WHITEWASH
he looked at the case impersonally, for the bias lay too deep, was too much a part of himself, for him to realize its presence. He would not admit the possibility of anything but the most angelic sentiments in Philippa. Philosophers have contended that real Platonic affection between man and woman is impossible, yet he admitted to himself that the utter annihilation of all his respect for all his other friends could not grieve him as did this suspicion of meanness in Victoria. She had always stood to him as a type of the "big and white," as his college slang briefly and picturesquely put it. And after all she was only small and spotted like the rest of the world. He felt instinctively that he must read just his valuation of all things.
The stamping of his horses on the wooden floor roused him, and he went to them with his usual slaps and sugar, mounted to the seat of his light runabout and signed his readiness. With the opening of the sliding-doors the friend vanished and the lover came. "When half-gods go, the gods arrive." Victoria the disappointing fled from his mind and made place for Philippa
