“I go into the study. Simson is at the desk--typing a sonnet for the Lit. ‘Oh, good day, Mr. Burt,’ without getting up, ‘and what is there this morning?’ I give him the papers. Without looking at them he signs them. ‘I am convinced, Mr. Burt, they are as they should be.’ There is at least one ‘Mr. Burt’ in every sentence. I am about to leave and a qualm catches him. He smiles and when he smiles his round face breaks into two triangles with the nose as the common base. ‘Does my class satisfy you, Mr. Burt?’ he asks. As the result of that question, he tells the others at the Graduates’ Club how frankly he takes each student into his confidence--asks their advice.” “Yes,” interrupted Garsted, “they despise Deering, but they all imitate him. Well?” “Well--I answer: ‘Mr. Simson, why did we skip _The Miller’s Tale_? I think it is one of the best Chaucer wrote.’ ‘It is good,’ he answers, tapping a finger on his mahogany desk--yes, there’s a huge seal ring on the tapping finger--‘It is good, Mr. Burt, but it’s unpleasant; it is coarse. We must remember that sometimes Chaucer’s surroundings,’ I was sure he was going to say _Mr. Chaucer_, since he despised him too, ‘sometimes Chaucer’s surroundings got the upper hand of his good taste. Despite its matter, that tale is good. For Chaucer was a genius. He could not help making even a licentious story interesting and human.’” Here Garsted roared: “_Even_ a licentious story! The old hypocrite! You know Simson, my dear Quint. You saw his human little eyes and his round lips and his belly--at twenty-seven! Do you think that is his real opinion of a licentious story?” “I know it isn’t,” answered Quincy. “Several of the boys whom he cares for--Society brothers of course--were repeating some of his own jokes. I heard them.” “Ugh--let’s have lunch,” said Garsted. Not alone diffidence held Quincy from calling on the Deerings until late October. His own turmoiled spring and summer had indeed made him unsure of himself toward them and hence unsure of them toward him. It is hard for the man whose sleep has been wracked with dreams to understand the serenity of sleep of the one beside him. So Quincy restrained his impulse to seek out the great man and his wife. He wished, moreover, to adventure a trifle more in the atmosphere of college. He seemed seriously firm and set and steady there. He enjoyed this new sensation. He was afraid lest the Deerings show up its superficial strength. This, of course, was a fear he did not avow to himself. His affairs, his reluctance to seem too pressing in his return sufficed for the admitted reasons. And meanwhile he was able to bask in his new sense of self-dominion. Garsted had grown aware of this. “You’re a different man,” he remarked to him; “you must have had a successful love affair this summer.” “You’re wrong, Simon,” replied Quincy, who was so well over the skirmish with Clarice as not to resent allusion to it. “Then there was a girl. And didn’t you kiss her?”