It was his turn to look intent. He felt somewhat ashamed to meet her little, soft eyes. He saw the crinkly flesh about them. He felt guilty in so scrutinizing her. But to hide his shame and guilt he had to keep on looking. And as he did so, Adelaide grew fearful of her boldness, regretful lest she had wounded him. Truth, after all, was less important than his well-being. If truth made him uncomfortable, it was a thing to be slain! With a real victory in her hands, she gave it up. She rose and went toward the door. “You’re busy. I’ll not disturb you now”--and she left. Quincy looked where she had gone. And then, he looked at his work. “Damn!” he said. “I’m too tired to-night” He put on his hat and coat and went to a nearby vaudeville. He had an empty evening. Thereby, he managed to escape his sister, himself, the suddenly obnoxious sales-slips. For the sales-slips, he hated Adelaide; for Adelaide, he hated the sales-slips;--for entertaining either feeling, he hated himself. It was a little case of general annihilation--a first, subtle, unconscious taste of the delights of emptiness.... This taste was nourished in talk with Marsden. Marsden was thirty. Without aid or consultation, there he was--a mature man! This seemed wonderful to Quincy who had never dared or cared to watch him grow, It seemed right to him that a cripple should be a child--or a young man. But to be thirty and have to be wheeled about; to have grey hair and no salary; to be very wise, yet very helpless! Quincy felt the same _malaise_ in Marsden’s presence that might have been expected of a stranger. He was resolved that this must change. And it was interesting, now they talked together, to watch this gnarled being gather itself tight and close from the mists which in Quincy’s former thoughts had constituted Marsden. As Quincy now listened to his words, he watched his head. And he was minded of a shell, full of the murmur of some vastness which it derided through its own emptiness. Here also, was a sense to be submerged like his first taste of the City. Said Marsden: “I never had much use for you, Quincy, for I always took you for a ninny.” “Why?” As the boy asked, he heard his voice, rather high and tremulous against the resonance of Marsden’s. This contrast made him conscious that he was being swayed, in the very accusation, to agree with it. Marsden answered him. His willingness to talk to Quincy was a new thing--a compliment. So, at least, the boy took it. He was being noticed, he was being taken into consideration. The boy allowed no doubt of the value of all this. He allowed no memory of other notice, of other consideration which had been given him, and in the light of which all this was mockery. That way lay hating his new self. And self-satisfaction had to win.