He placed away the book at once. And they began afresh.
Another remark opened the problem of the track-team. By now, something was tiring deep down in them. Each of these failures in rapport made the new effort wearier. But on they struggled, with a heroism that was the more poignant for its hopeless inarticulation.
Quincy’s attempt to explain about the track-team suffered from an earlier behavior of the others. This subject had come up, the first evening at dinner. Suddenly, he had seen the expression about the soft mouth of Jonas that had been there in the old days when his one-time idol placed a captured fly in a spider-web. And Jonas had said, knowing already:
“You did not make a fraternity, did you?”
The expression had stung. “I would have, if I’d wanted to stay on the track-team.”
This was beyond Jonas’ comprehension. “If you’d wanted to?” he sneered. And the conversation changed before a saving word from Adelaide. For Adelaide had noticed. And now, in Quincy’s rigid manner, she knew that she was suffering for Jonas. Adelaide knew much. But her mind lacked a motor. And so hampered, it could not reach those increments which are the flower of knowledge.
Quincy recalled her saving him. He deemed her act the result of mercy, of pity—as if she shared Jonas’ incredulity but lacked his wish to make him suffer.
“I just didn’t wish to bind myself. Lots of men in college thought I was right. That’s how I got to know Garsted.” He began gropingly and ended in a hurry.
“Don’t you think, perhaps, it was wrong to antagonize your class?”
“I do not. Damn the class.”