“Claude,” said Enid banteringly, “now both your brothers have houses.  Where are you going to have yours?”

“I don’t know that I’ll ever have one.  I think I’ll run about the world a little before I draw my plans,” he replied sarcastically.

“Take me with you, Claude!” said Gladys in a tone of sudden weariness.  From that spiritless murmur Enid suspected that Bayliss had captured Gladys’ hand under the buffalo robe.

Grimness had settled down over the sleighing party.  Even Enid, who was not highly sensitive to unuttered feelings, saw that there was an uncomfortable constraint.  A sharp wind had come up.  Bayliss twice suggested turning back, but his brother answered, “Pretty soon,” and drove on.  He meant that Bayliss should have enough of it.  Not until Enid whispered reproachfully, “I really think you ought to turn; we’re all getting cold,” did he realize that he had made his sleighing party into a punishment!  There was certainly nothing to punish Enid for; she had done her best, and had tried to make his own bad manners less conspicuous.  He muttered a blundering apology to her when he lifted her from the sleigh at the mill house.  On his long drive home he had bitter thoughts for company.

He was so angry with Gladys that he hadn’t been able to bid her good-night.  Everything she said on the ride had nettled him.  If she meant to marry Bayliss, then she ought to throw off this affectation of freedom and independence.  If she did not mean to, why did she accept favours from him and let him get into the habit of walking into her house and putting his box of candy on the table, as all Frankfort fellows did when they were courting?  Certainly she couldn’t make herself believe that she liked his society!

When they were classmates at the Frankfort High School, Gladys was Claude’s aesthetic proxy.  It wasn’t the proper thing for a boy to be too clean, or too careful about his dress and manners.  But if he selected a girl who was irreproachable in these respects, got his Latin and did his laboratory work with her, then all her personal attractions redounded to his credit.  Gladys had seemed to appreciate the honour Claude did her, and it was not all on her own account that she wore such beautifully ironed muslin dresses when they went on botanical expeditions.

Driving home after that miserable sleigh-ride, Claude told himself that in so far as Gladys was concerned he could make up his mind to the fact that he had been “stung” all along.  He had believed in her fine feelings; believed implicitly.  Now he knew she had none so fine that she couldn’t pocket them when there was enough to be gained by it.  Even while he said these things over and over, his old conception of Gladys, down at the bottom of his mind, remained persistently unchanged.  But that only made his state of feeling the more painful.  He was deeply hurt,—­and for some reason, youth, when it is hurt, likes to feel itself betrayed.