"Did you see him?"
"Yes; he's a average-sized fellow with a smooth face and brown hair."
"Would you know him if you saw him again?"
"Sure. I'll keep an eye out for him. But you've got to leave it to me. I can handle the situation all right now, if you just won't butt in."
"If you can get Rose to promise not to see him again, she'll stick to it; I can say that for her."
"She won't see him. They've quarreled, I tell you. I heard her balling him out good before he left. The whole thing is settled, and all you got to do is to button up your lip and go to bed."
A week later Papa Claude announced that Harold Phipps was at last released from his onerous duties in the army and had returned to his home in Chicago, where he would in future devote himself to the writing and producing of great American plays.
In everybody's life there are hours or days or even weeks that refuse to march on with the solemn procession of time, but lag behind and hide in some byway of memory, there to remain for ever and ever. It was such a week that tumbled unexpectedly out of Quin's calendar about the first of June, and lived itself in terms of sunshine and roses, of moonshine and melody, seven halcyon days between the time that Eleanor returned from school and the Bartletts went away for the summer. For the first time since he met her, she seemed to have nothing more demanding to do than to emulate "the innocent moon, who nothing does but shine, and yet moves all the slumbering surges of the world."
There was no doubt about Quin's "slumbering surges" being moved. Within twenty-four hours of her return to town he became totally and hopelessly demoralized. Education and business were, after all, but means to an end, and when he saw what he conceived to be a short cut to heaven, he rashly discarded wings and leaped toward his heart's desire.