Professor Deering was caught up by this rebuke. For he knew that they were not going out. Soon, he left them. “That was a lie--about our going out,” she said, at once, “But I am not sure, Quincy, that you quite deserve to dine, at present, at the Professor’s table.” With this twist of her two-edged sword, she let him go. It was all plain enough to Quincy now. His ignoring both sides had been ignorance. And ignorance meant weakness. The finger-feeling stage was dead. Down this new slope, events continued until March. He did not return to her. He saw the Professor only casually. But the sight of either was unnecessary. There was progress without them. The conflict was really on. The boy lumbered out his musty weapons of ideals, groaningly shouldered them and so fell to, against the seething, searing inroads of the enemy. Of course, of all this there could be no word with Garsted. Quincy was inarticulate enough by nature, of his realities. But to talk of a deep thing that was still chaos in him was impossible. For silence, he did not have to lean on an ideal of chivalry. The stoppage caused by his other ideals sufficed for that. So the boy withdrew utterly. He was alone. And this he felt with a twinge of self-commiseration. His friend, also, felt something. “My dear Quint,” he said, “you are become like a sounding cave--which gives forth from its mouth only a lugubrious counterpart of what is spoken to it.” “Talk sense, Simon.” Quincy was at his desk, doing a page of Cicero’s immortal tract _On Friendship_. His coat was on the floor near a chair where he had meant to throw it. He wore a plain white shirt with a soft collar. His chest and shoulders ridged fluently. He looked strong and at ease. Garsted sprawled, head up, mouth open, on the window seat. One leg lay high over the other knee. He was smoking a pipe. “All right,” he said; “--what the devil’s wrong?” “Nothing, old man.” “Now you’ve delivered yourself of the conventional denial, dispense with the conventional ten pages of hesitation and come to the avowal.” “I am not a character in a novel.” Quincy was incensed. “You don’t talk enough to be a character in a play.” “I’ll say anything you want. Only you’ve got to tell me what it is you want.” Quincy went ahead gingerly, for he felt his guilt. Garsted rolled over to face him, on his cushioned window-seat. “Very well,” he said, “first of all--close your book.” The boy complied. “Now listen. We are going to reverse the order of examination. I shall tell you your symptoms. And you shall tell _me_ what they mean.”