"You have a fundamental lack of acquaintance with Latin grammar, Miss--Miss Fifi. You badly need--" "Why don't you call me Fifi, Mr. Queed? That's what all my friends call me." He stared at her startled; she thought his eyes looked almost terrified. "My dear young lady! _I'm_ not your friend." A rare color sprang into Fifi's pallid cheeks: "I--I thought you liked me--from your being so good about helping me with my lessons--and everything." Queed cleared his throat. "I do like you--in a way. Yes--in that way--I like you very well. I will call you F--Fifi, if you wish. But--friends! Oh, no! They take up more time than such a man as I can afford." "I don't think I would take up one bit more time as your friend than I do now," said Fifi, in a plaintive voice. Queed, uncomfortably aware of the flying minutes, felt like saying that that was impossible. "Oh, I know what I'm talking about, I assure you," said the possessor of two friends in New York. "I have threshed the whole question out in a practical way." "Suppose," said Fifi, "your book came out and you were very famous, but all alone in the world, without a friend. And you died and there was not one single person to cry and miss you--would you think that was a--a successful life?" "Oh, I suppose so! Yes, yes!" "But don't--don't you want to have people like you and be your friend?" "My dear young lady, it is not a question of what I want. I was not put here in the world to frivol through a life of gross pleasure. I have serious work to do in the service of humankind, and I can do it only by rigid concentration and ruthless elimination of the unessential. Surely you can grasp that?" "But--if you died to-morrow," said Fifi, fearfully fascinated by this aspect of the young man's majestic isolation,--"don't you know of anybody who'd be really and truly sorry?" "Really, I've never thought of it, but doubtless my two friends in New York would be sorry after their fashion. They, I believe, are all." "No they aren't! There's somebody else!" Queed supposed she was going to say God, but he dutifully inquired, "Who?" Fifi looked decidedly disappointed. "I thought you knew," she said, gazing at him with childlike directness. "Me." Queed's eyes fell. There was a brief silence. The young man became aware of a curious sensation in his chest which he did not understand in the least, but which he was not prepared to describe as objectionable. To pass over it, and to bring the conversation to an immediate close, he rapped the open book austerely with his pencil. "We must proceed with the difficulties. Let me hear you try the passage. Come! _Quam ob rem, Quirites_...." The nine o'clock difficulties proceeded with, and duly cleared up, Fifi did not stay for the second, or 9.45, interlude. She closed _M.T. Ciceronis Orationes Selectæ_, gathered together her other paraphernalia, and then she said suddenly:-- "I may leave school next week, Mr. Queed. I--don't think I'm going to graduate."