Quincy said little in response. The woman smiled at his silence and his lack of judgment. “I must go now.” He suddenly jumped up. She also rose. She came beside him. And the mist of her bodice came over him afresh. “Do--if you wish to,” she said, quite close to him. He moved toward the door. “Good-bye,” she stopped him. Her tone had the lilt of two rhythms intertwined--a conversational happiness and a pathetic fatalism forcing it. She held out her hand. Quincy grasped it. It was soft at the first touch, and then, in the ensuing instant, fearfully strong and masterful. After that, he was in his rooms. He was unconscious of having walked there. Here, then, was Quincy face to face with a problem. For what Julia Deering, saying no thing, had given him to know was that her married life had been an endless failure and that, within the great man, was a limited creature--not cruelly so, not deliberately so, of course--but yet a creature who could deny and crush and misunderstand another! His room, waiting for him, as he entered it, had the air and nature of a mighty list. There was naught to do but to step up and prepare for battle. The pictures on the walls, the books he loved in their racks, the letter he had just received from Adelaide, the bed in the alcove--everything alive there, seemed tense and expectant, concentrated on him. He had read of ancient tournaments. Here was his gallery, looming about him, with intricate weavings of smile and scowl, a mass of emotional tangents; yet unisoned all in the word it spoke: “We watch you, now. It is your turn.” * * * * * The first phase of the conflict lasted two weeks. It began largely with cautious measurings of mount and lance. And of course, these gained nothing. They were signs of a deep reluctance for a clash--finger-feelings and toe-feelings where the truth called for blood and body. They measured nothing. Out of this phase, Quincy emerged, equally undoubting of Julia’s truthfulness and of Professor Deering’s greatness. And a new discretion was born in him. Why should he endeavor to solve this problem? What was it to him? He could not help. He would be broad--and ignore both sides. In this serene state, he went back to the box-frame house. “I am afraid,” she said to him, “from the way you acted, you may have misunderstood my words. I was mistaken to talk to you at all. Some of you is so old--but the conscious part of you is so very young!” Quincy protested that he was inimitably broad--broad enough to ignore both sides. These were of course not his words. But Julia also was receiving, now, not what he spoke but what he gave her to know. They changed the subject. They talked of books and of music. She was her old commanding self. He understood what this meant: that she once more despised him. The Professor entered. “Hello! Hello!” he cried. “Stay to supper, Mr. Burt. Can he, Julia?” “Why, Lawrence,--we’re going out.”