While Quincy moved about to hide his deep discomfiture at this set occasion, and to submerge in casualness his qualms as to meeting expectations, Adelaide sat calmly in an armless chair and waited for her brother to subside. She ventured no word. She did not appear to dislike this silence which was so patently wracking him. The truth was that she was forcing herself to bear it. It hurt. But it was the one way, she thought, of testing Quincy’s willingness to be a friend and to be loved. That she might hazard a first step toward a desired consequence with equal right, simply did not occur to Adelaide. She was the sort of girl to whom social initiative was as repugnant as nakedness--and for the self-same reason. The obscure channelings of sex in girls spread it at times so widely from its normal moorings that the remotest mental regions become colored, with the result that some amenities of social life are as impossible for them as a crude, physical aggression. Most girls of this girl’s age and background would have been just so silent and so passive before a man from whom they awaited a proposal. Adelaide hoped for a mere sisterly relation--the privilege of friendship with a brother. Yet, with this seemingly humble dream, her way was that of a girl aroused and wooed. And the reason, although she might never know it, was that within, her condition also was the same. Of course, Quincy did not understand. He saw merely that Adelaide was at her ancient trick of silence and of resenting his--as if the right of silence lay all with her, the need of speaking entirely with him. This, with the set formality of their retiring to her room, and the portrait of Sylvia and an indescribable something that was Adelaide herself, conjoined to complete his mood. It was a mood pathetically different from what Adelaide had hoped for. And this also dawned on Quincy:--that it would have been easier for him had she succeeded. In this mood, silence grew too oppressive and he began to speak. Wonder was small that the girl’s first confession at his words was pain. But from the discord of these two unrhythmed ones--a discord ashamed of itself--came a great pity; and from this at length, a sort of rhythm between them. So talk grew possible, and there was born, slow and unheeded, the boy’s intuition:--that Adelaide was in the ruck and base of life, and that, with her at life’s pinnacle, there had been room there, too, for him. She showed her wish to know about his friends. Quincy spoke of Garsted. “Next time you come to town, why not bring him with you?” “If I knew--” he stopped. “If you knew what?” she asked. She could easily have completed his remark. It had to do with his insecurity at home. He would not care to bring a friend--granted it was allowed--and have himself humiliated before a guest. Garsted had never seemed to understand his rank at home. Garsted told him, in a year college would respect him. And his family had had seventeen years.