Here was a new atmosphere indeed. Quincy sat down with a sense of mastership that goes with a sense of having been accepted. He judged that his parents were good, homely folk. He judged their respect a worthy thing. He felt arms go out and draw him within the circle. And it seemed to him that this was what he had longed for, fought for, always. He judged his past revolts as misapplied. He judged himself, if anything, more harshly than had they. That evening, Adelaide found him in his room. He had brought home some sales-slips which by rights belonged to office hours. “Do you really care for business, Quint?” she asked, seating herself on his bed. The boy had not changed for his sister. He resented her lack of vision into his revolution. Something unconscious within him must have told him that if Adelaide failed to see it, it could not, after all, be so very deep. This made him strike an imperious and patronizing air. “Of course I do!” “You never seemed to be turning in that direction.” “I had no direction at all, my dear. Now, I have one.” Adelaide leaned forward, her hands supporting her head. “Why, Quint!” she said, “You talk as if business were the one direction possible.” “Well--” he combatted her in this easy way of combatting himself, “what other direction is there?” “You ask me? I--I--thought you might study--something.” Her vagueness pleased him. It made her easier to confound. “Study something! That just about expresses it.” She knew that the Deerings were forbidden ground. She was untaught in leading up to such without an immediate trespass. So she was silent. But here was a chance for Quincy to deal a blow at that self of him which he had buried partially alive. He went on, with eloquence. “Adelaide--I was a fool. I’m surprised you didn’t see it, for yourself. I made a mess of things. I was a dreamer. I’ve stopped now!” He brandished his pile of yellow papers. “America has no place for men who make a profession of what fills leisure moments. What do philosophizing and book-reading get you? What earning capacity have they? It’s been my experience--and I’ve had enough to speak--that these professional fillers of leisure moments fall flat as dough when real life strikes them.” Adelaide was looking at him intently. It seemed to Quincy that she was heeding with so serious an air not so much his words as a part of him that had been silent. “Why don’t you speak frankly with me, ever?” she said at last. “What do you want to know?” “I want to know about _you_, Quincy--not about all these ideas with which you keep on fighting yourself!” He sneered at her. “Aren’t they worth anything, then?” “Not in your mouth, Quincy,” was her quick rejoinder.