Before the summer, there were two more tea hours with her. Each of them stood alone. No word uttered at one could ever have been confused with any word uttered at the others. Yet, despite their clearness, they were indissoluble. They lay together in Quincy’s mind as the boundary to a great and vague impression. The vague impression was first; behind, remoter, were these clear visits. As the boy envisaged them, it was as if, before them, Julia Deering had not existed. Instinctively, he accepted this: that before them, she had not existed, although his reason told him otherwise. And of course, his reason did not count. In like fashion, does a primitive people accept a day and an event when the world began. Its reason also, had it been consulted, would have judged otherwise. * * * * * “Why am I interested in the household life of a philosopher? Why do I resent his wife yet dream of her? Why, when I dwell on his perfections, does she seem to mar them? Why, when I let her vision come does his seem to dim? What business are all these things to me? I am a protégé of Professor Deering. Each year, out of the incoming mass, he selects a few like me. I have interested a woman happening to be his wife, who, being an interesting woman, is naturally capable of interest in another. There is nothing more. Yet my mind goes--like fingers picking rags--hoping for a fabulous jewel; tremulously. What is wrong with me?” These questions Quincy put to himself, as the sun mellowed and the spring burst forth from the brown earth and the haggard trees. Quincy took them with him on his country runs. The ground was damp with moisture. Maple buttons stood on the long twigs. And as he ran or sauntered or reclined on a dry rock, garlanded in the shoots of little elms and oaks, the question rounded like a fist, hardened and struck him silent. All of that spring this phenomenon was repeated. There would sprawl the questions, pricking or stroking him--no more. Suddenly, a vital force would encompass, then compress them. They would become a fist and strike him. He would startle, resist, give way. And then, as suddenly, the fist would once more disintegrate. Again, there would be relaxation until the following blow. All of that spring, moreover, there was no conclusion. Certain things were plain enough. Professor Deering was the greatest man in the world. His friendship was priceless. But Julia Deering was the first woman in the world willing to consort with him. Was that less a treasure? And why should it be? Why did some sickly sense within him tell him of a conflict between these two possessions? He had a mind; he had a soul. Did these two possessions menace one another? Perhaps that explained the mist about the two new human elements. But with all this, the boy’s head hurt. And his mind helped him out, through some centrifugal tangent.