“But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring motive may work for harm, and the university must not become a desert.  In the twenty-four hours since that young man went to join the army last night, one hundred and eleven of our young men students have left our walls; eighty-four of them went off together at three o’clock to catch an east-bound train at the junction and enlist for the Navy at Newport.  We are, I say, in danger of a stampede.”

He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by the idea which seemed to be carrying her to the border of tragedy.  When the crowd poured forth from the building she went with it mechanically, and paused in the dark outside.  She spoke to a girl whom she did not know.

“I beg your pardon—­”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to ask:  Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis spoke of?  I mean the one that was the first to enlist, and that they were cheering last night when he went away to be a private in the United States Army.  Did you happen to hear his name?”

“Yes, he was a junior.”

“Who was it?”

“Ramsey Milholland.”

Chapter XX

Fred Mitchell, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw Dora standing near the entrance of her dormitory, where he would pass her unless he altered his course; and as he drew nearer her and the details of her face grew into distinctness, he was indignant with himself for feeling less and less indignation toward her in proportion to the closeness of his approach.  The pity that came over him was mingled with an unruly admiration, causing him to wonder what unpatriotic stuff he could be made of.  She was marked, but not whipped; she still held herself straight under all the hammering and cutting which, to his knowledge, she had been getting.

She stopped him, “for only a moment,” she said, adding with a wan profoundness:  “That is, if you’re not one of those who feel that I shouldn’t be ’spoken to’?”

“No,” said Fred, stiffly.  “I may share their point of view, perhaps, but I don’t feel called upon to obtrude it on you in that manner.”

“I see,” she said, nodding.  “I’ve wanted to speak with you about Ramsey.”

“All right.”

She bit her lip, then asked, abruptly:  “What made him do it?”

“Enlist as a private with the regulars?”

“No.  What made him enlist at all?”

“Only because he’s that sort,” Fred returned briskly.  “He may be inexplicable to people who believe that his going out to fight for his country is the same thing as going out to commit a mur—­”

She lifted her hand.  “Couldn’t you—­”

“I beg your pardon,” Fred said at once.  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know just how to explain him to you.”

“Why?”

He laughed, apologetically.  “Well, you see, as I understand it, you don’t think it’s possible for a person to have something within him that makes him care so much about his country that he—­”