But I gather that Kate Dashaway was the kind
of girl who might have made a fit mate even for the sort
of intellectual giant that flourished at Mr. Sims's college.
She was not only beautiful. All the girls remembered by
Mr. Sims were that. But she was in addition "a good head"
and "a good sport," two of the highest qualities that, in
Mr. Sims's view, can crown the female sex. She had, he
said, no "nonsense" about her, by which term Mr. Sims
indicated religion. She drank lager beer, played tennis as
well as any man in the college, and smoked cigarettes a
whole generation in advance of the age.
Mr. Sims, so I gather, never proposed to her, nor came
within a measurable distance of doing so. A man so prone,
as is my friend, to spend his time in modest admiration
of the prowess of others is apt to lag behind. Miss
Dashaway remains to Mr. Sims, as all else does, a retrospect
and a regret.
But the chief peculiarities of the old gang--as they
exist in the mind of Mr. Sims--is the awful fate that
has overwhelmed them. It is not merely that they are
scattered to the four corners of the continent. That
might have been expected. But, apparently, the most awful
moral ruin has fallen upon them.
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