h 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."

* * * * *

A week from then I left.

I went up to Mrs. Tighe's room to say good-bye. Awkwardly and with the
bearlike roughness of excessive timidity I put my arms about her, drew
her to me tentatively.

"Be careful, poet dear, or you'll hurt me," she warned, giving me a look
of fondness. Her left arm was in a sling. She had fallen on the ste