And suddenly everything--class-mates, president,
roaring voices--died away. There was just one thing on earth.
In the doorway, in the group behind the president, a girl stood
with her head against the wall and cried as if her heart would
break. Cried frankly, openly, mopping away tears with a
whole-hearted pocket-handkerchief, and cried more to mop away.
As if there were no afternoon tea, no mob of Yale men in the streets,
no world full of people who might, if they pleased, see those tears and
understand. The girl. Herself. Crying. In a flash, by the
light of the happiness that was overwhelming, he found this other
happiness. He understood. The mad idea which had come back and back
to him out there in the West, which he had put down firmly, the idea
that she had cared too much and not too little on that Tap Day four
years ago--that idea was true. She did care. She cared still.
He knew it without a doubt. He sat on the men's shoulders in his
ridiculous clothes, and the heavens opened. Then the tumult and the
shouting died and they let the hero down, and to the rapid succession
of strong emotions came as a relief another emotion--enthusiasm.
They were cheering the president, on the point of bursting
themselves into fragments to do it, it seemed.
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