“Why, I believe so,” he said, and he turned to take leave of his pretty brunette; but she had promptly vanished with her brother, and he was spared the trouble of getting rid of her.  He would have been equal to much more for the sake of finding himself with Bessie Lynde again, whose excitement he could see burning in her eyes, though her thick complexion grew neither brighter nor paler.  He did not know what quality of excitement it might be, but he said, audaciously:  “It’s a good while since we met!” and he was sensible that his audacity availed.

“Is it?” she asked.  He put himself at her side, and he did not leave her again till he went to dress for the struggle around the Tree.  He found himself easily included in the adventurous young matron’s party.  He had not the elegance of some of the taller and slenderer men in the scholar’s gown, but the cap became his handsome face.  His affair with Bessie Lynde had given him a certain note, and an adventurous young matron, who was naturally a little indiscriminate, might very well have been willing to let him go about with her party.  She could not know how impudent his mere presence was with reference to Bessie, and the girl herself made no sign that could have enlightened her.  She accepted something more that her share of his general usefulness to the party; she danced with him whenever he asked her, and she seemed not to scruple to publish her affair with him in the openest manner.  If he could have stilled a certain shame for her which he felt, he would have thought he was having the best kind of time.  They made no account of by-gones in their talk, but she had never been so brilliant, or prompted him to so many of the effronteries which were the spirit of his humor.  He thought her awfully nice, with lots of sense; he liked her letting him come back without any fooling or fuss, and he began to admire instead of despising her for it.  Decidedly it was, as she would have said, the chicquest sort of thing.  What was the use, anyway?  He made up his mind.

When he said he must go and dress for the Tree, he took leave of her first, and he was aware of a vivid emotion, which was like regret in her at parting with him.  She said, Must he?  She seemed to want to say something more to him; while he was dismissing himself from the others, he noticed that once or twice she opened her lips as if she were going to speak.  In the end she did nothing more important than to ask if he had seen her brother; but after he had left the party he turned and saw her following him with eyes that he fancied anxious and even frightened in their gaze.

The riot round the Tree roared itself through its wonted events.  Class after class of the undergraduates filed in and sank upon the grass below the terraces and parterres of brilliantly dressed ladies within the quadrangle of seats; the alumni pushed themselves together against the wall of Holder Chapel; the men of the Senior class came last in their grotesque variety of sweaters and second and third best clothes for the scramble at the Tree.  The regulation cheers tore from throats that grew hoarser and hoarser, till every class and every favorite in the faculty had been cheered.  Then the signal-hat was flung into the air, and the rush at the Tree was made, and the combat’ for the flowers that garlanded its burly waist began.