Silence, again. And in this lack of substance in response, something fell away from him. It was as if he had leaned all his soul against an answer and found only emptiness. He was glad. He would go away. He would never come back. He feared lest perhaps the Professor should be there. He tried to retreat. And the door opened. There he was--big and undiminished, smiling invulnerably at him. His outstretched hand drew Quincy back. “Will you wait--just five minutes? I am busy with another man.” There was no way of escape. Quincy sat down on the step and waited. His mind was empty. He felt the grey stone stair about him. He saw a break in the plastered ceiling. He put his fingers against his eyes and asked how it was that what these round things saw, he also seemed to see. He tried to rehearse the ordeal that impended--to ascertain what it was to be. He got no farther than: “How do you do, Mr. Deering?” He repeated this, over and over and over. It became a drone and a sing-song and a mockery.... And then, he was actually within--alone with him. And he had forgotten to say the one thing he had rehearsed: “How do you do, Mr. Deering?” The Professor looked at him searchingly, made him sit down at the big desk, stood, himself, between him and the window, his generous hands clasped behind his back. “Well, Mr. Burt--what brings you here?” A pause. “You are in trouble?” “Yes, Mr. Deering.” The big man’s face softened. He moved away beneath a high rack of books, in order that the boy should not need to stare into the light. “Would you rather have me sit down, also?” Quincy felt his consideration. “No,” he said. “Very well, then--” The Professor’s face was gently serious, as if he could not brook the weakness of a delay in starting. “Professor Deering--Professor Deering--” But Quincy could not go on. He arose to his feet. That helped. But what he said amazed him as deeply as the other. “Professor Deering--tell me about you and your wife.” Mr. Deering took the remark without a tremor. His face darkened and his brow brooded. His clasped hands fell forward to his side. He did not mistake the nature of the boy. “You have a right to know?” he asked, softly. “I love her, Professor Deering.” They stood, not far apart, facing each other, firmly. And in the pause, neither of them breathed. It seemed to Quincy at that moment impossible that all this should be true. He watched the scene with a fiendish interest, as if waiting for an inevitable ruin. The Professor swallowed hard. And then, he spoke. “You love her. So do I. That gives you a right to ask what you have asked. Sit down.” He gestured the boy back into his seat. “We are in strangely similar positions, Mr. Burt. We both love her. Neither of us has her. There is no more to say.” “Neither of us--?” “Yes. She is my wife; but she is not mine. At first, of course, I believed she was. But she withdrew.” “She accuses you of withdrawing, Mr. Deering!” The boy cried this out, as if in pain.