It had been hard to leave the comfortable Deanes because they were so good to him and made him welcome and made him feel that he was theirs. It was a little easier to go, because of Lois. She held him suffering near to her, with her lips turned away. But the real reason of his going was a hidden spring that David could not name. He knew vaguely his going had to do with this same comfort which made his going hard. One quality held him, drove him. There was much to ponder in this, since, had he but known it, there was much of David in this. He needed to move on. He found reasons for his impulse, worthy reasons that his aunt and uncle were the first to admire. One morning in the mountains, sudden, he listened to his words: “Aunt and Uncle,” he said, “don’t you think I will be training better for an independent life if I learn to do without your dear hospitality?” A ponderous sentence. It emptied David whose native tongue was rounded, poetic, simple. He stood ponderous and awkward like it, above his uncle. Mr. Deane was in white flannels and a blazer coat that was almost unheard-of in America and had come blushing from London. It was red and yellow and purple: striped it was and flaring in front so as to leave way for the hospitable stomach. Mr. Deane sat curling his legs and peacefully tasting his cigar. One difference in Mr. Deane on a vacation was his less unnerved way with his cigars. In the City he chewed them, in the country he smoked them. Mr. Deane was altogether a more delightful and more generous person. His little blue eyes looked larger as if they were more alive: his cheeks hung less heavy: his sparse hair was less awry. In particular, his voice was different, what he said. It came in less hectic bursts, less flurries of sudden release. His voice was almost an easy monotone. He could speak more on a single subject without wandering or strutting away. He could find more subjects on which to speak. In the City any family discussion left him somehow outside, though he himself had started it. His eyes stared away, he retired, he became abstracted. Soon he was forgotten. He sat there at the table, chewing his cigar, glassily looking inward. His brow furrowed moistly, his cheek-jowls had pleats like an old dog’s.... But this Mr. Deane was alert and full of jests. Each afternoon, he trudged forth with Lois and David, grunting along a tree-swooned road to a distant woody place where he might ply them with candies and tea. He appeared in the morning, a racket in hand: “Well, young man, are you ready to be beaten?” And since David was a beginner at tennis, his uncle whipped him. He twisted his body into intricate designs, he served a high slow ball, surged forward with racket _en couche_ like a spear or _en garde_ like a shield. He laughed when Lois laughed from her bench, was happy in his 6-4 victory over David--far more happy, it seemed to David, than any business success had made him in the City.