The singing-class would have given him good-bye in a special session; but his eyes were now on brighter matters and the vocalizing Gertrudes and Adeles were dim. He got out of it. Besides, the affair might come to involve something like ceremony; and he was always desirous of avoiding (save in the arts) the ceremonial side of life. When he came back from his first sojourn on the Continent he was a young man of mark, as things went in our particular town and time; or, rather, he might have been such, had he but chosen. The family fortunes were then merely at the stage of worry and still far from that of impending disaster. Raymond came back with money, position, and a certain aureole of personal distinction--just the sort of young man who would be asked to act as usher at a wedding. He _was_ asked repeatedly; but he never acted, and his excuses and subterfuges for avoiding such a service almost became one of the comedies of the day. He had no relish for seeing himself walking ceremonially up a church aisle under the eyes of hundreds, and I knew better than to ask him to walk up any aisle for me. He never did the thing but once, and that was under the inescapable compulsion of his fiancee--who, for her part, insisted on eyes and plenty of them. A man may never cease to be astonished at the workings of feminine preferences on such an occasion, but can hardly escape accommodating himself to them. Gertrudes are Gertrudes. But the wedding is years ahead, while the departure for Europe is imminent. Raymond had a tepid, awkward parting with his mother, whose headaches would not allow her to go to the train; and he shook hands rather coldly and constrainedly with his father, who would have welcomed, as I guess, some slight show of filial warmth, and he threw an embarrassedly facetious word to me about the weight of his portmanteau, and so was off. And it was years, rather than months, before he came back. PART III I While Raymond was taking his course abroad, Johnny McComas was shaping his course at home. A colorless, unbiased statement--as it was meant to be; one which, despite the slight difference between "taking" and "shaping," has no slant and displays no animus. Colorless, yes; too colorless, perhaps you will object. If so, I will reword the matter. While Raymond, then, was in Europe cultivating his gentler faculties, Johnny remained in America, strengthening certain specific powers. Or, again: while Raymond was preparing, or so he thought, for a desirably decorative place in the "world" (the world at large), Johnny was qualifying himself, as he felt sure, for an important and remunerative position in that particular section of the world to which he had decided to confine his endeavors. And if you ask me, after I have colored a colorless statement, to bias an unbiased one, I shall refuse. I am not taking sides. Each of them was following his own likings--not the worst of rules for a growing and avid organism.