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And, Hugo perceived, none of that treatment and none of that society was quite real. He
wondered if his personality was so meager 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.
Hugo had seen her dancing, and her long, slender legs and arms had issued an almost
tangible challenge to him. She had looked over Lefty s shoulder and smiled vaguely. They
had met. Hugo danced with her. I love to come to a prom, she said; it makes me feel
young again.
How old are you?
She ignored the obvious temptation to be coy and he appreciated that.
Twenty-one.
It seemed reasonably old to Hugo. The three years difference in their ages had given
her a pinnacle of maturity.
And that makes you old, he reflected.
She nodded. Her name was Iris. Afterwards Hugo thought that it should have been
Isis. Half goddess, half animal. He had never met with the vanguard of emancipated
American womanhood before then. You re the great Hugo Danner, aren t you? I ve seen
your picture in the sporting sections. She read sporting sections. He had never thought of a
woman in that light. But you re really much handsomer. You have more sex and masculinity
and you seem more intelligent.
Then, between the dances, Lefty had come. She? Oh, she s a sort of cousin. Flies in
all the high altitudes in town. Blue Book and all that. Better look out, Hugo. She plays
rough.
She doesn t look rough.
Both youths watched her. Long, dark hair, willowy body, high, pale forehead, thin
nose, red mouth, smiling like a lewd agnostic and dancing close to her partner, enjoying even
that. Well, look out, Hugo. If she wants to play, don t let ner play with your heart. Anything
else is quite in the books.
Oh.
She came to the stag line, ignoring a sequence of invitations, and asked him to dance.
They went out on the velvet campus. I could love you for a little while, she said. It s too
bad you have to play football to-morrow.
Is that an excuse?
She smiled remotely. You re being disloyal. Her fan moved delicately. But I
shan t chide you. In fact, I ll stay over for the game and I ll enjoy the anticipation more,
perhaps. But you ll have to win it to win me. I m not a soothing type.
It will be easy to win, Hugo said and she peered through the darkness with
admiration, because he had made his ellipsis of the object very plain.
It is always easy for you to win, isn t it? she countered with an easy mockery, and
Hugo shivered.
The game was won. Hugo had made his touchdown. He unfolded a note she had
written on the back of a score card. At my hotel at ten, then.
Then. Some one lifted his eyes to praise him. His senses swam in careful
anticipation. They were cheering outside the dressing-room. A different sound from the
cheers at the fight-arena. Young, hilarious, happy.
At ten he bent over the desk and was told to go to her room. The clerk shrugged. She
opened the door. One light was burning. There was perfume in the air. She wore only a
translucent kimono of pale-colored silk. She taught him a great many things that night. And
Iris learned something, too, so that she never came back to Hugo, and kept the longing for
him as a sort of memory which she made hallowed in a shorn soul. It was, for her, a single
asceticism in a rather selfish life.
Hugo loved her for two weeks after that, and then his emotions wearied and he was
able to see what she had done and why she did not answer his letters. His subdued fierceness
was a vehement fire to women. His fiercer appetite was the cause of his early growth in a
knowledge of them. When most of his companions were finding their way into the mysteries
of sex both unhandily and with much turmoil, he learned well and abnormally. It became a
part of his secret self. Another barrier to the level of the society that surrounded him. When
he changed the name of Iris to Isis in his thoughts, he moved away from the Psi Deltas, who
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