to be able to meet the responsibility that he seeks.”