For Hugh the vacation came and went with a
rush. It was glorious to get home again, glorious
to see his father and mother, and, at first, glorious
to see Helen Simpson. But Helen had begun to
pall; her kisses hardly compensated for her conver¬
sation. She gave him a little feeling of guilt, too,
which he tried to argue away. “Kissing is n’t really
wrong. Everybody pets; at least, Carl says they
do. Helen likes it but . . .” Always that “but”
intruded itself. “But it does n’t seem quite right
when—I don’t really love her.” When he kissed
her for the last time before returning to college, he
had a distinct feeling of relief: well, that would be
off his mind for a while, anyway.
It was a sober, quiet crowd of students—for the first time they were students—that returned to their desks after the vacation. The final examinations were ahead of them, less than a month away; and those examinations hung over their heads like the relentless, glittering blade of a guillotine. The boys studied. “College life” ceased; there was a brief period of education.
Of course, they did not desert the movies, and the snoW and ice claimed them. Part of Indian Lake was scraped free of snow, and every clear aft¬ ernoon hundreds of boys skated happily, explain¬ ing afterward that they had to have some exercise if they were going to be able to study. On those afternoons the lake was a pretty sight, zestful, alive
