Quincy protested that he was inimitably broad—broad enough to ignore both sides. These were of course not his words. But Julia also was receiving, now, not what he spoke but what he gave her to know. They changed the subject. They talked of books and of music. She was her old commanding self. He understood what this meant: that she once more despised him.
The Professor entered.
“Hello! Hello!” he cried. “Stay to supper, Mr. Burt. Can he, Julia?”
“Why, Lawrence,—we’re going out.”
Professor Deering was caught up by this rebuke. For he knew that they were not going out. Soon, he left them.
“That was a lie—about our going out,” she said, at once, “But I am not sure, Quincy, that you quite deserve to dine, at present, at the Professor’s table.”
With this twist of her two-edged sword, she let him go.
It was all plain enough to Quincy now. His ignoring both sides had been ignorance. And ignorance meant weakness. The finger-feeling stage was dead.
Down this new slope, events continued until March. He did not return to her. He saw the Professor only casually. But the sight of either was unnecessary. There was progress without them. The conflict was really on. The boy lumbered out his musty weapons of ideals, groaningly shouldered them and so fell to, against the seething, searing inroads of the enemy.
Of course, of all this there could be no word with Garsted. Quincy was inarticulate enough by nature, of his realities. But to talk of a deep thing that was still chaos in him was impossible. For silence, he did not have to lean on an ideal of chivalry. The stoppage caused by his other ideals sufficed for that. So the boy withdrew utterly. He was alone. And this he felt with a twinge of self-commiseration. His friend, also, felt something.