There was naught very new with Quincy. He was unhappy. He was conscious that some day that unhappiness must cease. And that day would be auspicious of what already he felt mistily impending. Meantime, however, he doubled his visits to Clarice. And Clarice was glad. She had played badly her game of straddling two mounts. Disgust for the one direction, yearning to leave it, grew. And her respect, her need of the new, old Quincy, the brave Quincy that called things by their thrillingly right names, grew also. They were intimate friends. But Quincy never forgot the philosophy that she had given him as hers--her stern determination to mark her life along pragmatic measures. He did not venture to change this; he was not sure that he really cared to. He was fond of Clarice. Encouraged, this fondness might have been easily transfigured. But although Clarice came to look on him as the one fresh part of her living, she also still persisted in the false routine of traveling the desert. So she helped him in no aggressive way to love her, to win her. And no less a way could have swerved Quincy. He had no fuel for passion. Clarice had plenty. But the old creed in her prevented her from giving it. Thus matters stood. So far, he had been well. But with this fall, he felt an ebb in his physical reserve. He needed more sleep; he ate less food; he drowsed over his work. Often, he came to the office with limbs like lead. In November came an early snow-storm. Quincy caught cold. He failed to shake it off as he had other colds. He drove himself each morning out of bed, with his head aching and his eyes hot. The office-manager who prized him said to him: “Quincy--you’re not well. Business is slack. Why not take two weeks off?” But the boy demurred. What should he do with “two weeks off”? Was not the hard régime of business his salvation, his redemption from the barrenness that parched him, bit into him, when his mind turned toward it? He grew worse. But he persevered. And the office-manager, meeting Josiah Burt one day by chance, mentioned his boy’s condition. Josiah spoke to Sarah. Quincy’s mother took a six o’clock train the following morning to New York. At seven-thirty she was in Quincy’s room. He lay there awake, in bed, parched with fever, his brain sweating with effort, looking at her. Too disconsolate to demur long, the boy agreed to accompany his mother to Atlantic City. * * * * * Thanksgiving time. A vast sea, flashing in the sun. A golden beach standing upon the sea. A squadron of miserable shops and huge hotels, loudly awry in line and decoration, standing upon the beach. A number of garish piers, muddy, shapeless, plastered with advertisements, reaching over the purled waters like the fingers of a lecherous man upon a woman’s breast.