Julia allowed him to be alone. She demanded nothing. He saw her scarce more often than before. And when they were together, he found her reserved and smiling, with a deep suggestion of confidence and seriousness. All this helped him to a decision. And his decision was: that a great responsibility had come to him. His task must be to add Julia to her husband’s conscious treasures--to his ideals. In all ways, he must help herself to give herself to him. For he was sure that it was his failure to go out toward her, and hers to go out toward him--no more--which caused this state of famine. He did not seek a word for his emotion toward Julia. He admired her intensely; and she was a woman. That sufficed. As a woman, she did not see her husband as fully as did he. And her husband had limitations--in his capacity for living. But fortunately, he was there--he, Quincy, with his mission. He thanked God for it. One night, after long pondering upon his ideal and strong bond with Julia, a strange lust devoured Quincy. In the hands of it he went and spent several hours with a woman whom he had met, liked, but not dreamed before of visiting. The adventure was an empty, dismal failure. And Quincy found more joy in telling Julia about it, than he had felt all of those set, uncomfortable hours. Julia listened with her old, deep smile. “You’re not the sort to do things like that,” she said. And Quincy agreed. He was hungry no more--until the lust next possessed him. Three times, that spring, he went forth that way, joyless, hopeless, brutal all at once after a roseate revery about his friend. And each time, he returned, smiling bitterly at his folly, cured of his possession, yet filled with an acrid will for something which that visit, somehow, had not come near supplying. But after the first occasion, he spoke no more of such things, to Julia. A shame had caught him, which he had not felt at first. There seemed less innocence, now, in talking to her, than there had been. He was beginning--a part of him--to understand. Then, also, there were other storms,--sudden lusts of another stamp that swung him elsewhere away for satisfaction. At such times, he seemed a fool himself, and his task a mockery. “Take her for what she is,” he cried then. “You’ve spun her all over with your ideals. These blind you to her and keep you off from her. What has she to do with the greatness of her husband’s brain? That is one thing. If he, the man, is so sated that he doesn’t need her, the woman--well--” and he would sit there, late at night, in his chair, and strip her lusciously of these ideals he had spun about her; strip her with trembling hands as if it had been her clothes that fell away. And he would strip also himself of his ideals and his aspirations. Until, there they two would stand--naked and shivering, needful of each other’s bodies to be warm.