“Say, Davidson,” Keith cried impulsively, holding out his hand, “I don’t mind!”

“Well, what do you think I care,” the other boy asked icily as he turned on his heel and walked out of the room again without taking the proffered hand.

It was the first time that Keith felt the sting of real hatred.  He could never have acted like that—­not even toward one who had wronged him seriously.  What galled him most was that he had been made to look as if he were apologizing.  Then a sense of triumph returned little by little, but it was not very vivid, and what he missed utterly was the fact that no other situation could have been quite so hard on Davidson’s pride as the one in which Dally had placed him.  A realization of that fact came only years afterwards.

Then Dally himself arrived, and soon the commencement exercises were in full progress, Keith feeling quite superior to any curiosity or excitement.  Again he received a prize, and again it was in the form of money, but a smaller sum not accompanied by any special encomiums.  He walked home very quietly with his parents, and they had not much to say either.

Had Keith known what an anti-climax was, he would undoubtedly have used that word to describe the experiences of his second Commencement Day at Old Mary.

XIII

The summer was spent quietly on the same island where he had been so happy a year before.  Oscar was not there.  Other boys took his place, but no real intimacy sprang up between them and Keith.  They certainly did not talk of love, and what they knew of sex took Keith back to the days spent around the big rock.  He had a good time on the whole, but more and more a sense of missing something fretted him, and he could not tell what it was.  For emotional outlet he was wholly dependent on his mother, and though he seemed as devoted to her as ever, he had queer spells of wishing to get away from her.  The father was more in the background than ever during the summer.  Once in a while he would show up on a weekday evening very tired, and leave again with the first morning boat.  During the week-end he wanted above all to rest, and Keith was partly happy and partly unhappy at being left alone.

Once only during that summer did his father appear under circumstances that impressed themselves on the boy’s memory.  It was the day of the annual regatta of the Yacht Club.  When the races were over, the yachts were towed back to the city by a large steamer, escorted by a whole flotilla of every kind of craft loaded with sightseers.  It was the gala evening of the season.  As the tender twilight of the August night descended on the smooth waters of the Lake Maelaren, every villa along the shores became brightly illuminated, while the progress of the fleet was marked by incessant bursts of fireworks.