Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/111

 "Is that so?" Well, he looks as though he might have had all sorts of experiences in his younger days. I shouldn't be surprised to hear that he had killed his man once upon a time. Maybe that's the reason he's so silent and mysterious. Remorse."

This is the way they talked about him in Freshman year. They elected him class president in the spring.

But time and familiarity gradually wore off all the imagined things, and, as with all heroes when seen within touching distance and without the glass of romance, he was found to be about as full of human nature as the rest of us. He was a man of maturity and character, a staunch friend, a good fellow to go to for advice, "a decent enough sort of chap, to be sure, but"—well, for instance, they discovered that he had been silent and inscrutable at first not because thinking great mysterious thoughts, but because, as in the case of most "reserved" people, he couldn't talk. He had been somewhat abashed and ill at ease, at a loss