His malignant power, smouldering in the gloom of his infirmities, seemed of a note with the world’s might, smothered as deep in its rotting malady. Marsden’s philosophy sat on his helplessness and healthlessness, making them power and a grim enjoyment. And even so, Quincy’s new world builded its prestige from its barriers, mined its pride from the innumerable things--its wealth and laws--that cluttered it, gleaned pleasure from a poverty of vision making real freedom and real adventure undesirable. Marsden and the City--how one they were! Marsden in his cripple’s chair that was the seat of his dominion, Marsden who had builded his state and founded his pleasure in the sick senses of his being. And the City which gained its eminence and reason also from its shackles, from its myopia, from its deformities. Eloquently, these two, shut off alike from nature’s rhythm, thriving alike in the shelter of their moribund condition, fitted together. And now, won by the hard glamor of their perfection within their morbid limits, Quincy elected to join their company. Marsden the cripple must be his captain. For no wild flower, standing alone, was shielded in such permanence and might as he. This extremity of choice tokened the violence of effort which Quincy put to his so-called adjustment; and this violence of effort proved the strength of what still held him back. Needless to say, in all this time, Quincy did not grow fond of Marsden; he never reached the stage of even being comfortable in his presence. But in so far as he had not grown fond of work, nor of the City either--not grown comfortable in them, the analogy of resolution to abide with them and with his brother suffered no shock. If aught gave way in this factitious structure, it must be the base. All had been builded logically. And logic in a superstructure is a good thing; logic in a foundation is a lie. And the first gust of feeling, the first tremor of the unconscious, may make it totter. Meantime, Quincy furrowed a rut for himself in Mr. Cugeller’s office. He went about with Adelaide and with her friends. He struck up an acquaintance with a young man called Herbert Lamory, who worked beside him. Lamory was a cousin of Mr. Cugeller--a handsome boy who spent money handsomely even though he did not have it. He took Quincy about--introduced him to his acquaintances--undertook his education. He was bright and charmful, shallow and content. Quincy grew very fond of him.