There were more footsteps above. Presently, Quincy heard Garsted at the bottom of the stairs catch one shoe and muff the second. Then, he entered and without comment pulled off his own, tossed them under the kitchen-study table and put on the others. “I’m hungry; let’s go,” said Garsted, moving toward the door. “Should I put out the light?” said Quincy, who was behind him. “Lord, no! I never have any matches. I’d have to go to bed in the dark.” And still more Quincy marvelled. Gas had to be paid for, in the college dormitories. The waiters in the town’s most expensive restaurant (the only one with metropolitan prices) treated Simon Garsted as if he had lived in a mansion. They judged by the sort of dinner he ordered and his taste in wine. Garsted made it a rule not to enter the place save his purse was full. Also, in order that this might not be too infrequently, he would go long without good nourishment, subsisting on coffee, tobacco and free lunch. Another of his economies was in matches. However, it was a memorable evening for Quincy. He did not pretend to understand. He was subtle enough to be dazzled as much by the incident of the borrowed shoes as by the salaams of the headwaiter. He saw a dizzy accomplishment in either. He liked Garsted, besides admiring him. He found it easy to converse with him. And Garsted proved his entire comfort by not stammering once after the oysters. They talked long. Quincy discovered in himself ideas--and ideas, in addition, to which an evidently brilliant upperclassman was glad to listen. He found that many of his host’s spicily couched remarks were final forms of feelings he had long vaguely nursed. And, being human, he respected Garsted for this reason as well as for another. There were, moreover, many points in his new friend’s mind that had never occurred, even remotely, to the boy. Most of these, as Garsted made them, seemed bewilderingly true. Others, he argued frantically, unaware that he was in this way defending his old grounds, his old spiritual habits. It was obvious from the outset that Garsted was a rebel. He told him so. “Well, so are you,” retorted the older man. And this was news to Quincy. “Why, that’s anarchism!” cried Quincy, when Garsted was inveighing against the theoretic right of imprisonment for crime. “And what was your leaving the track team?” came the quick rejoinder. So, by this penetrating means the boy gained insight into himself. Small wonder, then, that he found himself growing enthusiastically fond of Garsted. There is no commoner cause, among the honest, for devoted friendships.