No middle way exists in natures like that of Quincy. Once they let go their blanketing reserve, they feel no shame in nakedness. They have not learned a technique of graded confidence. They withhold everything with a single grip. They know only how to maintain that grip or to release it. They lack experience in the _nuances_ of human correlations. Their rule is not to adventure. When they break it--since it is so sincere a rule--they break it utterly. For behind the rule, is the great, incessant need of what the rule forbids--the conviction that in such intensity of need abstinence is good. Quincy flung his reserves out from him, that evening. And Garsted had no reason to dream that this candid boy could be as secretive as a cat. He sat high up in his chair, haled by his wine, receiving Quincy’s brave opinions with an equal gusto. His own remarks served to expose and annotate them. Garsted had a genius in apt conversation. He knew when to obtain a major effect by playing _obbligato_. Quincy’s purposes and judgments were put forth acridly, naked, crudely, as seventeen years are wont. Had the boy heard himself as he actually spoke, he must have felt the strident immaturity of his opinions, been rebuffed by them and so reacted against Garsted. But here, this young man’s cleverness came out. As Quincy’s thoughts ran, Garsted dressed them, trimmed them, softened them. Such was the mission of his own accompanying remarks. And in consequence of this, Quincy’s impressions were not of his ideas alone, but of these tempered and glorified by his host’s part. So Quincy glowed with a strange assurance. And his subliminal gratitude for Garsted inspired a conscious admiration. They parted late. Quincy lay, stare-eyed, in bed; and by fancy continued his past conversation, until sleep cheated him. Even so, a young knight of old, fresh from a first tourney, might over and over again have fought in vision, stroke by stroke, the battle he had won. * * * * * One of the remarks of Simon Garsted had been responsible for Quincy’s journey to New York. The boy had claimed the years he lived there as credentials of his knowledge of the city. “But your family’s been there with you, all that time?” asked Garsted. “Of course.” “Then you know less of New York than the immigrant who lands at South Ferry from Ellis Island. He at least has been receptive to the real welcome--attack, if you will. With you, inevitably, the home you lived in and the hordes of people you knew must have interfered.” Quincy smiled at these “hordes.” But he resolved to meet New York without the fact or reservation of his family within his mind. Garsted had summarized: “Knowing a city is being open to the vibrance of its crowds and buildings. A family stops these apertures.” * * * * *