“I know it’s hard. But you have to, Burt. It’s the way.”
“Well—I’d rather not.”
The captain looked at him sharply. “You got to, I say!”
“How do you mean—I got to?”
“You can’t keep on a team and not practice every day. And not train all the time.”
And the man had walked off, not dreaming of a further protest.
Quincy, then, came close to the truth. There was something sacred, almost prayerful in running. It was the service of the trees and brooks. The strain of his muscles, the pant of his breath, the burn of his eyes, the hewing-down by this fleet spirit within him of the world’s resistances, came to him as romance, as worship. And to yoke this splendor to an affair of points and team-work seemed sacrilege. He could run when he wished. He had now learned the glory of that. He would not prostitute his best delight.
He broke training and failed to report.
The captain called on him. There was a stormy half-hour, in which the captain showed his native lights and talked much of treachery to one’s college. And so, Quincy was queered.
At the fall fraternity elections, he was left out. He knew that he had been marked for slaughter. The majority of his class now evinced nervousness at talking to him. They had fallen off as quickly as they had first rushed to accept him. He had committed the unpardonable sin. He stood there, in their midst, as a rebuke to their standards and activities—as an individual—as one who prized his pleasure and rejected the college shibboleth of “doing something.” There was no health in him. And there was danger of being associated with him, if one were seen too much about with him. Elections came. And Quincy, courageous as he had been in the lists of decision, was too young to smile and too weak not to suffer.