Loth’s father was a prosperous storekeeper on West Long Street and lived in a spacious and richly furnished apartment above the store.  It was a home like that revealed to Keith through his shortlived friendship with Harald.  The impression on Keith, however, was quite different because of his own growth since that first year at school.  And the actions of the eight or ten boys who were the other guests impressed him still more.  They wore gloves when they arrived.  They showed neither forwardness nor timidity, but greeted each other and their host with grown-up dignity and formality.  They seemed to know what to do at every moment, and how to do it.  Keith was accustomed to decent manners.  Social intercourse in the parental circle was not without grace, but this was something different.  At the time he was utterly incapable of telling where the difference lay, and years afterward he realized what subtle shadings it depended on.  The main thing at the time was that something in himself responded instinctively to the higher degree of polish and self-assurance which he now for the first time was able to observe at close quarters.

The principal entertainment of the evening was a monster battle with tin soldiers on the cleared floor of the huge dining-room.  The battle was at its height and supper was not yet in sight, when Keith learned that the girl was waiting for him.  There was nothing to do but to obey, but the hostess could not think of letting him go without having eaten.  A special service was prepared for him in the kindest way possible, and Keith enjoyed very much the many dainties offered him.  Nevertheless he felt the situation as humiliating and was actually glad when he got away at last.  But the gladness was only a surface gloss on a burning core of regrets and dissatisfaction.

In a way that evening, which was never repeated, proved a new starting point in his life.  He had had his first close contact with life on a higher social level, and he could not forget it.  New standards had been furnished him, and unconsciously he was applying them all the time to all sorts of things—­his parents included.  Until then he had blindly accepted them and their ways and their environment as representing the best this world had to offer.  Now the basis had been laid for doubts that gradually developed into positive criticism.

The immediate result seemed quite irrelevant.  He developed a sudden objection to running errands for his mother, and especially to doing anything that involved the carrying of bags or bottles or baskets through the streets.  Packages looking as if they might contain books remained unobjectional.  There was a time when being sent to the grocery store was a privilege and a distinction.  Later it became an opportunity for clandestine meetings with Johan.  Even during his first year at Old Mary he continued to perform such tasks without any thought of what others might think of them.  He must have heard things, however, and inner resistances must have developed, which were now brought into sudden appearance by the inner echoes of Loth’s birthday party.