She rose presently.  I stood up and caught her in my arms.  Slowly and firmly she disengaged herself ... silently she slid away.  She stopped in the shadow a moment before going up the long, winding stairs.

“Good night, my dear poet,” she whispered.

She had no sooner disappeared than I started out, my heart beating like a drum to a charge in me.  Spalton frequently wrote till late, in his office.  I would go over there and, if he was there, call him to account for his insults.  There was a light lit within, and I could see him through the window at his desk.

“Come in!” in answer to my knock.  “Oh, it’s you, Razorre!” and his eyes snapped with fresh resentment.  “What do you want?  Don’t you know that I’m busy on A Brief Visit?”

“You know why I’m here!”

“Well?” challengingly.

“I’ve come for two reasons.  I want to apologise to you for breaking that vase ... and I demand an equal apology from you, in turn, for the way you insulted me in Mrs. Tighe’s presence.”

“You deserved everything I said to you,” he replied, rising quietly from his chair.

“I may have deserved it ... but that doesn’t alter in the least my intention of smashing your face flat for the way you spoke to me, unless you tell me you’re sorry for it.”

“My dear Gregory, don’t be a fool.”

“A fool?” I replied, inflamed further by the appellation applied to quiet me in such a superior tone, “if you’ll come on out into the street and away from your own property, I’ll show you who’s a fool ... you’ll find you can’t treat me like a dog, and get away with it!”

“Why, Razorre ... my dear, dear boy,” calling me by my nickname and taking another tack ... he laid his hand gently on my shoulder and gave me a deep, burning look of compassionate rebuke ... though I saw fear flickering back of it all....

“Look here, John,” I burst out, never able to hold my wrath long, “I like you ... think you’re a great man—­but you humiliated me before other people ... and I’ve come to such a pass in my life that I wouldn’t let God Himself get away with a thing like that!”

“Then I apologise ... most humbly!”

“That was all I wanted.  Good-night!” But I could not bring myself to leave so abruptly.

“John,” I wavered, “you are a great man ... a much greater man than you allow yourself to be ...  I’m—­I’m going away from here forever, this time ... and I—­I want you to know how I reverence and love the bigness in you, in spite of our—­our differences.”

He was pleased.

“And so you’re going to college somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

I had talked much of college being my next aim.

“Either the University of Chicago, or further west.”

“I can give you commutation as far as Chicago.”

“I cannot accept it.”

“You must, Razorre.”