The door closed.
Williamson listened to her footsteps, as hard and uncompromising as her voice, and when they had ceased he got up from his chair, a despairing soul. After all, this was the rope's end. He would have to own up to a failure.
If Williamson had been a man of more force he would not have acknowledged so much, perhaps; but he had been conscientious and faithful to the limit of his understanding, patient to the verge of philosophy, and the result discouraged him.
He drew out his last clean collar and put it on, with the vague idea of going somewhere and doing something—what, he could not have told. His eyes fell on a framed document hanging near his mirror, a small but ornate instrument, setting forth that the Faculty and Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, by virtue of the authority in them vested, etc., conferred the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry on Philip Howard Williamson.
His thoughts turned back toward a morning over four years gone, when he walked down the platform bearing that "last of his childhood's toys," and in imagination P.H. Williamson, M. D., held conversation with Philip Howard Williamson, A. B.
Williamson, A. B., standing just the other side of the mirror, spoke and said:
"It looks as though you were up against it."
Williamson, M. D., arranging his tie so as to hide his soiled shirt, answered:
"I am up against it. And it's your fault."
Williamson, A. B., did not seem to see it. But he was a conceited creature, anyway.