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 office-boy trying to get off to a ball-game. There's a look of almost divine innocence that comes over his face that, once seen, is never forgotten. It's been on every one of your faces for the last ten minutes."

There was a pause, and then Sally Boyd said, in the tone of one who had been wounded almost beyond bearing, "You don't mean that you don't believe us, Mr. Bevans?"

And Miss Curtis at his elbow whispered, "Oh, don't say that you don't—please, please!"

"Sally," said Austin, "the rational part of me, to which you have all addressed your remarks exclusively, knows there isn't a joint in your logical statement. But the subsconscious part of me knows that we haven't yet touched on the real reason why you want to get out of the course, whatever that reason may be."

There was another pause, and then the girls nearest the door began to file quietly out. Miss Curtis was deeply distressed. She felt she had witnessed a painful, an almost indecent scene.

"I know you didn't mean it, Mr. Bevans," she said, "but I'm afraid the girls got the idea that you didn't quite believe their word,