But with such rivalry, sleep could not be firm. Too much passion and reflection, thrown up by his unconscious self like the lava of a volcano, flooded the black slopes of Quincy’s night. And in his sleep came hectic, vivid dreams--dreams in which a burst of repressed wishes stormed to realization. Nor were the wishes good or gentle or composed.... In the midst of some fantasy, painting his sleep, Quincy slides across the faint border into consciousness. There are his parents. A light sears through his closed eyes. He will keep them closed, though it meant never to be able again to open them. For solely by feigning sleep can he be sure his mother and father will not address him. And the idea of that is unbearable. How can he speak to these two tyrants about whom his thoughts contain so many guilty reservations? He lies still, strained, listening for all the little noises that will upset him, waiting for the light to go and rest to come. His parents never make mention of his name. They talk sparingly, and then of things that he does not understand. But every sound they make seems to him a monstrous thing. They are trying to be quiet. But of what avail, when the drop of a shoe on the floor twinges through him like a dart? when the creak of a bed plays on his nerves as on a jangled harp? when the repressed sound of their voices, whispering, becomes a source of suffering worse through the very quality of stillness and of effort? And with the morning, the shame of getting up when they do; the grim refusal (though the price be their completer feeling of his “badness”) in such naked intimacy to share their life, as if he shared as well their cruelty and their dull perceptions. The agonized last minutes waiting under covers, though the dregs of sleep be turned into a bitter wide-awake, until they are dressed. And then, to spring up with a sick relief, to rush into clothes and go!... Above all, with the morning, the consciousness of the next night. * * * * *