A list.... The other evening, when Tom had had a headache, David had gone around smoking and whistling. Did David recall the time Tom had brought _him_ his dinner? And the pique of David because Tom could not join him and Cornelia on some insignificant walk. As if Tom had broken a tryst. How David had his silences for a week, because of things like that. Did David perhaps remember how he had honored Tom’s desire to see him on his return from his vacation? honored it by dragging a dull outsider along for dinner. Let David think of himself wiring so to Tom. Perhaps he thought Tom’s silence meant he was not hurt that time when he broke their theater date because he had forgotten it was Lois’ birthday.... “But you said you could easily find some one else.” “Yes, David. I am not like you. I was afraid, if I made it hard for you, I might spoil your evening. I put you at ease. The truth is, the tickets went to waste. Yes, both of them. I had set my mind on that evening belonging to us. Do you think I cared most about seeing Annie Russell? I did not choose to go with some one else, on the occasion when I had chosen to go with you. That night, if you want to know, I sat in the Library of the Bar Association and read law. It was not my sense of justice to spoil your evening which you had chosen to spend with your cousin Lois, because you had chosen to spoil mine.” “You know that isn’t fair! You know I went to the Deanes, because I had to. Out of a sense of duty.” “You have a sense of duty toward your frivolous cousins; none toward your friend. I admire your distinctions.” “But, Tom, they would all have been insulted!” “Whether I was insulted had no importance....” So it went. David was inexorably and forever in the wrong. “Your cousins, your uncle, your aunt. I am to judge you care more for them than for me. They mean more to you. Doubtless their ideas, also.” He flayed David’s smugness: his cowardice: his failure to grow up. David’s sentiment was perfunctory: his sensibilities were dull: he had no recognition of what was going on in the minds and hearts of those who should have been dear to him. Loving meant taking. Tom flung him dolorously down to a level with that cousin whose company he had preferred and loyalty to whom, as against Tom, he had elected. David followed by the side of his tormentor, as by the side of fate.... Near where they lived was a little Square. It lay blue beneath the green haze of the lamplights. It was timid there under the sweep of the City. The buildings and the high flare of movement over the night made it deep like a well. Tom and David paced round it. Their steps were harsh to David as if in dissonance to the Square’s sweet reticence. They knew they must have this out ere they passed through the door.