Now, Quincy was silent. Adelaide blushed for him, in his emotion. “I--I’ll see to it, he has a nice time. You know, we can take him to the theatres. Dad isn’t stingy about the money.” “No, but Mama is.” “We’ll get the money from Dad.” Quincy had found a stiff position in a chair--across the room from Adelaide. Now he arose. “Adelaide! That isn’t everything,” he rebuked her. At least, Adelaide felt rebuked;--as if she had not known! as if it had not been delicacy that made her also waive the issue! “Quincy--don’t get angry with me.” “I’m not!” Once more, he picked up a book from the table near which, as if unconsciously for help, he had found his seat. It was a folio volume with colored pictures. They really interested him. So he turned them over, one by one. “If you’re not going to talk with me, Quincy--” He placed away the book at once. And they began afresh. Another remark opened the problem of the track-team. By now, something was tiring deep down in them. Each of these failures in rapport made the new effort wearier. But on they struggled, with a heroism that was the more poignant for its hopeless inarticulation. Quincy’s attempt to explain about the track-team suffered from an earlier behavior of the others. This subject had come up, the first evening at dinner. Suddenly, he had seen the expression about the soft mouth of Jonas that had been there in the old days when his one-time idol placed a captured fly in a spider-web. And Jonas had said, knowing already: “You did not make a fraternity, did you?” The expression had stung. “I would have, if I’d wanted to stay on the track-team.” This was beyond Jonas’ comprehension. “If you’d _wanted_ to?” he sneered. And the conversation changed before a saving word from Adelaide. For Adelaide had noticed. And now, in Quincy’s rigid manner, she knew that she was suffering for Jonas. Adelaide knew much. But her mind lacked a motor. And so hampered, it could not reach those increments which are the flower of knowledge. Quincy recalled her saving him. He deemed her act the result of mercy, of pity--as if she shared Jonas’ incredulity but lacked his wish to make him suffer. “I just didn’t wish to bind myself. Lots of men in college thought I was right. That’s how I got to know Garsted.” He began gropingly and ended in a hurry. “Don’t you think, perhaps, it was wrong to antagonize your class?” “I do not. Damn the class.” “Well, then you were right, if you think that way about it. But then--but then, you can scarcely blame the fraternities.” “And who blamed ’em?” cried Quincy. Of course, it was Adelaide who blamed them. She was about to say so. But evidently, from his outburst, her next step must be to concur in his refusal to. “Of course,” she smiled, “I don’t blame them. Who cares?” There was a pause. Adelaide got up, came to his side: “Well, _I_ love you, Quincy dear.”