The little man ran to shake Hugo’s hand, but it was extended for another reason. “I want that fifty you won,” he said unsmilingly. “When a bird tracks along for a free feed and lets another guy fight for him and has a roll big enough to stop up a rainspout, he owes money. That lunch will set you back just exactly what you won on me.”

There was laughter in the room. Izzie whimpered. “Ain’t you got a hundred all ready that I got for you? Ain’t it enough that you got it? Ain’t I got a wife wit’ kids yet?”

“No, it ain’t, yet.” Hugo snapped the fingers of his extended hand. The other hand doubled significantly. Izzie gave him the money. He was almost in tears. The others guffawed.

“Wait up, bo. Give us your address if you ever change your mind. You can pick up a nice livin’ in this game.”

“No, thanks. All I needed was railroad fare. Thank you, gentlemen—and—good-by.”

No one undertook to hinder Hugo’s departure.

VIII

Greatness seemed to elude Hugo, success such as he had earned was inadequate, and his friendships as well as his popularity were tinged with a sort of question that he never understood. By the end of winter he was well established in Webster as a great athlete. Psi Delta sang his praises and was envied his deeds. Lefty and Chuck treated him as a brother. And, Hugo perceived, none of that treatment and none of that society was quite real. He wondered if his personality was so meagre that it was not equal to his strength. He wondered if his strength was really the asset he had dreamed it would be, and if, perhaps, other people were not different from him in every way, so that any close human contact was impossible to him.

It was a rather tragic question to absorb a man so filled with life and ambition as he. Yet every month had raised it more insistently. He saw other men sharing their inmost souls and he could never do that. He saw those around him breaking their hearts and their lungs for the university, and, although it was never necessary for him to do that, he doubted that he could if he would. Webster was only a school. A sentiment rather than an ideal, a place rather than a goal of dreams. He thought that he was cynical. He thought that he was inhuman. It worried him.

His love was a similar experience. He fell in love twice during that first year in college. Once at a prom with a girl who was related to Lefty—a rich, socially secure girl who had studied abroad and who almost patronized her cousin.