They faced each other over the narrow little table. The unusual surroundings, the packed clamor of the guests, sharpened in each a sense of intimacy with the other. They drank the red wine that had been brought without their asking for it. Quincy was proud of the fresh firm girl that marked him off from the other men with their faded or drab or hectic women. And Clarice was proud, seeing in Quincy a man strong enough to run the race when its rhythm pleased him, without the engulfment that degraded all these other men--their slavish dress, and their inelastic hands and their stamped features. She lifted her glass; its scarlet made her wrist a mere shred of white. “Here’s to the new, old unbroken Quincy. May he have the strength he needs!” The boy did not understand. As they clinked glasses: “What do you mean?” he said. “Are you so confident that you don’t feel the need even of a toast to hearten you?” “What do you mean?” he could do no better than repeat. She laughed and leaned back in her chair and poised him so. “There is only one side of you--or is it depth?--that means anything to me, at all. One side only, that I will tolerate. I drank to that.” And then, seeing his quandary in his eyes, she went on. “Can you imagine yourself, Quincy dear, as just a lost note in this ugly din?--here it is all about us. Of course you can’t! But I can. Because I know so many such--because most of me is just that sort--and dedicated to it. Well, if you shrink ever to be just part of the din, you’ll be lost to me; you’ll be worse, even worse than I am. You’ll be utterly and dismally negligible. I shan’t be able to notice you at all.” She paused. “Quincy--I’m straining with you with all my might, so that shan’t be.” Why would she not accept him, whatever he might be, or turn to? Why was she always a taskmaster before she would be friend? Why did she demand that he _work_ for her smile? At last, he spoke this out. “You don’t care for me a bit, just for myself.” “That’s sentimental! Of course, it is what you can give me, what differentiates you, that I can care for. Otherwise, why am I dining just with you?” He shook his head. He had come there swinging in his momentum. And Clarice was standing still. She had a philosophy against moving with him. It occurred to him that this rational friendship was the antipode of love. And this troubled him--unreasonably, since he felt no love for her. There was a dear light in Clarice’s eyes--while all his mind grew blurred. “You don’t despise--_just being_,” she rebuked him. “Just being has eaten into you a bit. Whenever I look at you, I feel the danger that you are going to melt away; and that in your place where I was so glad to know you, I shall some day find a ghost, an echo, an empty shell--like the rest.” “And what do you give me, to help keep me real? A set of rules!”