He was aware that none of the eager spring of a new year was in his body as he marched up the main street of the college town. He was aware that he was apathetic and dull of eye. But the full force of what had caused this, he had not gauged. As he looked back upon the element of his family, it seemed to him, even, that it had helped. It had supplied the tang of sweet retribution in this fact, that he, so generally of no account, nourished a life within him more marvelous than anything his family had dreamed. As ever, Adelaide sought him and groped for him and failed. As ever Quincy felt the need of what she had to give yet ignored the conduit to her. For Adelaide knew there was something. She saw him bowed down with a new suffering and dazed with some still more perilous splendor. But her incessant efforts to share and help merely heightened his distress. With his mother, it was different. Sarah saw nothing, understood nothing. And now, when she lectured him upon his need of growing up and of preparing for responsibilities which, luckily, he did not as yet possess, it was delicious for him to smile and know and in silence suffer her misapprehension. For now, at last, he seemed to have a proof which he had always craved--of her injustice. What had hurt before was the insidious fear that she was right. Now, in his great secret, did he not know her wrong? So, the mixed element of family had not seemed unbearable. For Quincy could not know that his perverse delight in watching his mother, by her words, tear down her hold in him was far more ruinous to his composure than the pain of failure to help Adelaide build up hers. By permitting his mother to act counter to her primal place in his emotions, he was merely tangling and maiming them. This rational proof of her disharmony could distress him. But it could not touch her hold. It could serve merely to make it a less bearable, but not less real thing. Here then, was college, once more--the callous theater in which he would enact his scene. There had been no word or letter between him and Julia. He was glad of this. It made his march across the Campus toward the Professor’s office a less fearful effort. It justified the conviction which he willed, that she had loosed her hold on him, bade him follow his conscience. But was he following his conscience? He stood before the silent, yellow door of the office. He straightened visibly as if he had meant to measure himself against it--against what it signified. What was he following? What was it, while he pondered, that had driven him here; and now--had driven his list in signal against the yellow door?