“I did.” “What did I tell you?” “Is that success?” asked Quincy. “Rake!” Garsted misunderstood him. And Quincy blushed. Here again, it was impossible to go farther even with his dearest friend. But at length, one evening, the need of going to the little box-frame house came over Quincy. It was at dinner. There had been six weeks in which to go; yet he had not gone. And now, it seemed imperative that he must go--and that he must, at once. He rushed through his meal, half eating it. He ate his slice of beef, neglected the vegetables and then, when it was too late, found himself still hungry and gulped two cups of coffee whose heat displeased him. A great worry gripped him--lest they be out--or the evening inopportune. He might telephone; no, he did not dare to. He might wait until a surer time; no, he was not able to. He must go, this night. And if the evening was ill, so would be the omen. Was it that of a sudden, his new impression of college was digested and fresh food craved,--that, psychically, he had been released once more for living, now that the state of dormancy (called strength) was over? Howbeit, Quincy went. He found the Professor and his wife alone and ready to receive him. And when, at eleven, he returned campus-ward through the crisp shadows, the impression of the six fresh weeks came at length to a formed consciousness within him. In this way was that evening a peak whence he was able to look back upon the path he had just come, and forward upon the path ahead. And from its relative height, both paths were new and clear before him. Even so, as the climber stands upon an eminence does he descry for the first time the way that he has taken and view that past with the same eye of interest wherewith he peers into the future. It was as if the boys, his classmates, stepped outward from their general hum, disintegrated and took on a clear dimension. He saw them now as a seed that the wind would scatter. He felt them as plants that a varied, self-sufficient soil would wrench to its own uses. He knew the blindness of the seed and the planned frailty of this little circled harbor holding it up for the air’s sowing. He respected everything save the boys’ pretensions, save the false eternity of the fragile harbor. He saw the bloomless death that there would be, were these pretensions even tinged with the truth. He wondered at the need of these pretensions. He despised the powers--the faculty--that bred them in order to slough over their own crass sterility.