The boy stopped her. He took her angrily and bent her backward, until her face was under his. “If you behave like that, I’ll kiss you again!” He kissed her--savagely. And Clarice, as before, lay there in his arms, almost unheeding. He kissed her again--tenderly. And then, he looked at her. The lips were parted and moist. Her spirit seemed slumbering beneath a covert. Only her mouth was a taste of it. Her eyes were meaningless. She was not beautiful after all. He set her up once more upon her balance. “You have promised me now--to let me see you next Christmas?” Clarice straightened herself. “I have done nothing of the sort.” She spoke with a wrinkle of her forehead and her kissed mouth dryly puckered. “Next Christmas--” she paused and tilted her head vaguely up with a distant look, “Next Christmas--who knows?” “Then why,” said the angry boy, as he followed after her, “then why did you let me kiss you?” This time, Clarice stopped. “Are you sorry?” she asked. “I most certainly am!” burst from him. Unscathed, Clarice shrugged her shoulders. They walked to her home, in silence. “Good-bye,” said she. “Good-bye,” said Quincy. X College once more. It had the busy serenity of a bee hive. Its murmurous exclusiveness went against the vision of an outer world as a rebuke and a rebuff. But within the compact regions of honey and smug larvæ and pompous leaders, for those who were not really of it, however deeply in it, there was the quality of the sting. Quincy came back, moved and settled within new chambers, and looked about him. A sophomore. The heir, that meant, of the hum and the comb and the autonomy--laden with the equally strict traditions to enjoy these and to perpetuate them. A generation of larvæ lay, already, cuddled underneath him. And without, there was the world to which no visit must be dreamed of, no glance directed, save as a place of furnishing and fodder for the hive. All of it stretched out, a mere subsidiary. Its flowers were servants, its fertility was impost to the hive. In it, as in his home, were cloying and shutting-out and a sting. These were the first impressions. They came without bidding. But Quincy was resolved not to be satisfied with such. He went forth, therefore, to look about him. Perhaps his new instructor in English helped him as much as anything to bearings. His name was Egbert Simson. He was a graduate of the college. He had won honors in all the possible fields of it. He had won his letter in track; he had served on the college monthly; he had led his class in scholarship and presided over the college branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association, He was a perfect man. And now, he was a member of the faculty. In a year, he would have his doctor’s thesis. In five years, he would be grappling toward a professorship. In ten years, he would publish an edition of the Poems of Suckling. All his life he would continue humming and honey-gathering for the hive.