Gregory got down from his stool with a disdainful laugh, and went out of the place.  “You make me sick, Fane,” he said.

The last dance was over, and the young ladies who had been waltzing with one another, came out of the parlor with gay cries and laughter, like summer girls who had been at a brilliant hop, and began to stray down the piazzas, and storm into the office.  Several of them fluttered up to the desk, as the clerk had foretold, and looked for letters in the boxes bearing their initials.  They called him out, and asked if he had not forgotten something for them.  He denied it with a sad, wise smile, and then they tried to provoke him to a belated flirtation, in lack of other material, but he met their overtures discreetly, and they presently said, Well, they guessed they must go; and went.  Fane turned to encounter Gregory, who had come in by a side door.

“Fane, I want to beg your pardon.  I was rude to you just now.”

“Oh, no!  Oh, no!” the clerk protested.  “That’s all right.  Sit down a while, can’t you, and talk with a fellow.  It’s early, yet.”

“No, I can’t.  I just wanted to say I was sorry I spoke in that way.  Good-night.  Is there anything in particular?”

“No; good-night.  I was just wondering about—­that girl.”

“Oh!”

VI.

Gregory had an habitual severity with his own behavior which did not stop there, but was always passing on to the behavior of others; and his days went by in alternate offence and reparation to those he had to do with.  He had to do chiefly with the dining-room girls, whose susceptibilities were such that they kept about their work bathed in tears or suffused with anger much of the time.  He was not only good-looking but he was a college student, and their feelings were ready to bud toward him in tender efflorescence, but he kept them cropped and blighted by his curt words and impatient manner.  Some of them loved him for the hurts he did them, and some hated him, but all agreed fondly or furiously that he was too cross for anything.  They were mostly young school-mistresses, and whether they were of a soft and amorous make, or of a forbidding temper, they knew enough in spite of their hurts to value a young fellow whose thoughts were not running upon girls all the time.  Women, even in their spring-time, like men to treat them as if they had souls as well as hearts, and it was a saving grace in Gregory that he treated them all, the silliest of them, as if they had souls.  Very likely they responded more with their hearts than with their souls, but they were aware that this was not his fault.

The girls that waited at table saw that he did not distinguish in manner between them and the girls whom they served.  The knot between his brows did not dissolve in the smiling gratitude of the young ladies whom he preceded to their places, and pulled out their chairs for, any more than in the blandishments of a waitress who thanked him for some correction.