And now, it had grown too dark, even for comic pictures. Marsden and Rhoda whispered together; his raucous chuckle chimed well with the cold ring of her laughter. And the night rose above them. Quincy’s mind went leaping through it as if light were a barrier at last effaced. He was comfortable in his chair. He wondered whether, perhaps, he was not face to face with a more comfortable future. His heart went out to his brothers and sisters, so eager was he to prove his dream’s verisimilitude. One so beautiful as Rhoda could not be hard of heart; nor one so rubicund as Jonas, nor so suffering as Marsden, nor so meek as Adelaide. Oh! if they but gave him a chance--how good and kind and loving he would be! He was getting old now. He was fifteen. He could find ways to be of use. He could make his new happiness efficient. He could read to Marsden when he was tired; he could try to learn jokes to tell to Jonas; he could run errands for his sisters. He would use his body and his mind to show his gratitude, to prove his worth. Quincy went swimming through the element of his desire. The hum of the Elevated trains, the croon of the cars past the street, the rattle of a wagon merged into a varied harmony, all pliant to his gentle mood. The little fellow clasped the arm of his chair as if to hold on to this fleet state of happiness and so sustain it.... Marsden’s voice cut into him, like a knife. “Quincy,” it said, “turn on the lights.” The lad jumped up and complied. The cold glare of the electric beat out the gentle color of the dusk. But already, his brother’s tone had dispersed the dream which that dusk had nurtured. Quincy went back to his chair. But he was very wide-awake, now; and his thoughts were pragmatic. How he did spin nonsense to himself! A double resentment was on foot: against reality purely as such, and also as the disturber of his fancies. He looked at Marsden in the cruel light and found that he despised him. Rhoda was smugly smiling over a magazine she had now resumed. He hated her, for that. She had not felt the sting in Marsden’s order, or, if she had, it was with a feeling of approval. It required no more than this to turn the edge of Quincy’s mood. Jonas began to talk. He was boasting of a college celebration; of his friends. He alluded slyly to a girl. Rhoda, in her new magnanimous contentment, nodded her sympathy for his crass pranks. To Quincy it was as if all of his brother’s triumphs had been related to draw attention to his own social poverty. So he resented Jonas. And since even Marsden’s fastidious attention had been drawn, he blanketed in his bitter sense of exclusion all of those whom but a minute before he had been glowing to embrace. Adelaide, meantime, had actually fallen asleep. Her head was thrown back on the upholstered couch. Her lips were parted. Quincy observed how small and white her teeth were. He found her stupid.