It was a fact that the half-back was enormously relieved. But it was a
brutal derisive fact--an unescapable one. He wasn't heart-broken over
the dashing of a suddenly raised hope. He was, in his heart of hearts,
saying, "Thank the Lord!"

If he had been pale before, he was red enough now. He felt ridiculous
and irritable.

"Your husband knows all that a great deal better than I, of course," he
said.

"Yes, of course," Rose was thoughtless enough to admit, "but you see, I
don't want him to know." She flushed a little herself. "It's going to be
a--surprise for him," she said.

"And, after we've got the books," she went on, "I want you to do
something else. He's making an argument in court to-day, and I want to
go and hear him. Only--I'm so ignorant, you see, I don't know how to do
it and I didn't want to tell him I was going. So you're to find out
where the court room is and how to get me in. Now, tell me all about
everything and what's been happening since I went away. I saw you made
the all-American last fall, and meant to write you a note about it, but
I didn't get a chance. That was great!"

But even at this new angle, the talk didn't run smoothly. Because,
precisely as the half-back forgot his terrors and the hopes that had
prompted them, and the absurdity of both--precisely as he began to feel,
after all, that it was a very superb and grown-up thing to be a familiar
friend of a married woman with a limousine and a respectful chauffeur,
and wonderful clothes and an air of taking them all for