“Here—I say, Dink! What the devil!”
He reached the center of the campus before he stopped. He had quite lost control of himself; he knew what he would say, and he didn’t care. Suddenly he recalled where Reynolds roomed, and went hotfoot for Vanderbilt, with a fierce physical longing to be provoked into a fight.
He arrived at the door breathlessly, a lump in his throat, never considering the chances of finding them out.
Le Baron and Reynolds were before the fireplace in a determined argument. He shut the door behind him, and leaned against it, digging his nails into his hands with the effort to master his voice.
The two juniors, struck by the violence of his entrance, turned abruptly, and Le Baron, a little pale, started forward, saying:
“I say, Dink—”
“Look here,” he cried, flinging out a hand for silence, “I don’t know why I didn’t say it to you there—when you spoke to me. I don’t know. I’m a low-livered coward and a skunk because I didn’t! But I know now what I’m going to say, and I’ll say it. You came to me, you dared to come to me and tell me what I was to do—to heel—that’s what you meant; to cut out fellows I know and respect—oh, you didn’t have the courage to say it out, but that’s it. Well, now, I’ve just got one thing to say to you both. If this is what your society business means, if this is your idea of democracy—I’m through with you—”
“Hold up,” said Le Baron, springing forward.
“I won’t hold up,” said Stover, beside himself, “for you or for anyone else, or whatever you can do against me! Here’s my answer—I’m through! You and the whole society can go plumb to Hell!”
And suffocating, choking, blinded with his fury, he thrust his hand into his breast, and tore from his shirt the pin he had been given to wear, and flung it on the floor, stamped upon it, and bolted from the room.
XX
For an hour, bareheaded, he went plunging into the darkness, a prey to a nervous crisis, that left him shaking in every muscle. He knew the extent of his passions, and the anger which had swept over him left him weak and frightened.
“It’s lucky that runt of a Reynolds held his tongue,” he said hotly. “By the Lord, I don’t know what I would have done to him. Here, I must get hold of myself. This is terrible. Well, thank Heaven, it’s over.”
He controlled himself slowly, and came back, limp and weak; yet beyond the physical reaction was a liberated soaring of the spirit.
“I’m glad I did it! I never was gladder!” he said solemnly. “Goodbye to the whole society game, Skull and Bones, and all the rest. But I take my stand from now on, and I stand on my own feet. I’m glad of it.” Then he thought of Jean Story, and he was troubled. “I wonder if she’ll understand? I can’t help it. I couldn’t do anything else. Now, I suppose the whole bunch will turn on me. So be it.”
It was long after midnight when he came back gloomily to the light still staring from his window, and toiled up the heavy steps. When he entered the room, Le Baron, Bob Story, and Joe Hungerford were sitting silently, waiting for him, and in Story’s hand was the pin bruised by his furious heel.
He saw at once the full strength of the appeal that was to be made to him, and he closed the door wearily.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said slowly. “The whole thing is done and buried.”
Bob Story, agitated and solemn, came to him.
“Dink, this is awful—the whole thing is awful,” he said earnestly. “You’ve got to talk it out with us.”
“Do you understand, Bob,” Stover said suddenly, “just what happened in this room?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Dink, I want you to listen to me a moment,” said Le Baron. “It’s been rotten business, the whole wretched thing. I can understand how you felt. Reynolds and you got on each other’s nerves. You each said what you didn’t mean. It was damned unfortunate. He put things to you like a fool, and I was telling him so when you broke into the room. He was all up on edge from something that had gone before.”
“Oh, I lost my temper,” said Stover. “I know it.”
“I’d have done the same,” said Hungerford openly.
“Now, Dink, there isn’t one of us here that doesn’t like you, and look up to you,” said Story, with his irresistible charm. “We know you’re every inch a man, and what you do you believe in. But, Dink, we’re all friends together, and this is a terrible thing to us. We want you to take back your pin, and shut up this whole business. Will you?”
“I’d do a great deal for you, Bob Story,” said Stover, looking him in the eyes, “more than for anyone else, but I can’t do this.”
He said it calmly, with a little sadness. The three were impressed with the finality of the judgment. Story, standing with the cast-off pin in his hand, turning and twisting it, said slowly:
“Dink, do you really mean it?”
“I do.”
“It’s a serious thing you’re doing, Stover,” said Le Baron, with the first touch of formality, “and I don’t think it should be done in anger.”
“I’m not.”
“Remember that you are judging a whole society—your own friends—by what one man happened to say to you in a moment of irritation.”
“I don’t want to talk of what’s done,” said Stover slowly, for his head was throbbing. “I know
