"I can't take her myself, of course, and she hates to go alone. And I thought since you have two tickets and no girl"
"Sure, Brad." (No, not necessarily; she hadn't told him anything about her life. There was that man with whom she had talked so long in the restaurant—could it be that he—oh, but no! A thousand no's! And yet)
Once alone in his room at the fraternity house Jock read and reread Yvonne's message a score of times. It left him more bewildered than ever. He could neither imagine her married nor subject to parental discipline. Yet who but a parent or a husband could say "You cannot go," and be obeyed? Perhaps a lover? Thought unthinkable! Jock devised within his mind a hundred reasons why it was not a lover, each one of them emanating from his heart-felt desire to believe that it was not. . . . Eventually he hit upon a solution that pleased him; perhaps she did some work of some sort, and her employer had forbidden her departure. Perhaps she was on the stage (those theatrical photographs on her walls!) and could not miss the Saturday performances. The more he mulled this over the most plausible he made it seem, and it relieved him. Anything that dispelled the fear that she might be married or—or anything, would have relieved him. Mingled with his relief came the belated realization that he wasn't going to see her this weekend after all, smiting him like a pain. He had not known quite how much it meant to him. And hard on the heels of this, the memory of Brad's suggestion that he take Eunice to the game and his own unthinking agreement. . . . He spent the rest of the day in a state of deep depression.
