There, this was the second time, Edgar thought, flushing with anger, that his mother had so horridly tried to make him look small in front of his friend. Why did she do it? Why did she always want to set him down as a child when, he was convinced, he was no longer a child? Evidently she was jealous of his friend and was planning to get him all to herself. Yes, that was it, and it was she who had purposely led the baron the wrong way. But he wouldn't let her treat him like that again, he'd show her. He was going to be spiteful, he wasn't going to say a word to her at table, and he would speak only to his friend. However, it was not so easy to keep quiet as he thought it would be. Things went in a most unanticipated way. Neither his mother nor the baron noticed his attitude of spitefulness. Why, they did not even pay the slightest attention to him, who, the day before, had been the medium of their coming together. They talked over his head and laughed and joked as though he had disappeared under the table. His blood mounted to his head and a lump came into his throat. A horrid sense of his impotence overwhelmed him. Was it his doom to sit there quietly and look on while his mother stole away from him his friend, the one man he loved, while he, Edgar, made no movement in self-defence and used no other weapon than silence? He felt as though he must get up and pound the table with his clenched fists, just to make them take notice of him. But he restrained himself and merely put down his knife and fork and stopped eating. Even this it was a long time before they observed. It was not until the last course that his mother became conscious that he had not tasted his food and asked him if he were not feeling well. "Disgusting," he thought. "That's all she ever thinks of, whether I'm sick or not. Nothing else about me seems to matter to her." He told her shortly that he wasn't hungry, which quite satisfied her. Nothing, absolutely nothing forced them to pay attention to him. The baron seemed to have forgotten him completely, at least he never addressed a single remark to him. His eyeballs were getting hot with suppressed tears, and finally he had to resort to the childlike device of raising his napkin like a screen to hide the traitorous drops that rolled down his cheeks and salted his lips. When the meal finally came to an end, he drew a sigh of relief. During the meal his mother had proposed a drive to an interesting spot in the neighborhood and Edgar had listened with his lips between his teeth. So she was not going to allow him a single moment alone with his friend any more. But now, as they got up from table, came something even worse, and Edgar's anger went over into a fury of hate. "Edgar," said his mother, "you'll be forgetting everything you learned at school. You had better stay here this afternoon while we're out driving and do a little studying."