THIS SIDE OF PARADISE

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

 . . . Well this side of Paradise!. . . There's little comfort in the wise. --Rupert Brooke. 

 Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes. --Oscar Wilde. 

 To SIGOURNEY FAY

CONTENTS

 BOOK ONE: The Romantic Egotist 1. AMORY, SON OF BEATRICE 2. SPIRES AND GARGOYLES 3. THE EGOTIST CONSIDERS 4. NARCISSUS OFF DUTY

 [INTERLUDE: MAY, 1917-FEBRUARY, 1919. ]

 BOOK TWO: The Education of a Personage 1. THE DEBUTANTE 2. EXPERIMENTS IN CONVALESCENCE 3. YOUNG IRONY 4. THE SUPERCILIOUS SACRIFICE 5. THE EGOTIST BECOMES A PERSONAGE

BOOK ONE--The Romantic Egotist

CHAPTER 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice

Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except thestray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, anineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit ofdrowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirtythrough the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, andin the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harborand met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down toposterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver atcrucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, anunassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in "taking care" of his wife, continually harassedby the idea that he didn't and couldn't understand her. 

But Beatrice Blaine! There was a woman! Early pictures taken on herfather's estate at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or in Rome at the SacredHeart Convent--an educational extravagance that in her youth was onlyfor the daughters of the exceptionally wealthy--showed the exquisitedelicacy of her features, the consummate art and simplicity of herclothes. A brilliant education she had--her youth passed in renaissanceglory, she was versed in the latest gossip of the Older Roman Families;known by name as a fabulously wealthy American girl to Cardinal Vitoriand Queen Margherita and more subtle celebrities that one must have hadsome culture even to have heard of. She learned in England to preferwhiskey and soda to wine, and her small talk was broadened in two sensesduring a winter in Vienna. All in all Beatrice O'Hara absorbed thesort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelagemeasured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous ofand charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren ofall ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped theinferior roses to produce one perfect bud. 

In her less important moments she returned to America, met StephenBlaine and married him--this almost entirely because she was a littlebit weary, a little bit sad. Her only child was carried througha tiresome season and brought into the world on a spring day inninety-six. 

When Amory was five he was already a delightful companion for her. Hewas an auburn-haired boy, with great, handsome eyes which he would growup to in time, a facile imaginative mind and a taste for fancy dress. From his fourth to his tenth year he did the country with his motherin her father's private car, from Coronado, where his mother became sobored that she had a nervous breakdown in a fashionable hotel, down toMexico City, where she took a mild, almost epidemic consumption. Thistrouble pleased her, and later she made use of it as an intrinsic partof her atmosphere--especially after several astounding bracers. 

So, while more or less fortunate little rich boys were defyinggovernesses on the beach at Newport, or being spanked or tutored or readto from "Do and Dare, " or "Frank on the Mississippi, " Amory was bitingacquiescent bell-boys in the Waldorf, outgrowing a natural repugnanceto chamber music and symphonies, and deriving a highly specializededucation from his mother. 

"Amory. "

"Yes, Beatrice. " (Such a quaint name for his mother; she encouraged it. )

"Dear, don't _think_ of getting out of bed yet. I've always suspectedthat early rising in early life makes one nervous. Clothilde is havingyour breakfast brought up. "

"All right. "

"I am feeling very old to-day, Amory, " she would sigh, her face a rarecameo of pathos, her voice exquisitely modulated, her hands as facileas Bernhardt's. "My nerves are on edge--on edge. We must leave thisterrifying place to-morrow and go searching for sunshine. "

Amory's penetrating green eyes would look out through tangled hair athis mother. Even at this age he had no illusions about her. 

"Amory. "

"Oh, _yes_. "

"I want you to take a red-hot bath as hot as you can bear it, and justrelax your nerves. You can read in the tub if you wish. "

She fed him sections of the "Fetes Galantes" before he was ten; ateleven he could talk glibly, if rather reminiscently, of Brahms andMozart and Beethoven. One afternoon, when left alone in the hotel atHot Springs, he sampled his mother's apricot cordial, and as the tastepleased him, he became quite tipsy. This was fun for a while, buthe essayed a cigarette in his exaltation, and succumbed to a vulgar, plebeian reaction. Though this incident horrified Beatrice, it alsosecretly amused her and became part of what in a later generation wouldhave been termed her "line. "

"This son of mine, " he heard her tell a room full of awestruck, admiringwomen one day, "is entirely sophisticated and quite charming--butdelicate--we're all delicate; _here_, you know. " Her hand was radiantlyoutlined against her beautiful bosom; then sinking her voice to awhisper, she told them of the apricot cordial. They rejoiced, for shewas a brave raconteuse, but many were the keys turned in sideboard locksthat night against the possible defection of little Bobby or Barbara. . . . 

These domestic pilgrimages were invariably in state; two maids, theprivate car, or Mr. Blaine when available, and very often a physician. When Amory had the whooping-cough four disgusted specialists glared ateach other hunched around his bed; when he took scarlet fever the numberof attendants, including physicians and nurses, totalled fourteen. However, blood being thicker than broth, he was pulled through. 

The Blaines were attached to no city. They were the Blaines of LakeGeneva; they had quite enough relatives to serve in place of friends, and an enviable standing from Pasadena to Cape Cod. But Beatrice grewmore and more prone to like only new acquaintances, as there werecertain stories, such as the history of her constitution and its manyamendments, memories of her years abroad, that it was necessary forher to repeat at regular intervals. Like Freudian dreams, they must bethrown off, else they would sweep in and lay siege to her nerves. ButBeatrice was critical about American women, especially the floatingpopulation of ex-Westerners. 

"They have accents, my dear, " she told Amory, "not Southern accentsor Boston accents, not an accent attached to any locality, just anaccent"--she became dreamy. "They pick up old, moth-eaten London accentsthat are down on their luck and have to be used by some one. They talkas an English butler might after several years in a Chicago grand-operacompany. " She became almost incoherent--"Suppose--time in every Westernwoman's life--she feels her husband is prosperous enough for her tohave--accent--they try to impress _me_, my dear--"

Though she thought of her body as a mass of frailties, she consideredher soul quite as ill, and therefore important in her life. She hadonce been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely moreattentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in MotherChurch, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude. Often shedeplored the bourgeois quality of the American Catholic clergy, and wasquite sure that had she lived in the shadow of the great Continentalcathedrals her soul would still be a thin flame on the mighty altar ofRome. Still, next to doctors, priests were her favorite sport. 

"Ah, Bishop Wiston, " she would declare, "I do not want to talk ofmyself. I can imagine the stream of hysterical women fluttering at yourdoors, beseeching you to be simpatico"--then after an interlude filledby the clergyman--"but my mood--is--oddly dissimilar. "

Only to bishops and above did she divulge her clerical romance. When shehad first returned to her country there had been a pagan, Swinburnianyoung man in Asheville, for whose passionate kisses and unsentimentalconversations she had taken a decided penchant--they had discussedthe matter pro and con with an intellectual romancing quite devoid ofsappiness. Eventually she had decided to marry for background, and theyoung pagan from Asheville had gone through a spiritual crisis, joinedthe Catholic Church, and was now--Monsignor Darcy. 

"Indeed, Mrs. Blaine, he is still delightful company--quite thecardinal's right-hand man. "

"Amory will go to him one day, I know, " breathed the beautiful lady, "and Monsignor Dark will understand him as he understood me. "

Amory became thirteen, rather tall and slender, and more than ever on tohis Celtic mother. He had tutored occasionally--the idea being that hewas to "keep up, " at each place "taking up the work where he left off, "yet as no tutor ever found the place he left off, his mind was still invery good shape. What a few more years of this life would have made ofhim is problematical. However, four hours out from land, Italy bound, with Beatrice, his appendix burst, probably from too many meals in bed, and after a series of frantic telegrams to Europe and America, to theamazement of the passengers the great ship slowly wheeled around andreturned to New York to deposit Amory at the pier. You will admit thatif it was not life it was magnificent. 

After the operation Beatrice had a nervous breakdown that bore asuspicious resemblance to delirium tremens, and Amory was left inMinneapolis, destined to spend the ensuing two years with his aunt anduncle. There the crude, vulgar air of Western civilization first catcheshim--in his underwear, so to speak. 

 *****

A KISS FOR AMORY

His lip curled when he read it. 

 "I am going to have a bobbing party, " it said, "on Thursday, December the seventeenth, at five o'clock, and I would like it very much if you could come. 

 Yours truly, R. S. V. P. Myra St. Claire. 

He had been two months in Minneapolis, and his chief struggle had beenthe concealing from "the other guys at school" how particularly superiorhe felt himself to be, yet this conviction was built upon shiftingsands. He had shown off one day in French class (he was in senior Frenchclass) to the utter confusion of Mr. Reardon, whose accent Amory damnedcontemptuously, and to the delight of the class. Mr. Reardon, who hadspent several weeks in Paris ten years before, took his revenge on theverbs, whenever he had his book open. But another time Amory showed offin history class, with quite disastrous results, for the boys therewere his own age, and they shrilled innuendoes at each other all thefollowing week:

"Aw--I b'lieve, doncherknow, the Umuricun revolution was _lawgely_ anaffair of the middul _clawses_, " or

"Washington came of very good blood--aw, quite good--I b'lieve. "

Amory ingeniously tried to retrieve himself by blundering on purpose. Two years before he had commenced a history of the United States which, though it only got as far as the Colonial Wars, had been pronounced byhis mother completely enchanting. 

His chief disadvantage lay in athletics, but as soon as he discoveredthat it was the touchstone of power and popularity at school, he beganto make furious, persistent efforts to excel in the winter sports, andwith his ankles aching and bending in spite of his efforts, he skatedvaliantly around the Lorelie rink every afternoon, wondering how soonhe would be able to carry a hockey-stick without getting it inexplicablytangled in his skates. 

The invitation to Miss Myra St. Claire's bobbing party spent the morningin his coat pocket, where it had an intense physical affair with a dustypiece of peanut brittle. During the afternoon he brought it to lightwith a sigh, and after some consideration and a preliminary draft in theback of Collar and Daniel's "First-Year Latin, " composed an answer:

 My dear Miss St. Claire: Your truly charming envitation for the evening of next Thursday evening was truly delightful to receive this morning. I will be charm and inchanted indeed to present my compliments on next Thursday evening. Faithfully, Amory Blaine. 

 *****

On Thursday, therefore, he walked pensively along the slippery, shovel-scraped sidewalks, and came in sight of Myra's house, on thehalf-hour after five, a lateness which he fancied his mother wouldhave favored. He waited on the door-step with his eyes nonchalantlyhalf-closed, and planned his entrance with precision. He would crossthe floor, not too hastily, to Mrs. St. Claire, and say with exactly thecorrect modulation:

"My _dear_ Mrs. St. Claire, I'm _frightfully_ sorry to be late, but mymaid"--he paused there and realized he would be quoting--"but my uncleand I had to see a fella--Yes, I've met your enchanting daughter atdancing-school. "

Then he would shake hands, using that slight, half-foreign bow, with allthe starchy little females, and nod to the fellas who would be standing'round, paralyzed into rigid groups for mutual protection. 

A butler (one of the three in Minneapolis) swung open the door. Amorystepped inside and divested himself of cap and coat. He was mildlysurprised not to hear the shrill squawk of conversation from the nextroom, and he decided it must be quite formal. He approved of that--as heapproved of the butler. 

"Miss Myra, " he said. 

To his surprise the butler grinned horribly. 

"Oh, yeah, " he declared, "she's here. " He was unaware that his failureto be cockney was ruining his standing. Amory considered him coldly. 

"But, " continued the butler, his voice rising unnecessarily, "she's theonly one what _is_ here. The party's gone. "

Amory gasped in sudden horror. 

"What?"

"She's been waitin' for Amory Blaine. That's you, ain't it? Her mothersays that if you showed up by five-thirty you two was to go after 'em inthe Packard. "

Amory's despair was crystallized by the appearance of Myra herself, bundled to the ears in a polo coat, her face plainly sulky, her voicepleasant only with difficulty. 

"'Lo, Amory. "

"'Lo, Myra. " He had described the state of his vitality. 

"Well--you _got_ here, _any_ways. "

"Well--I'll tell you. I guess you don't know about the auto accident, "he romanced. 

Myra's eyes opened wide. 

"Who was it to?"

"Well, " he continued desperately, "uncle 'n aunt 'n I. "

"Was any one _killed?_"

Amory paused and then nodded. 

"Your uncle?"--alarm. 

"Oh, no just a horse--a sorta gray horse. "

At this point the Erse butler snickered. 

"Probably killed the engine, " he suggested. Amory would have put him onthe rack without a scruple. 

"We'll go now, " said Myra coolly. "You see, Amory, the bobs were orderedfor five and everybody was here, so we couldn't wait--"

"Well, I couldn't help it, could I?"

"So mama said for me to wait till ha'past five. We'll catch the bobsbefore it gets to the Minnehaha Club, Amory. "

Amory's shredded poise dropped from him. He pictured the happy partyjingling along snowy streets, the appearance of the limousine, thehorrible public descent of him and Myra before sixty reproachful eyes, his apology--a real one this time. He sighed aloud. 

"What?" inquired Myra. 

"Nothing. I was just yawning. Are we going to _surely_ catch up with 'embefore they get there?" He was encouraging a faint hope that they mightslip into the Minnehaha Club and meet the others there, be found inblasé seclusion before the fire and quite regain his lost attitude. 

"Oh, sure Mike, we'll catch 'em all right--let's hurry. "

He became conscious of his stomach. As they stepped into the machine hehurriedly slapped the paint of diplomacy over a rather box-like planhe had conceived. It was based upon some "trade-lasts" gleaned atdancing-school, to the effect that he was "awful good-looking and_English_, sort of. "

"Myra, " he said, lowering his voice and choosing his words carefully, "I beg a thousand pardons. Can you ever forgive me?" She regardedhim gravely, his intent green eyes, his mouth, that to herthirteen-year-old, arrow-collar taste was the quintessence of romance. Yes, Myra could forgive him very easily. 

"Why--yes--sure. "

He looked at her again, and then dropped his eyes. He had lashes. 

"I'm awful, " he said sadly. "I'm diff'runt. I don't know why I make fauxpas. 'Cause I don't care, I s'pose. " Then, recklessly: "I been smokingtoo much. I've got t'bacca heart. "

Myra pictured an all-night tobacco debauch, with Amory pale and reelingfrom the effect of nicotined lungs. She gave a little gasp. 

"Oh, _Amory_, don't smoke. You'll stunt your _growth!_"

"I don't care, " he persisted gloomily. "I gotta. I got the habit. I'vedone a lot of things that if my fambly knew"--he hesitated, giving herimagination time to picture dark horrors--"I went to the burlesque showlast week. "

Myra was quite overcome. He turned the green eyes on her again. "You'rethe only girl in town I like much, " he exclaimed in a rush of sentiment. "You're simpatico. "

Myra was not sure that she was, but it sounded stylish though vaguelyimproper. 

Thick dusk had descended outside, and as the limousine made a suddenturn she was jolted against him; their hands touched. 

"You shouldn't smoke, Amory, " she whispered. "Don't you know that?"

He shook his head. 

"Nobody cares. "

Myra hesitated. 

"_I_ care. "

Something stirred within Amory. 

"Oh, yes, you do! You got a crush on Froggy Parker. I guess everybodyknows that. "

"No, I haven't, " very slowly. 

A silence, while Amory thrilled. There was something fascinating aboutMyra, shut away here cosily from the dim, chill air. Myra, a littlebundle of clothes, with strands of yellow hair curling out from underher skating cap. 

"Because I've got a crush, too--" He paused, for he heard in thedistance the sound of young laughter, and, peering through the frostedglass along the lamp-lit street, he made out the dark outline of thebobbing party. He must act quickly. He reached over with a violent, jerky effort, and clutched Myra's hand--her thumb, to be exact. 

"Tell him to go to the Minnehaha straight, " he whispered. "I wanta talkto you--I _got_ to talk to you. "

Myra made out the party ahead, had an instant vision of her mother, andthen--alas for convention--glanced into the eyes beside. "Turn down thisside street, Richard, and drive straight to the Minnehaha Club!" shecried through the speaking tube. Amory sank back against the cushionswith a sigh of relief. 

"I can kiss her, " he thought. "I'll bet I can. I'll _bet_ I can!"

Overhead the sky was half crystalline, half misty, and the night aroundwas chill and vibrant with rich tension. From the Country Club steps theroads stretched away, dark creases on the white blanket; huge heaps ofsnow lining the sides like the tracks of giant moles. They lingered fora moment on the steps, and watched the white holiday moon. 

"Pale moons like that one"--Amory made a vague gesture--"make peoplemysterieuse. You look like a young witch with her cap off and her hairsorta mussed"--her hands clutched at her hair--"Oh, leave it, it looks_good_. "

They drifted up the stairs and Myra led the way into the little den ofhis dreams, where a cosy fire was burning before a big sink-down couch. A few years later this was to be a great stage for Amory, a cradle formany an emotional crisis. Now they talked for a moment about bobbingparties. 

"There's always a bunch of shy fellas, " he commented, "sitting at thetail of the bob, sorta lurkin' an' whisperin' an' pushin' each otheroff. Then there's always some crazy cross-eyed girl"--he gave aterrifying imitation--"she's always talkin' _hard_, sorta, to thechaperon. "

"You're such a funny boy, " puzzled Myra. 

"How d'y' mean?" Amory gave immediate attention, on his own ground atlast. 

"Oh--always talking about crazy things. Why don't you come ski-ing withMarylyn and I to-morrow?"

"I don't like girls in the daytime, " he said shortly, and then, thinkingthis a bit abrupt, he added: "But I like you. " He cleared his throat. "Ilike you first and second and third. "

Myra's eyes became dreamy. What a story this would make to tellMarylyn! Here on the couch with this _wonderful_-looking boy--the littlefire--the sense that they were alone in the great building--

Myra capitulated. The atmosphere was too appropriate. 

"I like you the first twenty-five, " she confessed, her voice trembling, "and Froggy Parker twenty-sixth. "

Froggy had fallen twenty-five places in one hour. As yet he had not evennoticed it. 

But Amory, being on the spot, leaned over quickly and kissed Myra'scheek. He had never kissed a girl before, and he tasted his lipscuriously, as if he had munched some new fruit. Then their lips brushedlike young wild flowers in the wind. 

"We're awful, " rejoiced Myra gently. She slipped her hand into his, her head drooped against his shoulder. Sudden revulsion seized Amory, disgust, loathing for the whole incident. He desired frantically tobe away, never to see Myra again, never to kiss any one; he becameconscious of his face and hers, of their clinging hands, and he wantedto creep out of his body and hide somewhere safe out of sight, up in thecorner of his mind. 

"Kiss me again. " Her voice came out of a great void. 

"I don't want to, " he heard himself saying. There was another pause. 

"I don't want to!" he repeated passionately. 

Myra sprang up, her cheeks pink with bruised vanity, the great bow onthe back of her head trembling sympathetically. 

"I hate you!" she cried. "Don't you ever dare to speak to me again!"

"What?" stammered Amory. 

"I'll tell mama you kissed me! I will too! I will too! I'll tell mama, and she won't let me play with you!"

Amory rose and stared at her helplessly, as though she were a new animalof whose presence on the earth he had not heretofore been aware. 

The door opened suddenly, and Myra's mother appeared on the threshold, fumbling with her lorgnette. 

"Well, " she began, adjusting it benignantly, "the man at the desk toldme you two children were up here--How do you do, Amory. "

Amory watched Myra and waited for the crash--but none came. The poutfaded, the high pink subsided, and Myra's voice was placid as a summerlake when she answered her mother. 

"Oh, we started so late, mama, that I thought we might as well--"

He heard from below the shrieks of laughter, and smelled the vapidodor of hot chocolate and tea-cakes as he silently followed mother anddaughter down-stairs. The sound of the graphophone mingled with thevoices of many girls humming the air, and a faint glow was born andspread over him:

 "Casey-Jones--mounted to the cab-un Casey-Jones--'th his orders in his hand. Casey-Jones--mounted to the cab-un Took his farewell journey to the prom-ised land. "

 *****

SNAPSHOTS OF THE YOUNG EGOTIST

Amory spent nearly two years in Minneapolis. The first winter he woremoccasins that were born yellow, but after many applications of oil anddirt assumed their mature color, a dirty, greenish brown; he wore a grayplaid mackinaw coat, and a red toboggan cap. His dog, Count Del Monte, ate the red cap, so his uncle gave him a gray one that pulled down overhis face. The trouble with this one was that you breathed into it andyour breath froze; one day the darn thing froze his cheek. He rubbedsnow on his cheek, but it turned bluish-black just the same. 

 *****

The Count Del Monte ate a box of bluing once, but it didn't hurt him. Later, however, he lost his mind and ran madly up the street, bumpinginto fences, rolling in gutters, and pursuing his eccentric course outof Amory's life. Amory cried on his bed. 

"Poor little Count, " he cried. "Oh, _poor_ little _Count!_"

After several months he suspected Count of a fine piece of emotionalacting. 

 *****

Amory and Frog Parker considered that the greatest line in literatureoccurred in Act III of "Arsene Lupin. "

They sat in the first row at the Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Theline was:

"If one can't be a great artist or a great soldier, the next best thingis to be a great criminal. "

 *****

Amory fell in love again, and wrote a poem. This was it:

 "Marylyn and Sallee, Those are the girls for me. Marylyn stands above Sallee in that sweet, deep love. "

He was interested in whether McGovern of Minnesota would make thefirst or second All-American, how to do the card-pass, how to dothe coin-pass, chameleon ties, how babies were born, and whetherThree-fingered Brown was really a better pitcher than ChristieMathewson. 

Among other things he read: "For the Honor of the School, " "LittleWomen" (twice), "The Common Law, " "Sapho, " "Dangerous Dan McGrew, " "TheBroad Highway" (three times), "The Fall of the House of Usher, " "ThreeWeeks, " "Mary Ware, the Little Colonel's Chum, " "Gunga Din, " The PoliceGazette, and Jim-Jam Jems. 

He had all the Henty biasses in history, and was particularly fond ofthe cheerful murder stories of Mary Roberts Rinehart. 

 *****

School ruined his French and gave him a distaste for standard authors. His masters considered him idle, unreliable and superficially clever. 

 *****

He collected locks of hair from many girls. He wore the rings ofseveral. Finally he could borrow no more rings, owing to his nervoushabit of chewing them out of shape. This, it seemed, usually aroused thejealous suspicions of the next borrower. 

 *****

All through the summer months Amory and Frog Parker went each week tothe Stock Company. Afterward they would stroll home in the balmy air ofAugust night, dreaming along Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues, through thegay crowd. Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was aboy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward himand ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic ofexpressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts offourteen. 

Always, after he was in bed, there were voices--indefinite, fading, enchanting--just outside his window, and before he fell asleep he woulddream one of his favorite waking dreams, the one about becoming a greathalf-back, or the one about the Japanese invasion, when he was rewardedby being made the youngest general in the world. It was alwaysthe becoming he dreamed of, never the being. This, too, was quitecharacteristic of Amory. 

 *****

CODE OF THE YOUNG EGOTIST

Before he was summoned back to Lake Geneva, he had appeared, shy butinwardly glowing, in his first long trousers, set off by a purpleaccordion tie and a "Belmont" collar with the edges unassailablymeeting, purple socks, and handkerchief with a purple border peepingfrom his breast pocket. But more than that, he had formulated his firstphilosophy, a code to live by, which, as near as it can be named, was asort of aristocratic egotism. 

He had realized that his best interests were bound up with those of acertain variant, changing person, whose label, in order that his pastmight always be identified with him, was Amory Blaine. Amory markedhimself a fortunate youth, capable of infinite expansion for good orevil. He did not consider himself a "strong char'c'ter, " but relied onhis facility (learn things sorta quick) and his superior mentality (reada lotta deep books). He was proud of the fact that he could neverbecome a mechanical or scientific genius. From no other heights was hedebarred. 

Physically. --Amory thought that he was exceedingly handsome. He was. Hefancied himself an athlete of possibilities and a supple dancer. 

Socially. --Here his condition was, perhaps, most dangerous. He grantedhimself personality, charm, magnetism, poise, the power of dominatingall contemporary males, the gift of fascinating all women. 

Mentally. --Complete, unquestioned superiority. 

Now a confession will have to be made. Amory had rather a Puritanconscience. Not that he yielded to it--later in life he almostcompletely slew it--but at fifteen it made him consider himself agreat deal worse than other boys. . . Unscrupulousness. . . The desireto influence people in almost every way, even for evil. . . A certaincoldness and lack of affection, amounting sometimes to cruelty. . . Ashifting sense of honor. . . An unholy selfishness. . . A puzzled, furtiveinterest in everything concerning sex. 

There was, also, a curious strain of weakness running crosswise throughhis make-up. . . A harsh phrase from the lips of an older boy (older boysusually detested him) was liable to sweep him off his poise into surlysensitiveness, or timid stupidity. . . He was a slave to his own moodsand he felt that though he was capable of recklessness and audacity, hepossessed neither courage, perseverance, nor self-respect. 

Vanity, tempered with self-suspicion if not self-knowledge, a sense ofpeople as automatons to his will, a desire to "pass" as many boys aspossible and get to a vague top of the world. . . With this background didAmory drift into adolescence. 

 *****

PREPARATORY TO THE GREAT ADVENTURE

The train slowed up with midsummer languor at Lake Geneva, and Amorycaught sight of his mother waiting in her electric on the gravelledstation drive. It was an ancient electric, one of the early types, andpainted gray. The sight of her sitting there, slenderly erect, andof her face, where beauty and dignity combined, melting to a dreamyrecollected smile, filled him with a sudden great pride of her. As theykissed coolly and he stepped into the electric, he felt a quick fearlest he had lost the requisite charm to measure up to her. 

"Dear boy--you're _so_ tall. . . Look behind and see if there's anythingcoming. . . "

She looked left and right, she slipped cautiously into a speed of twomiles an hour, beseeching Amory to act as sentinel; and at one busycrossing she made him get out and run ahead to signal her forward like atraffic policeman. Beatrice was what might be termed a careful driver. 

"You _are_ tall--but you're still very handsome--you've skipped theawkward age, or is that sixteen; perhaps it's fourteen or fifteen; I cannever remember; but you've skipped it. "

"Don't embarrass me, " murmured Amory. 

"But, my dear boy, what odd clothes! They look as if they were a_set_--don't they? Is your underwear purple, too?"

Amory grunted impolitely. 

"You must go to Brooks' and get some really nice suits. Oh, we'll have atalk to-night or perhaps to-morrow night. I want to tell you aboutyour heart--you've probably been neglecting your heart--and you don't_know_. "

Amory thought how superficial was the recent overlay of his owngeneration. Aside from a minute shyness, he felt that the old cynicalkinship with his mother had not been one bit broken. Yet for the firstfew days he wandered about the gardens and along the shore in a stateof superloneliness, finding a lethargic content in smoking "Bull" at thegarage with one of the chauffeurs. 

The sixty acres of the estate were dotted with old and new summer housesand many fountains and white benches that came suddenly into sight fromfoliage-hung hiding-places; there was a great and constantly increasingfamily of white cats that prowled the many flower-beds and weresilhouetted suddenly at night against the darkening trees. It was onone of the shadowy paths that Beatrice at last captured Amory, after Mr. Blaine had, as usual, retired for the evening to his private library. After reproving him for avoiding her, she took him for a longtete-a-tete in the moonlight. He could not reconcile himself to herbeauty, that was mother to his own, the exquisite neck and shoulders, the grace of a fortunate woman of thirty. 

"Amory, dear, " she crooned softly, "I had such a strange, weird timeafter I left you. "

"Did you, Beatrice?"

"When I had my last breakdown"--she spoke of it as a sturdy, gallantfeat. 

"The doctors told me"--her voice sang on a confidential note--"that ifany man alive had done the consistent drinking that I have, he wouldhave been physically _shattered_, my dear, and in his _grave_--long inhis grave. "

Amory winced, and wondered how this would have sounded to Froggy Parker. 

"Yes, " continued Beatrice tragically, "I had dreams--wonderful visions. "She pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes. "I saw bronze riverslapping marble shores, and great birds that soared through the air, parti-colored birds with iridescent plumage. I heard strange music andthe flare of barbaric trumpets--what?"

Amory had snickered. 

"What, Amory?"

"I said go on, Beatrice. "

"That was all--it merely recurred and recurred--gardens that flauntedcoloring against which this would be quite dull, moons that whirled andswayed, paler than winter moons, more golden than harvest moons--"

"Are you quite well now, Beatrice?"

"Quite well--as well as I will ever be. I am not understood, Amory. Iknow that can't express it to you, Amory, but--I am not understood. "

Amory was quite moved. He put his arm around his mother, rubbing hishead gently against her shoulder. 

"Poor Beatrice--poor Beatrice. "

"Tell me about _you_, Amory. Did you have two _horrible_ years?"

Amory considered lying, and then decided against it. 

"No, Beatrice. I enjoyed them. I adapted myself to the bourgeoisie. I became conventional. " He surprised himself by saying that, and hepictured how Froggy would have gaped. 

"Beatrice, " he said suddenly, "I want to go away to school. Everybody inMinneapolis is going to go away to school. "

Beatrice showed some alarm. 

"But you're only fifteen. "

"Yes, but everybody goes away to school at fifteen, and I _want_ to, Beatrice. "

On Beatrice's suggestion the subject was dropped for the rest of thewalk, but a week later she delighted him by saying:

"Amory, I have decided to let you have your way. If you still want to, you can go to school. "

"Yes?"

"To St. Regis's in Connecticut. "

Amory felt a quick excitement. 

"It's being arranged, " continued Beatrice. "It's better that you shouldgo away. I'd have preferred you to have gone to Eton, and then to ChristChurch, Oxford, but it seems impracticable now--and for the presentwe'll let the university question take care of itself. "

"What are you going to do, Beatrice?"

"Heaven knows. It seems my fate to fret away my years in this country. Not for a second do I regret being American--indeed, I think that aregret typical of very vulgar people, and I feel sure we are the greatcoming nation--yet"--and she sighed--"I feel my life should have drowsedaway close to an older, mellower civilization, a land of greens andautumnal browns--"

Amory did not answer, so his mother continued:

"My regret is that you haven't been abroad, but still, as you are a man, it's better that you should grow up here under the snarling eagle--isthat the right term?"

Amory agreed that it was. She would not have appreciated the Japaneseinvasion. 

"When do I go to school?"

"Next month. You'll have to start East a little early to take yourexaminations. After that you'll have a free week, so I want you to go upthe Hudson and pay a visit. "

"To who?"

"To Monsignor Darcy, Amory. He wants to see you. He went to Harrow andthen to Yale--became a Catholic. I want him to talk to you--I feel hecan be such a help--" She stroked his auburn hair gently. "Dear Amory, dear Amory--"

"Dear Beatrice--"

 *****

So early in September Amory, provided with "six suits summer underwear, six suits winter underwear, one sweater or T shirt, one jersey, oneovercoat, winter, etc. , " set out for New England, the land of schools. 

There were Andover and Exeter with their memories of New Englanddead--large, college-like democracies; St. Mark's, Groton, St. Regis'--recruited from Boston and the Knickerbocker families of NewYork; St. Paul's, with its great rinks; Pomfret and St. George's, prosperous and well-dressed; Taft and Hotchkiss, which preparedthe wealth of the Middle West for social success at Yale; Pawling, Westminster, Choate, Kent, and a hundred others; all milling out theirwell-set-up, conventional, impressive type, year after year; theirmental stimulus the college entrance exams; their vague purpose setforth in a hundred circulars as "To impart a Thorough Mental, Moral, andPhysical Training as a Christian Gentleman, to fit the boy for meetingthe problems of his day and generation, and to give a solid foundationin the Arts and Sciences. "

At St. Regis' Amory stayed three days and took his exams with a scoffingconfidence, then doubling back to New York to pay his tutelary visit. The metropolis, barely glimpsed, made little impression on him, exceptfor the sense of cleanliness he drew from the tall white buildings seenfrom a Hudson River steamboat in the early morning. Indeed, his mind wasso crowded with dreams of athletic prowess at school that he consideredthis visit only as a rather tiresome prelude to the great adventure. This, however, it did not prove to be. 

Monsignor Darcy's house was an ancient, rambling structure set on a hilloverlooking the river, and there lived its owner, between his trips toall parts of the Roman-Catholic world, rather like an exiled Stuart kingwaiting to be called to the rule of his land. Monsignor was forty-fourthen, and bustling--a trifle too stout for symmetry, with hair the colorof spun gold, and a brilliant, enveloping personality. When he came intoa room clad in his full purple regalia from thatch to toe, he resembleda Turner sunset, and attracted both admiration and attention. He hadwritten two novels: one of them violently anti-Catholic, just before hisconversion, and five years later another, in which he had attemptedto turn all his clever jibes against Catholics into even clevererinnuendoes against Episcopalians. He was intensely ritualistic, startlingly dramatic, loved the idea of God enough to be a celibate, andrather liked his neighbor. 

Children adored him because he was like a child; youth revelled in hiscompany because he was still a youth, and couldn't be shocked. In theproper land and century he might have been a Richelieu--at present hewas a very moral, very religious (if not particularly pious) clergyman, making a great mystery about pulling rusty wires, and appreciating lifeto the fullest, if not entirely enjoying it. 

He and Amory took to each other at first sight--the jovial, impressiveprelate who could dazzle an embassy ball, and the green-eyed, intentyouth, in his first long trousers, accepted in their own minds arelation of father and son within a half-hour's conversation. 

"My dear boy, I've been waiting to see you for years. Take a big chairand we'll have a chat. "

"I've just come from school--St. Regis's, you know. "

"So your mother says--a remarkable woman; have a cigarette--I'm sureyou smoke. Well, if you're like me, you loathe all science andmathematics--"

Amory nodded vehemently. 

"Hate 'em all. Like English and history. "

"Of course. You'll hate school for a while, too, but I'm glad you'regoing to St. Regis's. "

"Why?"

"Because it's a gentleman's school, and democracy won't hit you soearly. You'll find plenty of that in college. "

"I want to go to Princeton, " said Amory. "I don't know why, but I thinkof all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men aswearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes. "

Monsignor chuckled. 

"I'm one, you know. "

"Oh, you're different--I think of Princeton as being lazy andgood-looking and aristocratic--you know, like a spring day. Harvardseems sort of indoors--"

"And Yale is November, crisp and energetic, " finished Monsignor. 

"That's it. "

They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered. 

"I was for Bonnie Prince Charlie, " announced Amory. 

"Of course you were--and for Hannibal--"

"Yes, and for the Southern Confederacy. " He was rather sceptical aboutbeing an Irish patriot--he suspected that being Irish was being somewhatcommon--but Monsignor assured him that Ireland was a romantic lost causeand Irish people quite charming, and that it should, by all means, beone of his principal biasses. 

After a crowded hour which included several more cigarettes, and duringwhich Monsignor learned, to his surprise but not to his horror, thatAmory had not been brought up a Catholic, he announced that he hadanother guest. This turned out to be the Honorable Thornton Hancock, ofBoston, ex-minister to The Hague, author of an erudite history of theMiddle Ages and the last of a distinguished, patriotic, and brilliantfamily. 

"He comes here for a rest, " said Monsignor confidentially, treatingAmory as a contemporary. "I act as an escape from the weariness ofagnosticism, and I think I'm the only man who knows how his staid oldmind is really at sea and longs for a sturdy spar like the Church tocling to. "

Their first luncheon was one of the memorable events of Amory's earlylife. He was quite radiant and gave off a peculiar brightness andcharm. Monsignor called out the best that he had thought by question andsuggestion, and Amory talked with an ingenious brilliance of a thousandimpulses and desires and repulsions and faiths and fears. He andMonsignor held the floor, and the older man, with his less receptive, less accepting, yet certainly not colder mentality, seemed content tolisten and bask in the mellow sunshine that played between these two. Monsignor gave the effect of sunlight to many people; Amory gave it inhis youth and, to some extent, when he was very much older, but neveragain was it quite so mutually spontaneous. 

"He's a radiant boy, " thought Thornton Hancock, who had seen thesplendor of two continents and talked with Parnell and Gladstone andBismarck--and afterward he added to Monsignor: "But his education oughtnot to be intrusted to a school or college. "

But for the next four years the best of Amory's intellect wasconcentrated on matters of popularity, the intricacies of a universitysocial system and American Society as represented by Biltmore Teas andHot Springs golf-links. 

. . . In all, a wonderful week, that saw Amory's mind turned inside out, ahundred of his theories confirmed, and his joy of life crystallized toa thousand ambitions. Not that the conversation was scholastic--heavenforbid! Amory had only the vaguest idea as to what Bernard Shaw was--butMonsignor made quite as much out of "The Beloved Vagabond" and "SirNigel, " taking good care that Amory never once felt out of his depth. 

But the trumpets were sounding for Amory's preliminary skirmish with hisown generation. 

"You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home iswhere we are not, " said Monsignor. 

"I _am_ sorry--"

"No, you're not. No one person in the world is necessary to you or tome. "

"Well--"

"Good-by. "

 *****

THE EGOTIST DOWN

Amory's two years at St. Regis', though in turn painful and triumphant, had as little real significance in his own life as the American "prep"school, crushed as it is under the heel of the universities, hasto American life in general. We have no Eton to create theself-consciousness of a governing class; we have, instead, clean, flaccid and innocuous preparatory schools. 

He went all wrong at the start, was generally considered both conceitedand arrogant, and universally detested. He played football intensely, alternating a reckless brilliancy with a tendency to keep himself assafe from hazard as decency would permit. In a wild panic he backed outof a fight with a boy his own size, to a chorus of scorn, and a weeklater, in desperation, picked a battle with another boy very muchbigger, from which he emerged badly beaten, but rather proud of himself. 

He was resentful against all those in authority over him, and this, combined with a lazy indifference toward his work, exasperated everymaster in school. He grew discouraged and imagined himself a pariah;took to sulking in corners and reading after lights. With a dread ofbeing alone he attached a few friends, but since they were not amongthe elite of the school, he used them simply as mirrors of himself, audiences before which he might do that posing absolutely essential tohim. He was unbearably lonely, desperately unhappy. 

There were some few grains of comfort. Whenever Amory was submerged, his vanity was the last part to go below the surface, so he could stillenjoy a comfortable glow when "Wookey-wookey, " the deaf old housekeeper, told him that he was the best-looking boy she had ever seen. It hadpleased him to be the lightest and youngest man on the first footballsquad; it pleased him when Doctor Dougall told him at the end of aheated conference that he could, if he wished, get the best marks inschool. But Doctor Dougall was wrong. It was temperamentally impossiblefor Amory to get the best marks in school. 

Miserable, confined to bounds, unpopular with both faculty andstudents--that was Amory's first term. But at Christmas he had returnedto Minneapolis, tight-lipped and strangely jubilant. 

"Oh, I was sort of fresh at first, " he told Frog Parker patronizingly, "but I got along fine--lightest man on the squad. You ought to go awayto school, Froggy. It's great stuff. "

 *****

INCIDENT OF THE WELL-MEANING PROFESSOR

On the last night of his first term, Mr. Margotson, the senior master, sent word to study hall that Amory was to come to his room at nine. Amory suspected that advice was forthcoming, but he determined to becourteous, because this Mr. Margotson had been kindly disposed towardhim. 

His summoner received him gravely, and motioned him to a chair. Hehemmed several times and looked consciously kind, as a man will when heknows he's on delicate ground. 

"Amory, " he began. "I've sent for you on a personal matter. "

"Yes, sir. "

"I've noticed you this year and I--I like you. I think you have in youthe makings of a--a very good man. "

"Yes, sir, " Amory managed to articulate. He hated having people talk asif he were an admitted failure. 

"But I've noticed, " continued the older man blindly, "that you're notvery popular with the boys. "

"No, sir. " Amory licked his lips. 

"Ah--I thought you might not understand exactly what itwas they--ah--objected to. I'm going to tell you, because Ibelieve--ah--that when a boy knows his difficulties he's better able tocope with them--to conform to what others expect of him. " He a-hemmedagain with delicate reticence, and continued: "They seem to think thatyou're--ah--rather too fresh--"

Amory could stand no more. He rose from his chair, scarcely controllinghis voice when he spoke. 

"I know--oh, _don't_ you s'pose I know. " His voice rose. "I know whatthey think; do you s'pose you have to _tell_ me!" He paused. "I'm--I'vegot to go back now--hope I'm not rude--"

He left the room hurriedly. In the cool air outside, as he walked to hishouse, he exulted in his refusal to be helped. 

"That _damn_ old fool!" he cried wildly. "As if I didn't _know!_"

He decided, however, that this was a good excuse not to go back to studyhall that night, so, comfortably couched up in his room, he munchedNabiscos and finished "The White Company. "

 *****

INCIDENT OF THE WONDERFUL GIRL

There was a bright star in February. New York burst upon him onWashington's Birthday with the brilliance of a long-anticipated event. His glimpse of it as a vivid whiteness against a deep-blue sky had lefta picture of splendor that rivalled the dream cities in the ArabianNights; but this time he saw it by electric light, and romance gleamedfrom the chariot-race sign on Broadway and from the women's eyes at theAstor, where he and young Paskert from St. Regis' had dinner. When theywalked down the aisle of the theatre, greeted by the nervous twangingand discord of untuned violins and the sensuous, heavy fragrance ofpaint and powder, he moved in a sphere of epicurean delight. Everythingenchanted him. The play was "The Little Millionaire, " with George M. Cohan, and there was one stunning young brunette who made him sit withbrimming eyes in the ecstasy of watching her dance. 

 "Oh--you--wonderful girl, What a wonderful girl you are--"

sang the tenor, and Amory agreed silently, but passionately. 

 "All--your--wonderful words Thrill me through--"

The violins swelled and quavered on the last notes, the girl sank to acrumpled butterfly on the stage, a great burst of clapping filled thehouse. Oh, to fall in love like that, to the languorous magic melody ofsuch a tune!

The last scene was laid on a roof-garden, and the 'cellos sighed to themusical moon, while light adventure and facile froth-like comedy flittedback and forth in the calcium. Amory was on fire to be an habitui ofroof-gardens, to meet a girl who should look like that--better, thatvery girl; whose hair would be drenched with golden moonlight, while athis elbow sparkling wine was poured by an unintelligible waiter. Whenthe curtain fell for the last time he gave such a long sigh that thepeople in front of him twisted around and stared and said loud enoughfor him to hear:

"What a _remarkable_-looking boy!"

This took his mind off the play, and he wondered if he really did seemhandsome to the population of New York. 

Paskert and he walked in silence toward their hotel. The former wasthe first to speak. His uncertain fifteen-year-old voice broke in in amelancholy strain on Amory's musings:

"I'd marry that girl to-night. "

There was no need to ask what girl he referred to. 

"I'd be proud to take her home and introduce her to my people, "continued Paskert. 

Amory was distinctly impressed. He wished he had said it instead ofPaskert. It sounded so mature. 

"I wonder about actresses; are they all pretty bad?"

"No, _sir_, not by a darn sight, " said the worldly youth with emphasis, "and I know that girl's as good as gold. I can tell. "

They wandered on, mixing in the Broadway crowd, dreaming on the musicthat eddied out of the cafes. New faces flashed on and off likemyriad lights, pale or rouged faces, tired, yet sustained by a wearyexcitement. Amory watched them in fascination. He was planning his life. He was going to live in New York, and be known at every restaurant andcafe, wearing a dress-suit from early evening to early morning, sleepingaway the dull hours of the forenoon. 

"Yes, _sir_, I'd marry that girl to-night!"

 *****

HEROIC IN GENERAL TONE

October of his second and last year at St. Regis' was a high point inAmory's memory. The game with Groton was played from three of a snappy, exhilarating afternoon far into the crisp autumnal twilight, and Amoryat quarter-back, exhorting in wild despair, making impossible tackles, calling signals in a voice that had diminished to a hoarse, furiouswhisper, yet found time to revel in the blood-stained bandage around hishead, and the straining, glorious heroism of plunging, crashing bodiesand aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of theNovember dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover onthe prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel andTed Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own willinto the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder ofcheers. . . Finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, changing pace, straight-arming. . . Falling behind the Grotongoal with two men on his legs, in the only touchdown of the game. 

 *****

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SLICKER

From the scoffing superiority of sixth-form year and success Amorylooked back with cynical wonder on his status of the year before. He waschanged as completely as Amory Blaine could ever be changed. Amory plusBeatrice plus two years in Minneapolis--these had been his ingredientswhen he entered St. Regis'. But the Minneapolis years were not a thickenough overlay to conceal the "Amory plus Beatrice" from the ferretingeyes of a boarding-school, so St. Regis' had very painfully drilledBeatrice out of him, and begun to lay down new and more conventionalplanking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory wereunconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himselfchanged. Those qualities for which he had suffered, his moodiness, histendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool, werenow taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a starquarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the St. Regis Tattler:it puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating the veryvanities that had not long ago been contemptible weaknesses. 

After the football season he slumped into dreamy content. The nightof the pre-holiday dance he slipped away and went early to bed for thepleasure of hearing the violin music cross the grass and come surging inat his window. Many nights he lay there dreaming awake of secret cafesin Mont Martre, where ivory women delved in romantic mysteries withdiplomats and soldiers of fortune, while orchestras played Hungarianwaltzes and the air was thick and exotic with intrigue and moonlightand adventure. In the spring he read "L'Allegro, " by request, and wasinspired to lyrical outpourings on the subject of Arcady and the pipesof Pan. He moved his bed so that the sun would wake him at dawn that hemight dress and go out to the archaic swing that hung from an apple-treenear the sixth-form house. Seating himself in this he would pump higherand higher until he got the effect of swinging into the wide air, intoa fairyland of piping satyrs and nymphs with the faces of fair-hairedgirls he passed in the streets of Eastchester. As the swing reached itshighest point, Arcady really lay just over the brow of a certain hill, where the brown road dwindled out of sight in a golden dot. 

He read voluminously all spring, the beginning of his eighteenth year:"The Gentleman from Indiana, " "The New Arabian Nights, " "The Moralsof Marcus Ordeyne, " "The Man Who Was Thursday, " which he liked withoutunderstanding; "Stover at Yale, " that became somewhat of a text-book;"Dombey and Son, " because he thought he really should read betterstuff; Robert Chambers, David Graham Phillips, and E. Phillips Oppenheimcomplete, and a scattering of Tennyson and Kipling. Of all his classwork only "L'Allegro" and some quality of rigid clarity in solidgeometry stirred his languid interest. 

As June drew near, he felt the need of conversation to formulate hisown ideas, and, to his surprise, found a co-philosopher in Rahill, thepresident of the sixth form. In many a talk, on the highroad or lyingbelly-down along the edge of the baseball diamond, or late at night withtheir cigarettes glowing in the dark, they threshed out the questions ofschool, and there was developed the term "slicker. "

"Got tobacco?" whispered Rahill one night, putting his head inside thedoor five minutes after lights. 

"Sure. "

"I'm coming in. "

"Take a couple of pillows and lie in the window-seat, why don't you. "

Amory sat up in bed and lit a cigarette while Rahill settled for aconversation. Rahill's favorite subject was the respective futures ofthe sixth form, and Amory never tired of outlining them for his benefit. 

"Ted Converse? 'At's easy. He'll fail his exams, tutor all summer atHarstrum's, get into Sheff with about four conditions, and flunk out inthe middle of the freshman year. Then he'll go back West and raise hellfor a year or so; finally his father will make him go into the paintbusiness. He'll marry and have four sons, all bone heads. He'll alwaysthink St. Regis's spoiled him, so he'll send his sons to day school inPortland. He'll die of locomotor ataxia when he's forty-one, andhis wife will give a baptizing stand or whatever you call it to thePresbyterian Church, with his name on it--"

"Hold up, Amory. That's too darned gloomy. How about yourself?"

"I'm in a superior class. You are, too. We're philosophers. "

"I'm not. "

"Sure you are. You've got a darn good head on you. " But Amory knew thatnothing in the abstract, no theory or generality, ever moved Rahilluntil he stubbed his toe upon the concrete minutiae of it. 

"Haven't, " insisted Rahill. "I let people impose on me here and don'tget anything out of it. I'm the prey of my friends, damn it--do theirlessons, get 'em out of trouble, pay 'em stupid summer visits, andalways entertain their kid sisters; keep my temper when they get selfishand then they think they pay me back by voting for me and telling me I'mthe 'big man' of St. Regis's. I want to get where everybody does theirown work and I can tell people where to go. I'm tired of being nice toevery poor fish in school. "

"You're not a slicker, " said Amory suddenly. 

"A what?"

"A slicker. "

"What the devil's that?"

"Well, it's something that--that--there's a lot of them. You're not one, and neither am I, though I am more than you are. "

"Who is one? What makes you one?"

Amory considered. 

"Why--why, I suppose that the _sign_ of it is when a fellow slicks hishair back with water. "

"Like Carstairs?"

"Yes--sure. He's a slicker. "

They spent two evenings getting an exact definition. The slicker wasgood-looking or clean-looking; he had brains, social brains, that is, and he used all means on the broad path of honesty to get ahead, be popular, admired, and never in trouble. He dressed well, wasparticularly neat in appearance, and derived his name from the fact thathis hair was inevitably worn short, soaked in water or tonic, partedin the middle, and slicked back as the current of fashion dictated. Theslickers of that year had adopted tortoise-shell spectacles as badgesof their slickerhood, and this made them so easy to recognize that Amoryand Rahill never missed one. The slicker seemed distributed throughschool, always a little wiser and shrewder than his contemporaries, managing some team or other, and keeping his cleverness carefullyconcealed. 

Amory found the slicker a most valuable classification until his junioryear in college, when the outline became so blurred and indeterminatethat it had to be subdivided many times, and became only a quality. Amory's secret ideal had all the slicker qualifications, but, inaddition, courage and tremendous brains and talents--also Amory concededhim a bizarre streak that was quite irreconcilable to the slickerproper. 

This was a first real break from the hypocrisy of school tradition. Theslicker was a definite element of success, differing intrinsically fromthe prep school "big man. "

 "THE SLICKER"

 1. Clever sense of social values. 

 2. Dresses well. Pretends that dress is superficial--but knows that it isn't. 

 3. Goes into such activities as he can shine in. 

 4. Gets to college and is, in a worldly way, successful. 

 5. Hair slicked. 

 "THE BIG MAN"

 1. Inclined to stupidity and unconscious of social values. 

 2. Thinks dress is superficial, and is inclined to be careless about it. 

 3. Goes out for everything from a sense of duty. 

 4. Gets to college and has a problematical future. Feels lost without his circle, and always says that school days were happiest, after all. Goes back to school and makes speeches about what St. Regis's boys are doing. 

 5. Hair not slicked. 

Amory had decided definitely on Princeton, even though he would be theonly boy entering that year from St. Regis'. Yale had a romance andglamour from the tales of Minneapolis, and St. Regis' men who had been"tapped for Skull and Bones, " but Princeton drew him most, withits atmosphere of bright colors and its alluring reputation as thepleasantest country club in America. Dwarfed by the menacing collegeexams, Amory's school days drifted into the past. Years afterward, whenhe went back to St. Regis', he seemed to have forgotten the successesof sixth-form year, and to be able to picture himself only as theunadjustable boy who had hurried down corridors, jeered at by his rabidcontemporaries mad with common sense. 

CHAPTER 2. Spires and Gargoyles

At first Amory noticed only the wealth of sunshine creeping across thelong, green swards, dancing on the leaded window-panes, and swimmingaround the tops of spires and towers and battlemented walls. Gradually he realized that he was really walking up University Place, self-conscious about his suitcase, developing a new tendency to glarestraight ahead when he passed any one. Several times he could have swornthat men turned to look at him critically. He wondered vaguely if therewas something the matter with his clothes, and wished he had shavedthat morning on the train. He felt unnecessarily stiff and awkwardamong these white-flannelled, bareheaded youths, who must be juniors andseniors, judging from the savoir faire with which they strolled. 

He found that 12 University Place was a large, dilapidated mansion, atpresent apparently uninhabited, though he knew it housed usually a dozenfreshmen. After a hurried skirmish with his landlady he sallied out ona tour of exploration, but he had gone scarcely a block when he becamehorribly conscious that he must be the only man in town who was wearinga hat. He returned hurriedly to 12 University, left his derby, and, emerging bareheaded, loitered down Nassau Street, stopping toinvestigate a display of athletic photographs in a store window, including a large one of Allenby, the football captain, and nextattracted by the sign "Jigger Shop" over a confectionary window. Thissounded familiar, so he sauntered in and took a seat on a high stool. 

"Chocolate sundae, " he told a colored person. 

"Double chocolate jiggah? Anything else?"

"Why--yes. "

"Bacon bun?"

"Why--yes. "

He munched four of these, finding them of pleasing savor, and thenconsumed another double-chocolate jigger before ease descended upon him. After a cursory inspection of the pillow-cases, leather pennants, andGibson Girls that lined the walls, he left, and continued along NassauStreet with his hands in his pockets. Gradually he was learning todistinguish between upper classmen and entering men, even though thefreshman cap would not appear until the following Monday. Those who weretoo obviously, too nervously at home were freshmen, for as each trainbrought a new contingent it was immediately absorbed into the hatless, white-shod, book-laden throng, whose function seemed to be to driftendlessly up and down the street, emitting great clouds of smokefrom brand-new pipes. By afternoon Amory realized that now thenewest arrivals were taking him for an upper classman, and he triedconscientiously to look both pleasantly blasé and casually critical, which was as near as he could analyze the prevalent facial expression. 

At five o'clock he felt the need of hearing his own voice, so heretreated to his house to see if any one else had arrived. Havingclimbed the rickety stairs he scrutinized his room resignedly, concluding that it was hopeless to attempt any more inspired decorationthan class banners and tiger pictures. There was a tap at the door. 

"Come in!"

A slim face with gray eyes and a humorous smile appeared in the doorway. 

"Got a hammer?"

"No--sorry. Maybe Mrs. Twelve, or whatever she goes by, has one. "

The stranger advanced into the room. 

"You an inmate of this asylum?"

Amory nodded. 

"Awful barn for the rent we pay. "

Amory had to agree that it was. 

"I thought of the campus, " he said, "but they say there's so fewfreshmen that they're lost. Have to sit around and study for somethingto do. "

The gray-eyed man decided to introduce himself. 

"My name's Holiday. "

"Blaine's my name. "

They shook hands with the fashionable low swoop. Amory grinned. 

"Where'd you prep?"

"Andover--where did you?"

"St. Regis's. "

"Oh, did you? I had a cousin there. "

They discussed the cousin thoroughly, and then Holiday announced that hewas to meet his brother for dinner at six. 

"Come along and have a bite with us. "

"All right. "

At the Kenilworth Amory met Burne Holiday--he of the gray eyes wasKerry--and during a limpid meal of thin soup and anaemic vegetables theystared at the other freshmen, who sat either in small groups lookingvery ill at ease, or in large groups seeming very much at home. 

"I hear Commons is pretty bad, " said Amory. 

"That's the rumor. But you've got to eat there--or pay anyways. "

"Crime!"

"Imposition!"

"Oh, at Princeton you've got to swallow everything the first year. It'slike a damned prep school. "

Amory agreed. 

"Lot of pep, though, " he insisted. "I wouldn't have gone to Yale for amillion. "

"Me either. "

"You going out for anything?" inquired Amory of the elder brother. 

"Not me--Burne here is going out for the Prince--the Daily Princetonian, you know. "

"Yes, I know. "

"You going out for anything?"

"Why--yes. I'm going to take a whack at freshman football. "

"Play at St. Regis's?"

"Some, " admitted Amory depreciatingly, "but I'm getting so damned thin. "

"You're not thin. "

"Well, I used to be stocky last fall. "

"Oh!"

After supper they attended the movies, where Amory was fascinated by theglib comments of a man in front of him, as well as by the wild yellingand shouting. 

"Yoho!"

"Oh, honey-baby--you're so big and strong, but oh, so gentle!"

"Clinch!"

"Oh, Clinch!"

"Kiss her, kiss 'at lady, quick!"

"Oh-h-h--!"

A group began whistling "By the Sea, " and the audience took it upnoisily. This was followed by an indistinguishable song that includedmuch stamping and then by an endless, incoherent dirge. 

 "Oh-h-h-h-h She works in a Jam Factoree And--that-may-be-all-right But you can't-fool-me For I know--DAMN--WELL That she DON'T-make-jam-all-night! Oh-h-h-h!"

As they pushed out, giving and receiving curious impersonal glances, Amory decided that he liked the movies, wanted to enjoy them as the rowof upper classmen in front had enjoyed them, with their arms along thebacks of the seats, their comments Gaelic and caustic, their attitude amixture of critical wit and tolerant amusement. 

"Want a sundae--I mean a jigger?" asked Kerry. 

"Sure. "

They suppered heavily and then, still sauntering, eased back to 12. 

"Wonderful night. "

"It's a whiz. "

"You men going to unpack?"

"Guess so. Come on, Burne. "

Amory decided to sit for a while on the front steps, so he bade themgood night. 

The great tapestries of trees had darkened to ghosts back at the lastedge of twilight. The early moon had drenched the arches with pale blue, and, weaving over the night, in and out of the gossamer rifts of moon, swept a song, a song with more than a hint of sadness, infinitelytransient, infinitely regretful. 

He remembered that an alumnus of the nineties had told him of one ofBooth Tarkington's amusements: standing in mid-campus in the small hoursand singing tenor songs to the stars, arousing mingled emotions in thecouched undergraduates according to the sentiment of their moods. 

Now, far down the shadowy line of University Place a white-clad phalanxbroke the gloom, and marching figures, white-shirted, white-trousered, swung rhythmically up the street, with linked arms and heads thrownback:

 "Going back--going back, Going--back--to--Nas-sau--Hall, Going back--going back-- To the--Best--Old--Place--of--All. Going back--going back, From all--this--earth-ly--ball, We'll--clear--the--track--as--we--go--back-- Going--back--to--Nas-sau--Hall!"

Amory closed his eyes as the ghostly procession drew near. The songsoared so high that all dropped out except the tenors, who bore themelody triumphantly past the danger-point and relinquished it to thefantastic chorus. Then Amory opened his eyes, half afraid that sightwould spoil the rich illusion of harmony. 

He sighed eagerly. There at the head of the white platoon marchedAllenby, the football captain, slim and defiant, as if aware that thisyear the hopes of the college rested on him, that his hundred-and-sixtypounds were expected to dodge to victory through the heavy blue andcrimson lines. 

Fascinated, Amory watched each rank of linked arms as it came abreast, the faces indistinct above the polo shirts, the voices blent in a paeanof triumph--and then the procession passed through shadowy CampbellArch, and the voices grew fainter as it wound eastward over the campus. 

The minutes passed and Amory sat there very quietly. He regretted therule that would forbid freshmen to be outdoors after curfew, for hewanted to ramble through the shadowy scented lanes, where Witherspoonbrooded like a dark mother over Whig and Clio, her Attic children, wherethe black Gothic snake of Little curled down to Cuyler and Patton, thesein turn flinging the mystery out over the placid slope rolling to thelake. 

 *****

Princeton of the daytime filtered slowly into his consciousness--Westand Reunion, redolent of the sixties, Seventy-nine Hall, brick-red andarrogant, Upper and Lower Pyne, aristocratic Elizabethan ladies notquite content to live among shopkeepers, and, topping all, climbing withclear blue aspiration, the great dreaming spires of Holder and Clevelandtowers. 

From the first he loved Princeton--its lazy beauty, its half-graspedsignificance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome, prosperous big-game crowds, and under it all the air of struggle thatpervaded his class. From the day when, wild-eyed and exhausted, thejerseyed freshmen sat in the gymnasium and elected some one from HillSchool class president, a Lawrenceville celebrity vice-president, ahockey star from St. Paul's secretary, up until the end of sophomoreyear it never ceased, that breathless social system, that worship, seldom named, never really admitted, of the bogey "Big Man. "

First it was schools, and Amory, alone from St. Regis', watched thecrowds form and widen and form again; St. Paul's, Hill, Pomfret, eatingat certain tacitly reserved tables in Commons, dressing in their owncorners of the gymnasium, and drawing unconsciously about them a barrierof the slightly less important but socially ambitious to protect themfrom the friendly, rather puzzled high-school element. From themoment he realized this Amory resented social barriers as artificialdistinctions made by the strong to bolster up their weak retainers andkeep out the almost strong. 

Having decided to be one of the gods of the class, he reportedfor freshman football practice, but in the second week, playingquarter-back, already paragraphed in corners of the Princetonian, hewrenched his knee seriously enough to put him out for the rest of theseason. This forced him to retire and consider the situation. 

"12 Univee" housed a dozen miscellaneous question-marks. There werethree or four inconspicuous and quite startled boys from Lawrenceville, two amateur wild men from a New York private school (Kerry Holidaychristened them the "plebeian drunks"), a Jewish youth, also from NewYork, and, as compensation for Amory, the two Holidays, to whom he tookan instant fancy. 

The Holidays were rumored twins, but really the dark-haired one, Kerry, was a year older than his blond brother, Burne. Kerry was tall, withhumorous gray eyes, and a sudden, attractive smile; he became at oncethe mentor of the house, reaper of ears that grew too high, censor ofconceit, vendor of rare, satirical humor. Amory spread the table oftheir future friendship with all his ideas of what college should anddid mean. Kerry, not inclined as yet to take things seriously, chidedhim gently for being curious at this inopportune time about theintricacies of the social system, but liked him and was both interestedand amused. 

Burne, fair-haired, silent, and intent, appeared in the house only as abusy apparition, gliding in quietly at night and off again in theearly morning to get up his work in the library--he was out for thePrincetonian, competing furiously against forty others for the covetedfirst place. In December he came down with diphtheria, and some oneelse won the competition, but, returning to college in February, he dauntlessly went after the prize again. Necessarily, Amory'sacquaintance with him was in the way of three-minute chats, walkingto and from lectures, so he failed to penetrate Burne's one absorbinginterest and find what lay beneath it. 

Amory was far from contented. He missed the place he had won at St. Regis', the being known and admired, yet Princeton stimulated him, andthere were many things ahead calculated to arouse the Machiavelli latentin him, could he but insert a wedge. The upper-class clubs, concerningwhich he had pumped a reluctant graduate during the previous summer, excited his curiosity: Ivy, detached and breathlessly aristocratic;Cottage, an impressive milange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressedphilanderers; Tiger Inn, broad-shouldered and athletic, vitalized byan honest elaboration of prep-school standards; Cap and Gown, anti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful; flamboyantColonial; literary Quadrangle; and the dozen others, varying in age andposition. 

Anything which brought an under classman into too glaring a light waslabelled with the damning brand of "running it out. " The movies thrivedon caustic comments, but the men who made them were generally runningit out; talking of clubs was running it out; standing for anythingvery strongly, as, for instance, drinking parties or teetotalling, was running it out; in short, being personally conspicuous was nottolerated, and the influential man was the non-committal man, until atclub elections in sophomore year every one should be sewed up in somebag for the rest of his college career. 

Amory found that writing for the Nassau Literary Magazine would get himnothing, but that being on the board of the Daily Princetonian wouldget any one a good deal. His vague desire to do immortal acting withthe English Dramatic Association faded out when he found that the mostingenious brains and talents were concentrated upon the Triangle Club, amusical comedy organization that every year took a great Christmas trip. In the meanwhile, feeling strangely alone and restless in Commons, withnew desires and ambitions stirring in his mind, he let the first term goby between an envy of the embryo successes and a puzzled fretting withKerry as to why they were not accepted immediately among the elite ofthe class. 

Many afternoons they lounged in the windows of 12 Univee and watchedthe class pass to and from Commons, noting satellites already attachingthemselves to the more prominent, watching the lonely grind with hishurried step and downcast eye, envying the happy security of the bigschool groups. 

"We're the damned middle class, that's what!" he complained to Kerry oneday as he lay stretched out on the sofa, consuming a family of Fatimaswith contemplative precision. 

"Well, why not? We came to Princeton so we could feel that way towardthe small colleges--have it on 'em, more self-confidence, dress better, cut a swathe--"

"Oh, it isn't that I mind the glittering caste system, " admitted Amory. "I like having a bunch of hot cats on top, but gosh, Kerry, I've got tobe one of them. "

"But just now, Amory, you're only a sweaty bourgeois. "

Amory lay for a moment without speaking. 

"I won't be--long, " he said finally. "But I hate to get anywhere byworking for it. I'll show the marks, don't you know. "

"Honorable scars. " Kerry craned his neck suddenly at the street. "There's Langueduc, if you want to see what he looks like--and Humbirdjust behind. "

Amory rose dynamically and sought the windows. 

"Oh, " he said, scrutinizing these worthies, "Humbird looks like aknock-out, but this Langueduc--he's the rugged type, isn't he? Idistrust that sort. All diamonds look big in the rough. "

"Well, " said Kerry, as the excitement subsided, "you're a literarygenius. It's up to you. "

"I wonder"--Amory paused--"if I could be. I honestly think so sometimes. That sounds like the devil, and I wouldn't say it to anybody exceptyou. "

"Well--go ahead. Let your hair grow and write poems like this guyD'Invilliers in the Lit. "

Amory reached lazily at a pile of magazines on the table. 

"Read his latest effort?"

"Never miss 'em. They're rare. "

Amory glanced through the issue. 

"Hello!" he said in surprise, "he's a freshman, isn't he?"

"Yeah. "

"Listen to this! My God!

 "'A serving lady speaks: Black velvet trails its folds over the day, White tapers, prisoned in their silver frames, Wave their thin flames like shadows in the wind, Pia, Pompia, come--come away--'

"Now, what the devil does that mean?"

"It's a pantry scene. "

 "'Her toes are stiffened like a stork's in flight; She's laid upon her bed, on the white sheets, Her hands pressed on her smooth bust like a saint, Bella Cunizza, come into the light!'

"My gosh, Kerry, what in hell is it all about? I swear I don't get himat all, and I'm a literary bird myself. "

"It's pretty tricky, " said Kerry, "only you've got to think of hearsesand stale milk when you read it. That isn't as pash as some of them. "

Amory tossed the magazine on the table. 

"Well, " he sighed, "I sure am up in the air. I know I'm not a regularfellow, yet I loathe anybody else that isn't. I can't decide whether tocultivate my mind and be a great dramatist, or to thumb my nose at theGolden Treasury and be a Princeton slicker. "

"Why decide?" suggested Kerry. "Better drift, like me. I'm going to sailinto prominence on Burne's coat-tails. "

"I can't drift--I want to be interested. I want to pull strings, evenfor somebody else, or be Princetonian chairman or Triangle president. Iwant to be admired, Kerry. "

"You're thinking too much about yourself. "

Amory sat up at this. 

"No. I'm thinking about you, too. We've got to get out and mix aroundthe class right now, when it's fun to be a snob. I'd like to bring asardine to the prom in June, for instance, but I wouldn't do it unlessI could be damn debonaire about it--introduce her to all the prizeparlor-snakes, and the football captain, and all that simple stuff. "

"Amory, " said Kerry impatiently, "you're just going around in a circle. If you want to be prominent, get out and try for something; if youdon't, just take it easy. " He yawned. "Come on, let's let the smokedrift off. We'll go down and watch football practice. "

 *****

Amory gradually accepted this point of view, decided that next fallwould inaugurate his career, and relinquished himself to watching Kerryextract joy from 12 Univee. 

They filled the Jewish youth's bed with lemon pie; they put out the gasall over the house every night by blowing into the jet in Amory's room, to the bewilderment of Mrs. Twelve and the local plumber; they set upthe effects of the plebeian drunks--pictures, books, and furniture--inthe bathroom, to the confusion of the pair, who hazily discoveredthe transposition on their return from a Trenton spree; they weredisappointed beyond measure when the plebeian drunks decided to take itas a joke; they played red-dog and twenty-one and jackpot from dinnerto dawn, and on the occasion of one man's birthday persuaded him to buysufficient champagne for a hilarious celebration. The donor of the partyhaving remained sober, Kerry and Amory accidentally dropped him down twoflights of stairs and called, shame-faced and penitent, at the infirmaryall the following week. 

"Say, who are all these women?" demanded Kerry one day, protestingat the size of Amory's mail. "I've been looking at the postmarkslately--Farmington and Dobbs and Westover and Dana Hall--what's theidea?"

Amory grinned. 

"All from the Twin Cities. " He named them off. "There's Marylyn DeWitt--she's pretty, got a car of her own and that's damn convenient;there's Sally Weatherby--she's getting too fat; there's Myra St. Claire, she's an old flame, easy to kiss if you like it--"

"What line do you throw 'em?" demanded Kerry. "I've tried everything, and the mad wags aren't even afraid of me. "

"You're the 'nice boy' type, " suggested Amory. 

"That's just it. Mother always feels the girl is safe if she's with me. Honestly, it's annoying. If I start to hold somebody's hand, they laughat me, and let me, just as if it wasn't part of them. As soon as I gethold of a hand they sort of disconnect it from the rest of them. "

"Sulk, " suggested Amory. "Tell 'em you're wild and have 'em reformyou--go home furious--come back in half an hour--startle 'em. "

Kerry shook his head. 

"No chance. I wrote a St. Timothy girl a really loving letter last year. In one place I got rattled and said: 'My God, how I love you!' She tooka nail scissors, clipped out the 'My God' and showed the rest of theletter all over school. Doesn't work at all. I'm just 'good old Kerry'and all that rot. "

Amory smiled and tried to picture himself as "good old Amory. " He failedcompletely. 

February dripped snow and rain, the cyclonic freshman mid-years passed, and life in 12 Univee continued interesting if not purposeful. Once aday Amory indulged in a club sandwich, cornflakes, and Julienne potatoesat "Joe's, " accompanied usually by Kerry or Alec Connage. The latter wasa quiet, rather aloof slicker from Hotchkiss, who lived next door andshared the same enforced singleness as Amory, due to the fact thathis entire class had gone to Yale. "Joe's" was unaesthetic and faintlyunsanitary, but a limitless charge account could be opened there, aconvenience that Amory appreciated. His father had been experimentingwith mining stocks and, in consequence, his allowance, while liberal, was not at all what he had expected. 

"Joe's" had the additional advantage of seclusion from curiousupper-class eyes, so at four each afternoon Amory, accompanied by friendor book, went up to experiment with his digestion. One day in March, finding that all the tables were occupied, he slipped into a chairopposite a freshman who bent intently over a book at the last table. They nodded briefly. For twenty minutes Amory sat consuming bacon bunsand reading "Mrs. Warren's Profession" (he had discovered Shaw quiteby accident while browsing in the library during mid-years); the otherfreshman, also intent on his volume, meanwhile did away with a trio ofchocolate malted milks. 

By and by Amory's eyes wandered curiously to his fellow-luncher's book. He spelled out the name and title upside down--"Marpessa, " by StephenPhillips. This meant nothing to him, his metrical education having beenconfined to such Sunday classics as "Come into the Garden, Maude, " andwhat morsels of Shakespeare and Milton had been recently forced uponhim. 

Moved to address his vis-a-vis, he simulated interest in his book for amoment, and then exclaimed aloud as if involuntarily:

"Ha! Great stuff!"

The other freshman looked up and Amory registered artificialembarrassment. 

"Are you referring to your bacon buns?" His cracked, kindly voicewent well with the large spectacles and the impression of a voluminouskeenness that he gave. 

"No, " Amory answered. "I was referring to Bernard Shaw. " He turned thebook around in explanation. 

"I've never read any Shaw. I've always meant to. " The boy paused andthen continued: "Did you ever read Stephen Phillips, or do you likepoetry?"

"Yes, indeed, " Amory affirmed eagerly. "I've never read much ofPhillips, though. " (He had never heard of any Phillips except the lateDavid Graham. )

"It's pretty fair, I think. Of course he's a Victorian. " They salliedinto a discussion of poetry, in the course of which they introducedthemselves, and Amory's companion proved to be none other than "thatawful highbrow, Thomas Parke D'Invilliers, " who signed the passionatelove-poems in the Lit. He was, perhaps, nineteen, with stoopedshoulders, pale blue eyes, and, as Amory could tell from his generalappearance, without much conception of social competition and suchphenomena of absorbing interest. Still, he liked books, and it seemedforever since Amory had met any one who did; if only that St. Paul'scrowd at the next table would not mistake _him_ for a bird, too, hewould enjoy the encounter tremendously. They didn't seem to be noticing, so he let himself go, discussed books by the dozens--books he had read, read about, books he had never heard of, rattling off lists of titleswith the facility of a Brentano's clerk. D'Invilliers was partiallytaken in and wholly delighted. In a good-natured way he had almostdecided that Princeton was one part deadly Philistines and one partdeadly grinds, and to find a person who could mention Keats withoutstammering, yet evidently washed his hands, was rather a treat. 

"Ever read any Oscar Wilde?" he asked. 

"No. Who wrote it?"

"It's a man--don't you know?"

"Oh, surely. " A faint chord was struck in Amory's memory. "Wasn't thecomic opera, 'Patience, ' written about him?"

"Yes, that's the fella. I've just finished a book of his, 'The Pictureof Dorian Gray, ' and I certainly wish you'd read it. You'd like it. Youcan borrow it if you want to. "

"Why, I'd like it a lot--thanks. "

"Don't you want to come up to the room? I've got a few other books. "

Amory hesitated, glanced at the St. Paul's group--one of them was themagnificent, exquisite Humbird--and he considered how determinate theaddition of this friend would be. He never got to the stage of makingthem and getting rid of them--he was not hard enough for that--so hemeasured Thomas Parke D'Invilliers' undoubted attractions and valueagainst the menace of cold eyes behind tortoise-rimmed spectacles thathe fancied glared from the next table. 

"Yes, I'll go. "

So he found "Dorian Gray" and the "Mystic and Somber Dolores" and the"Belle Dame sans Merci"; for a month was keen on naught else. The worldbecame pale and interesting, and he tried hard to look at Princetonthrough the satiated eyes of Oscar Wilde and Swinburne--or "FingalO'Flaherty" and "Algernon Charles, " as he called them in precieuse jest. He read enormously every night--Shaw, Chesterton, Barrie, Pinero, Yeats, Synge, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, Keats, Sudermann, Robert HughBenson, the Savoy Operas--just a heterogeneous mixture, for he suddenlydiscovered that he had read nothing for years. 

Tom D'Invilliers became at first an occasion rather than a friend. Amorysaw him about once a week, and together they gilded the ceiling ofTom's room and decorated the walls with imitation tapestry, bought atan auction, tall candlesticks and figured curtains. Amory liked him forbeing clever and literary without effeminacy or affectation. In fact, Amory did most of the strutting and tried painfully to make every remarkan epigram, than which, if one is content with ostensible epigrams, there are many feats harder. 12 Univee was amused. Kerry read "DorianGray" and simulated Lord Henry, following Amory about, addressing himas "Dorian" and pretending to encourage in him wicked fancies andattenuated tendencies to ennui. When he carried it into Commons, to theamazement of the others at table, Amory became furiously embarrassed, and after that made epigrams only before D'Invilliers or a convenientmirror. 

One day Tom and Amory tried reciting their own and Lord Dunsany's poemsto the music of Kerry's graphophone. 

"Chant!" cried Tom. "Don't recite! Chant!"

Amory, who was performing, looked annoyed, and claimed that he neededa record with less piano in it. Kerry thereupon rolled on the floor instifled laughter. 

"Put on 'Hearts and Flowers'!" he howled. "Oh, my Lord, I'm going tocast a kitten. "

"Shut off the damn graphophone, " Amory cried, rather red in the face. "I'm not giving an exhibition. "

In the meanwhile Amory delicately kept trying to awaken a sense of thesocial system in D'Invilliers, for he knew that this poet was reallymore conventional than he, and needed merely watered hair, a smallerrange of conversation, and a darker brown hat to become quite regular. But the liturgy of Livingstone collars and dark ties fell on heedlessears; in fact D'Invilliers faintly resented his efforts; so Amoryconfined himself to calls once a week, and brought him occasionally to12 Univee. This caused mild titters among the other freshmen, who calledthem "Doctor Johnson and Boswell. "

Alec Connage, another frequent visitor, liked him in a vague way, butwas afraid of him as a highbrow. Kerry, who saw through his poeticpatter to the solid, almost respectable depths within, was immenselyamused and would have him recite poetry by the hour, while he lay withclosed eyes on Amory's sofa and listened:

 "Asleep or waking is it? for her neck Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out; Soft and stung softly--fairer for a fleck. . . "

"That's good, " Kerry would say softly. "It pleases the elder Holiday. That's a great poet, I guess. " Tom, delighted at an audience, wouldramble through the "Poems and Ballades" until Kerry and Amory knew themalmost as well as he. 

Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of thebig estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in theartificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willows. May came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered thecampus at all hours through starlight and rain. 

 *****

A DAMP SYMBOLIC INTERLUDE

The night mist fell. From the moon it rolled, clustered about the spiresand towers, and then settled below them, so that the dreaming peaks werestill in lofty aspiration toward the sky. Figures that dotted theday like ants now brushed along as shadowy ghosts, in and out ofthe foreground. The Gothic halls and cloisters were infinitely moremysterious as they loomed suddenly out of the darkness, outlined each bymyriad faint squares of yellow light. Indefinitely from somewhere a bellboomed the quarter-hour, and Amory, pausing by the sun-dial, stretchedhimself out full length on the damp grass. The cool bathed his eyes andslowed the flight of time--time that had crept so insidiously throughthe lazy April afternoons, seemed so intangible in the long springtwilights. Evening after evening the senior singing had drifted over thecampus in melancholy beauty, and through the shell of his undergraduateconsciousness had broken a deep and reverent devotion to the gray wallsand Gothic peaks and all they symbolized as warehouses of dead ages. 

The tower that in view of his window sprang upward, grew into a spire, yearning higher until its uppermost tip was half invisible againstthe morning skies, gave him the first sense of the transiency andunimportance of the campus figures except as holders of the apostolicsuccession. He liked knowing that Gothic architecture, with its upwardtrend, was peculiarly appropriate to universities, and the idea becamepersonal to him. The silent stretches of green, the quiet halls withan occasional late-burning scholastic light held his imagination ina strong grasp, and the chastity of the spire became a symbol of thisperception. 

"Damn it all, " he whispered aloud, wetting his hands in the damp andrunning them through his hair. "Next year I work!" Yet he knew thatwhere now the spirit of spires and towers made him dreamily acquiescent, it would then overawe him. Where now he realized only his owninconsequence, effort would make him aware of his own impotency andinsufficiency. 

The college dreamed on--awake. He felt a nervous excitement that mighthave been the very throb of its slow heart. It was a stream where he wasto throw a stone whose faint ripple would be vanishing almost as it lefthis hand. As yet he had given nothing, he had taken nothing. 

A belated freshman, his oilskin slicker rasping loudly, slushed alongthe soft path. A voice from somewhere called the inevitable formula, "Stick out your head!" below an unseen window. A hundred little soundsof the current drifting on under the fog pressed in finally on hisconsciousness. 

"Oh, God!" he cried suddenly, and started at the sound of his voicein the stillness. The rain dripped on. A minute longer he lay withoutmoving, his hands clinched. Then he sprang to his feet and gave hisclothes a tentative pat. 

"I'm very damn wet!" he said aloud to the sun-dial. 

 *****

HISTORICAL

The war began in the summer following his freshman year. Beyond asporting interest in the German dash for Paris the whole affair failedeither to thrill or interest him. With the attitude he might have heldtoward an amusing melodrama he hoped it would be long and bloody. If ithad not continued he would have felt like an irate ticket-holder at aprize-fight where the principals refused to mix it up. 

That was his total reaction. 

 *****

"HA-HA HORTENSE!"

"All right, ponies!"

"Shake it up!"

"Hey, ponies--how about easing up on that crap game and shaking a meanhip?"

"Hey, _ponies!_"

The coach fumed helplessly, the Triangle Club president, gloweringwith anxiety, varied between furious bursts of authority and fits oftemperamental lassitude, when he sat spiritless and wondered how thedevil the show was ever going on tour by Christmas. 

"All right. We'll take the pirate song. "

The ponies took last drags at their cigarettes and slumped into place;the leading lady rushed into the foreground, setting his hands and feetin an atmospheric mince; and as the coach clapped and stamped and tumpedand da-da'd, they hashed out a dance. 

A great, seething ant-hill was the Triangle Club. It gave a musicalcomedy every year, travelling with cast, chorus, orchestra, and sceneryall through Christmas vacation. The play and music were the workof undergraduates, and the club itself was the most influential ofinstitutions, over three hundred men competing for it every year. 

Amory, after an easy victory in the first sophomore Princetoniancompetition, stepped into a vacancy of the cast as Boiling Oil, a PirateLieutenant. Every night for the last week they had rehearsed "Ha-HaHortense!" in the Casino, from two in the afternoon until eight in themorning, sustained by dark and powerful coffee, and sleeping inlectures through the interim. A rare scene, the Casino. A big, barnlikeauditorium, dotted with boys as girls, boys as pirates, boys as babies;the scenery in course of being violently set up; the spotlight manrehearsing by throwing weird shafts into angry eyes; over all theconstant tuning of the orchestra or the cheerful tumpty-tump of aTriangle tune. The boy who writes the lyrics stands in the corner, biting a pencil, with twenty minutes to think of an encore; the businessmanager argues with the secretary as to how much money can be spenton "those damn milkmaid costumes"; the old graduate, president inninety-eight, perches on a box and thinks how much simpler it was in hisday. 

How a Triangle show ever got off was a mystery, but it was a riotousmystery, anyway, whether or not one did enough service to wear a littlegold Triangle on his watch-chain. "Ha-Ha Hortense!" was written oversix times and had the names of nine collaborators on the programme. AllTriangle shows started by being "something different--not just a regularmusical comedy, " but when the several authors, the president, the coachand the faculty committee finished with it, there remained just the oldreliable Triangle show with the old reliable jokes and the star comedianwho got expelled or sick or something just before the trip, and thedark-whiskered man in the pony-ballet, who "absolutely won't shave twicea day, doggone it!"

There was one brilliant place in "Ha-Ha Hortense!" It is a Princetontradition that whenever a Yale man who is a member of the widelyadvertised "Skull and Bones" hears the sacred name mentioned, he mustleave the room. It is also a tradition that the members are invariablysuccessful in later life, amassing fortunes or votes or coupons orwhatever they choose to amass. Therefore, at each performance of "Ha-HaHortense!" half-a-dozen seats were kept from sale and occupied by sixof the worst-looking vagabonds that could be hired from the streets, further touched up by the Triangle make-up man. At the moment in theshow where Firebrand, the Pirate Chief, pointed at his black flag andsaid, "I am a Yale graduate--note my Skull and Bones!"--at this verymoment the six vagabonds were instructed to rise _conspicuously_ andleave the theatre with looks of deep melancholy and an injured dignity. It was claimed though never proved that on one occasion the hired Eliswere swelled by one of the real thing. 

They played through vacation to the fashionable of eight cities. Amoryliked Louisville and Memphis best: these knew how to meet strangers, furnished extraordinary punch, and flaunted an astonishing arrayof feminine beauty. Chicago he approved for a certain verve thattranscended its loud accent--however, it was a Yale town, and as theYale Glee Club was expected in a week the Triangle received only dividedhomage. In Baltimore, Princeton was at home, and every one fell in love. There was a proper consumption of strong waters all along the line; oneman invariably went on the stage highly stimulated, claiming that hisparticular interpretation of the part required it. There were threeprivate cars; however, no one slept except in the third car, whichwas called the "animal car, " and where were herded the spectacledwind-jammers of the orchestra. Everything was so hurried that therewas no time to be bored, but when they arrived in Philadelphia, withvacation nearly over, there was rest in getting out of the heavyatmosphere of flowers and grease-paint, and the ponies took off theircorsets with abdominal pains and sighs of relief. 

When the disbanding came, Amory set out post haste for Minneapolis, forSally Weatherby's cousin, Isabelle Borge, was coming to spend the winterin Minneapolis while her parents went abroad. He remembered Isabelleonly as a little girl with whom he had played sometimes when he firstwent to Minneapolis. She had gone to Baltimore to live--but since thenshe had developed a past. 

Amory was in full stride, confident, nervous, and jubilant. Scurryingback to Minneapolis to see a girl he had known as a child seemed theinteresting and romantic thing to do, so without compunction he wiredhis mother not to expect him. . . Sat in the train, and thought abouthimself for thirty-six hours. 

 *****

"PETTING"

On the Triangle trip Amory had come into constant contact with thatgreat current American phenomenon, the "petting party. "

None of the Victorian mothers--and most of the mothers wereVictorian--had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed tobe kissed. "Servant-girls are that way, " says Mrs. Huston-Carmelite toher popular daughter. "They are kissed first and proposed to afterward. "

But the Popular Daughter becomes engaged every six months betweensixteen and twenty-two, when she arranges a match with young Hambell, ofCambell & Hambell, who fatuously considers himself her first love, andbetween engagements the P. D. (she is selected by the cut-in system atdances, which favors the survival of the fittest) has other sentimentallast kisses in the moonlight, or the firelight, or the outer darkness. 

Amory saw girls doing things that even in his memory would have beenimpossible: eating three-o'clock, after-dance suppers in impossiblecafes, talking of every side of life with an air half of earnestness, half of mockery, yet with a furtive excitement that Amory consideredstood for a real moral let-down. But he never realized how wide-spreadit was until he saw the cities between New York and Chicago as one vastjuvenile intrigue. 

Afternoon at the Plaza, with winter twilight hovering outside and faintdrums down-stairs. . . They strut and fret in the lobby, taking anothercocktail, scrupulously attired and waiting. Then the swinging doorsrevolve and three bundles of fur mince in. The theatre comes afterward;then a table at the Midnight Frolic--of course, mother will be alongthere, but she will serve only to make things more secretive andbrilliant as she sits in solitary state at the deserted table and thinkssuch entertainments as this are not half so bad as they are painted, only rather wearying. But the P. D. Is in love again. . . It was odd, wasn't it?--that though there was so much room left in the taxi the P. D. And the boy from Williams were somehow crowded out and had to go in aseparate car. Odd! Didn't you notice how flushed the P. D. Was when shearrived just seven minutes late? But the P. D. "gets away with it. "

The "belle" had become the "flirt, " the "flirt" had become the "babyvamp. " The "belle" had five or six callers every afternoon. If the P. D. , by some strange accident, has two, it is made pretty uncomfortablefor the one who hasn't a date with her. The "belle" was surrounded bya dozen men in the intermissions between dances. Try to find the P. D. Between dances, just _try_ to find her. 

The same girl. . . Deep in an atmosphere of jungle music and thequestioning of moral codes. Amory found it rather fascinating to feelthat any popular girl he met before eight he might quite possibly kissbefore twelve. 

"Why on earth are we here?" he asked the girl with the green combs onenight as they sat in some one's limousine, outside the Country Club inLouisville. 

"I don't know. I'm just full of the devil. "

"Let's be frank--we'll never see each other again. I wanted to come outhere with you because I thought you were the best-looking girl in sight. You really don't care whether you ever see me again, do you?"

"No--but is this your line for every girl? What have I done to deserveit?"

"And you didn't feel tired dancing or want a cigarette or any of thethings you said? You just wanted to be--"

"Oh, let's go in, " she interrupted, "if you want to _analyze_. Let's not_talk_ about it. "

When the hand-knit, sleeveless jerseys were stylish, Amory, in a burstof inspiration, named them "petting shirts. " The name travelled fromcoast to coast on the lips of parlor-snakes and P. D. 's. 

 *****

DESCRIPTIVE

Amory was now eighteen years old, just under six feet tall andexceptionally, but not conventionally, handsome. He had rather a youngface, the ingenuousness of which was marred by the penetrating greeneyes, fringed with long dark eyelashes. He lacked somehow that intenseanimal magnetism that so often accompanies beauty in men or women; hispersonality seemed rather a mental thing, and it was not in his powerto turn it on and off like a water-faucet. But people never forgot hisface. 

 *****

ISABELLE

She paused at the top of the staircase. The sensations attributed todivers on spring-boards, leading ladies on opening nights, and lumpy, husky young men on the day of the Big Game, crowded through her. Sheshould have descended to a burst of drums or a discordant blend ofthemes from "Thais" and "Carmen. " She had never been so curious abouther appearance, she had never been so satisfied with it. She had beensixteen years old for six months. 

"Isabelle!" called her cousin Sally from the doorway of thedressing-room. 

"I'm ready. " She caught a slight lump of nervousness in her throat. 

"I had to send back to the house for another pair of slippers. It'll bejust a minute. "

Isabelle started toward the dressing-room for a last peek in the mirror, but something decided her to stand there and gaze down the broad stairsof the Minnehaha Club. They curved tantalizingly, and she could catchjust a glimpse of two pairs of masculine feet in the hall below. Pump-shod in uniform black, they gave no hint of identity, but shewondered eagerly if one pair were attached to Amory Blaine. This youngman, not as yet encountered, had nevertheless taken up a considerablepart of her day--the first day of her arrival. Coming up in the machinefrom the station, Sally had volunteered, amid a rain of question, comment, revelation, and exaggeration:

"You remember Amory Blaine, of _course_. Well, he's simply mad tosee you again. He's stayed over a day from college, and he's comingto-night. He's heard so much about you--says he remembers your eyes. "

This had pleased Isabelle. It put them on equal terms, although shewas quite capable of staging her own romances, with or without advanceadvertising. But following her happy tremble of anticipation, came asinking sensation that made her ask:

"How do you mean he's heard about me? What sort of things?"

Sally smiled. She felt rather in the capacity of a showman with her moreexotic cousin. 

"He knows you're--you're considered beautiful and all that"--shepaused--"and I guess he knows you've been kissed. "

At this Isabelle's little fist had clinched suddenly under the fur robe. She was accustomed to be thus followed by her desperate past, and itnever failed to rouse in her the same feeling of resentment; yet--in astrange town it was an advantageous reputation. She was a "Speed, " wasshe? Well--let them find out. 

Out of the window Isabelle watched the snow glide by in the frostymorning. It was ever so much colder here than in Baltimore; she hadnot remembered; the glass of the side door was iced, the windowswere shirred with snow in the corners. Her mind played still with onesubject. Did _he_ dress like that boy there, who walked calmly down abustling business street, in moccasins and winter-carnival costume? Howvery _Western!_ Of course he wasn't that way: he went to Princeton, wasa sophomore or something. Really she had no distinct idea of him. Anancient snap-shot she had preserved in an old kodak book had impressedher by the big eyes (which he had probably grown up to by now). However, in the last month, when her winter visit to Sally had been decided on, he had assumed the proportions of a worthy adversary. Children, mostastute of match-makers, plot their campaigns quickly, and Sallyhad played a clever correspondence sonata to Isabelle's excitabletemperament. Isabelle had been for some time capable of very strong, ifvery transient emotions. . . . 

They drew up at a spreading, white-stone building, set back from thesnowy street. Mrs. Weatherby greeted her warmly and her various youngercousins were produced from the corners where they skulked politely. Isabelle met them tactfully. At her best she allied all with whom shecame in contact--except older girls and some women. All the impressionsshe made were conscious. The half-dozen girls she renewed acquaintancewith that morning were all rather impressed and as much by her directpersonality as by her reputation. Amory Blaine was an open subject. Evidently a bit light of love, neither popular nor unpopular--every girlthere seemed to have had an affair with him at some time or other, butno one volunteered any really useful information. He was going to fallfor her. . . . Sally had published that information to her young setand they were retailing it back to Sally as fast as they set eyes onIsabelle. Isabelle resolved secretly that she would, if necessary, _force_ herself to like him--she owed it to Sally. Suppose she wereterribly disappointed. Sally had painted him in such glowing colors--hewas good-looking, "sort of distinguished, when he wants to be, " had aline, and was properly inconstant. In fact, he summed up all the romancethat her age and environment led her to desire. She wondered if thosewere his dancing-shoes that fox-trotted tentatively around the soft rugbelow. 

All impressions and, in fact, all ideas were extremely kaleidoscopic toIsabelle. She had that curious mixture of the social and the artistictemperaments found often in two classes, society women and actresses. Her education or, rather, her sophistication, had been absorbed fromthe boys who had dangled on her favor; her tact was instinctive, andher capacity for love-affairs was limited only by the number of thesusceptible within telephone distance. Flirt smiled from her largeblack-brown eyes and shone through her intense physical magnetism. 

So she waited at the head of the stairs that evening while slipperswere fetched. Just as she was growing impatient, Sally came out of thedressing-room, beaming with her accustomed good nature and high spirits, and together they descended to the floor below, while the shiftingsearch-light of Isabelle's mind flashed on two ideas: she was glad shehad high color to-night, and she wondered if he danced well. 

Down-stairs, in the club's great room, she was surrounded for a momentby the girls she had met in the afternoon, then she heard Sally's voicerepeating a cycle of names, and found herself bowing to a sextet ofblack and white, terribly stiff, vaguely familiar figures. The nameBlaine figured somewhere, but at first she could not place him. Avery confused, very juvenile moment of awkward backings and bumpingsfollowed, and every one found himself talking to the person he leastdesired to. Isabelle manoeuvred herself and Froggy Parker, freshmanat Harvard, with whom she had once played hop-scotch, to a seat on thestairs. A humorous reference to the past was all she needed. The thingsIsabelle could do socially with one idea were remarkable. First, sherepeated it rapturously in an enthusiastic contralto with a soupconof Southern accent; then she held it off at a distance and smiled atit--her wonderful smile; then she delivered it in variations andplayed a sort of mental catch with it, all this in the nominal formof dialogue. Froggy was fascinated and quite unconscious that this wasbeing done, not for him, but for the green eyes that glistened under theshining carefully watered hair, a little to her left, for Isabelle haddiscovered Amory. As an actress even in the fullest flush of her ownconscious magnetism gets a deep impression of most of the people in thefront row, so Isabelle sized up her antagonist. First, he had auburnhair, and from her feeling of disappointment she knew that she hadexpected him to be dark and of garter-advertisement slenderness. . . . Forthe rest, a faint flush and a straight, romantic profile; the effect setoff by a close-fitting dress suit and a silk ruffled shirt of the kindthat women still delight to see men wear, but men were just beginning toget tired of. 

During this inspection Amory was quietly watching. 

"Don't _you_ think so?" she said suddenly, turning to him, innocent-eyed. 

There was a stir, and Sally led the way over to their table. Amorystruggled to Isabelle's side, and whispered:

"You're my dinner partner, you know. We're all coached for each other. "

Isabelle gasped--this was rather right in line. But really she feltas if a good speech had been taken from the star and given to a minorcharacter. . . . She mustn't lose the leadership a bit. The dinner-tableglittered with laughter at the confusion of getting places and thencurious eyes were turned on her, sitting near the head. She was enjoyingthis immensely, and Froggy Parker was so engrossed with the addedsparkle of her rising color that he forgot to pull out Sally's chair, and fell into a dim confusion. Amory was on the other side, full ofconfidence and vanity, gazing at her in open admiration. He begandirectly, and so did Froggy:

"I've heard a lot about you since you wore braids--"

"Wasn't it funny this afternoon--"

Both stopped. Isabelle turned to Amory shyly. Her face was always enoughanswer for any one, but she decided to speak. 

"How--from whom?"

"From everybody--for all the years since you've been away. " She blushedappropriately. On her right Froggy was _hors de combat_ already, although he hadn't quite realized it. 

"I'll tell you what I remembered about you all these years, " Amorycontinued. She leaned slightly toward him and looked modestly at thecelery before her. Froggy sighed--he knew Amory, and the situations thatAmory seemed born to handle. He turned to Sally and asked her if she wasgoing away to school next year. Amory opened with grape-shot. 

"I've got an adjective that just fits you. " This was one of his favoritestarts--he seldom had a word in mind, but it was a curiosity provoker, and he could always produce something complimentary if he got in a tightcorner. 

"Oh--what?" Isabelle's face was a study in enraptured curiosity. 

Amory shook his head. 

"I don't know you very well yet. "

"Will you tell me--afterward?" she half whispered. 

He nodded. 

"We'll sit out. "

Isabelle nodded. 

"Did any one ever tell you, you have keen eyes?" she said. 

Amory attempted to make them look even keener. He fancied, but he wasnot sure, that her foot had just touched his under the table. But itmight possibly have been only the table leg. It was so hard to tell. Still it thrilled him. He wondered quickly if there would be anydifficulty in securing the little den up-stairs. 

 *****

BABES IN THE WOODS

Isabelle and Amory were distinctly not innocent, nor were theyparticularly brazen. Moreover, amateur standing had very little valuein the game they were playing, a game that would presumably be herprincipal study for years to come. She had begun as he had, with goodlooks and an excitable temperament, and the rest was the result ofaccessible popular novels and dressing-room conversation culled from aslightly older set. Isabelle had walked with an artificial gait at nineand a half, and when her eyes, wide and starry, proclaimed the ingenuemost. Amory was proportionately less deceived. He waited for the mask todrop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wearit. She, on her part, was not impressed by his studied air of blasésophistication. She had lived in a larger city and had slightly anadvantage in range. But she accepted his pose--it was one of the dozenlittle conventions of this kind of affair. He was aware that he wasgetting this particular favor now because she had been coached; he knewthat he stood for merely the best game in sight, and that he wouldhave to improve his opportunity before he lost his advantage. So theyproceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents. 

After the dinner the dance began. . . Smoothly. Smoothly?--boys cut inon Isabelle every few feet and then squabbled in the corners with: "Youmight let me get more than an inch!" and "She didn't like it either--shetold me so next time I cut in. " It was true--she told every one so, andgave every hand a parting pressure that said: "You know that your dancesare _making_ my evening. "

But time passed, two hours of it, and the less subtle beaux had betterlearned to focus their pseudo-passionate glances elsewhere, for eleveno'clock found Isabelle and Amory sitting on the couch in the littleden off the reading-room up-stairs. She was conscious that they werea handsome pair, and seemed to belong distinctively in this seclusion, while lesser lights fluttered and chattered down-stairs. 

Boys who passed the door looked in enviously--girls who passed onlylaughed and frowned and grew wise within themselves. 

They had now reached a very definite stage. They had traded accounts oftheir progress since they had met last, and she had listened to muchshe had heard before. He was a sophomore, was on the Princetonian board, hoped to be chairman in senior year. He learned that some of the boysshe went with in Baltimore were "terrible speeds" and came to dances instates of artificial stimulation; most of them were twenty or so, anddrove alluring red Stutzes. A good half seemed to have already flunkedout of various schools and colleges, but some of them bore athleticnames that made him look at her admiringly. As a matter of fact, Isabelle's closer acquaintance with the universities was justcommencing. She had bowing acquaintance with a lot of young men whothought she was a "pretty kid--worth keeping an eye on. " But Isabellestrung the names into a fabrication of gayety that would have dazzleda Viennese nobleman. Such is the power of young contralto voices onsink-down sofas. 

He asked her if she thought he was conceited. She said there wasa difference between conceit and self-confidence. She adoredself-confidence in men. 

"Is Froggy a good friend of yours?" she asked. 

"Rather--why?"

"He's a bum dancer. "

Amory laughed. 

"He dances as if the girl were on his back instead of in his arms. "

She appreciated this. 

"You're awfully good at sizing people up. "

Amory denied this painfully. However, he sized up several people forher. Then they talked about hands. 

"You've got awfully nice hands, " she said. "They look as if you playedthe piano. Do you?"

I have said they had reached a very definite stage--nay, more, a verycritical stage. Amory had stayed over a day to see her, and his trainleft at twelve-eighteen that night. His trunk and suitcase awaited himat the station; his watch was beginning to hang heavy in his pocket. 

"Isabelle, " he said suddenly, "I want to tell you something. " They hadbeen talking lightly about "that funny look in her eyes, " and Isabelleknew from the change in his manner what was coming--indeed, she had beenwondering how soon it would come. Amory reached above their heads andturned out the electric light, so that they were in the dark, exceptfor the red glow that fell through the door from the reading-room lamps. Then he began:

"I don't know whether or not you know what you--what I'm going to say. Lordy, Isabelle--this _sounds_ like a line, but it isn't. "

"I know, " said Isabelle softly. 

"Maybe we'll never meet again like this--I have darned hard lucksometimes. " He was leaning away from her on the other arm of the lounge, but she could see his eyes plainly in the dark. 

"You'll meet me again--silly. " There was just the slightest emphasison the last word--so that it became almost a term of endearment. Hecontinued a bit huskily:

"I've fallen for a lot of people--girls--and I guess you have, too--boys, I mean, but, honestly, you--" he broke off suddenly andleaned forward, chin on his hands: "Oh, what's the use--you'll go yourway and I suppose I'll go mine. "

Silence for a moment. Isabelle was quite stirred; she wound herhandkerchief into a tight ball, and by the faint light that streamedover her, dropped it deliberately on the floor. Their hands touched foran instant, but neither spoke. Silences were becoming more frequentand more delicious. Outside another stray couple had come up and wereexperimenting on the piano in the next room. After the usual preliminaryof "chopsticks, " one of them started "Babes in the Woods" and a lighttenor carried the words into the den:

 "Give me your hand I'll understand We're off to slumberland. "

Isabelle hummed it softly and trembled as she felt Amory's hand closeover hers. 

"Isabelle, " he whispered. "You know I'm mad about you. You _do_ give adarn about me. "

"Yes. "

"How much do you care--do you like any one better?"

"No. " He could scarcely hear her, although he bent so near that he felther breath against his cheek. 

"Isabelle, I'm going back to college for six long months, and whyshouldn't we--if I could only just have one thing to remember you by--"

"Close the door. . . . " Her voice had just stirred so that he half wonderedwhether she had spoken at all. As he swung the door softly shut, themusic seemed quivering just outside. 

 "Moonlight is bright, Kiss me good night. "

What a wonderful song, she thought--everything was wonderful to-night, most of all this romantic scene in the den, with their hands clingingand the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of herlife seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlightand pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low, cosyroadsters stopped under sheltering trees--only the boy might change, andthis one was so nice. He took her hand softly. With a sudden movement heturned it and, holding it to his lips, kissed the palm. 

"Isabelle!" His whisper blended in the music, and they seemed tofloat nearer together. Her breath came faster. "Can't I kiss you, Isabelle--Isabelle?" Lips half parted, she turned her head to him in thedark. Suddenly the ring of voices, the sound of running footsteps surgedtoward them. Quick as a flash Amory reached up and turned on the light, and when the door opened and three boys, the wrathy and dance-cravingFroggy among them, rushed in, he was turning over the magazines on thetable, while she sat without moving, serene and unembarrassed, and evengreeted them with a welcoming smile. But her heart was beating wildly, and she felt somehow as if she had been deprived. 

It was evidently over. There was a clamor for a dance, there was aglance that passed between them--on his side despair, on hers regret, and then the evening went on, with the reassured beaux and the eternalcutting in. 

At quarter to twelve Amory shook hands with her gravely, in the midst ofa small crowd assembled to wish him good-speed. For an instant he losthis poise, and she felt a bit rattled when a satirical voice from aconcealed wit cried:

"Take her outside, Amory!" As he took her hand he pressed it a little, and she returned the pressure as she had done to twenty hands thatevening--that was all. 

At two o'clock back at the Weatherbys' Sally asked her if she and Amoryhad had a "time" in the den. Isabelle turned to her quietly. In hereyes was the light of the idealist, the inviolate dreamer of Joan-likedreams. 

"No, " she answered. "I don't do that sort of thing any more; he asked meto, but I said no. "

As she crept in bed she wondered what he'd say in his special deliveryto-morrow. He had such a good-looking mouth--would she ever--?

"Fourteen angels were watching o'er them, " sang Sally sleepily from thenext room. 

"Damn!" muttered Isabelle, punching the pillow into a luxurious lump andexploring the cold sheets cautiously. "Damn!"

 *****

CARNIVAL

Amory, by way of the Princetonian, had arrived. The minor snobs, finelybalanced thermometers of success, warmed to him as the club electionsgrew nigh, and he and Tom were visited by groups of upper classmen whoarrived awkwardly, balanced on the edge of the furniture and talked ofall subjects except the one of absorbing interest. Amory was amused atthe intent eyes upon him, and, in case the visitors represented someclub in which he was not interested, took great pleasure in shockingthem with unorthodox remarks. 

"Oh, let me see--" he said one night to a flabbergasted delegation, "what club do you represent?"

With visitors from Ivy and Cottage and Tiger Inn he played the "nice, unspoilt, ingenuous boy" very much at ease and quite unaware of theobject of the call. 

When the fatal morning arrived, early in March, and the campus becamea document in hysteria, he slid smoothly into Cottage with Alec Connageand watched his suddenly neurotic class with much wonder. 

There were fickle groups that jumped from club to club; there werefriends of two or three days who announced tearfully and wildly thatthey must join the same club, nothing should separate them; there weresnarling disclosures of long-hidden grudges as the Suddenly Prominentremembered snubs of freshman year. Unknown men were elevated intoimportance when they received certain coveted bids; others who wereconsidered "all set" found that they had made unexpected enemies, feltthemselves stranded and deserted, talked wildly of leaving college. 

In his own crowd Amory saw men kept out for wearing green hats, forbeing "a damn tailor's dummy, " for having "too much pull in heaven, "for getting drunk one night "not like a gentleman, by God, " or forunfathomable secret reasons known to no one but the wielders of theblack balls. 

This orgy of sociability culminated in a gigantic party at the NassauInn, where punch was dispensed from immense bowls, and the wholedown-stairs became a delirious, circulating, shouting pattern of facesand voices. 

"Hi, Dibby--'gratulations!"

"Goo' boy, Tom, you got a good bunch in Cap. "

"Say, Kerry--"

"Oh, Kerry--I hear you went Tiger with all the weight-lifters!" "Well, Ididn't go Cottage--the parlor-snakes' delight. "

"They say Overton fainted when he got his Ivy bid--Did he sign up thefirst day?--oh, _no_. Tore over to Murray-Dodge on a bicycle--afraid itwas a mistake. "

"How'd you get into Cap--you old roue?"

"'Gratulations!"

"'Gratulations yourself. Hear you got a good crowd. "

When the bar closed, the party broke up into groups and streamed, singing, over the snow-clad campus, in a weird delusion thatsnobbishness and strain were over at last, and that they could do whatthey pleased for the next two years. 

Long afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest time ofhis life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found it; he wantedno more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen new-found friendshipsthrough the April afternoons. 

Alec Connage came into his room one morning and woke him up into thesunshine and peculiar glory of Campbell Hall shining in the window. 

"Wake up, Original Sin, and scrape yourself together. Be in front ofRenwick's in half an hour. Somebody's got a car. " He took the bureaucover and carefully deposited it, with its load of small articles, uponthe bed. 

"Where'd you get the car?" demanded Amory cynically. 

"Sacred trust, but don't be a critical goopher or you can't go!"

"I think I'll sleep, " Amory said calmly, resettling himself and reachingbeside the bed for a cigarette. 

"Sleep!"

"Why not? I've got a class at eleven-thirty. "

"You damned gloom! Of course, if you don't want to go to the coast--"

With a bound Amory was out of bed, scattering the bureau cover's burdenon the floor. The coast. . . He hadn't seen it for years, since he and hismother were on their pilgrimage. 

"Who's going?" he demanded as he wriggled into his B. V. D. 's. 

"Oh, Dick Humbird and Kerry Holiday and Jesse Ferrenby and--oh aboutfive or six. Speed it up, kid!"

In ten minutes Amory was devouring cornflakes in Renwick's, and atnine-thirty they bowled happily out of town, headed for the sands ofDeal Beach. 

"You see, " said Kerry, "the car belongs down there. In fact, it wasstolen from Asbury Park by persons unknown, who deserted it in Princetonand left for the West. Heartless Humbird here got permission from thecity council to deliver it. "

"Anybody got any money?" suggested Ferrenby, turning around from thefront seat. 

There was an emphatic negative chorus. 

"That makes it interesting. "

"Money--what's money? We can sell the car. "

"Charge him salvage or something. "

"How're we going to get food?" asked Amory. 

"Honestly, " answered Kerry, eying him reprovingly, "do you doubt Kerry'sability for three short days? Some people have lived on nothing foryears at a time. Read the Boy Scout Monthly. "

"Three days, " Amory mused, "and I've got classes. "

"One of the days is the Sabbath. "

"Just the same, I can only cut six more classes, with over a month and ahalf to go. "

"Throw him out!"

"It's a long walk back. "

"Amory, you're running it out, if I may coin a new phrase. "

"Hadn't you better get some dope on yourself, Amory?"

Amory subsided resignedly and drooped into a contemplation of thescenery. Swinburne seemed to fit in somehow. 

 "Oh, winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the seasons of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover, Blossom by blossom the spring begins. 

 "The full streams feed on flower of--"

"What's the matter, Amory? Amory's thinking about poetry, about thepretty birds and flowers. I can see it in his eye. "

"No, I'm not, " he lied. "I'm thinking about the Princetonian. I ought tomake up to-night; but I can telephone back, I suppose. "

"Oh, " said Kerry respectfully, "these important men--"

Amory flushed and it seemed to him that Ferrenby, a defeated competitor, winced a little. Of course, Kerry was only kidding, but he reallymustn't mention the Princetonian. 

It was a halcyon day, and as they neared the shore and the salt breezesscurried by, he began to picture the ocean and long, level stretches ofsand and red roofs over blue sea. Then they hurried through the littletown and it all flashed upon his consciousness to a mighty paean ofemotion. . . . 

"Oh, good Lord! _Look_ at it!" he cried. 

"What?"

"Let me out, quick--I haven't seen it for eight years! Oh, gentlefolk, stop the car!"

"What an odd child!" remarked Alec. 

"I do believe he's a bit eccentric. "

The car was obligingly drawn up at a curb, and Amory ran for theboardwalk. First, he realized that the sea was blue and that there wasan enormous quantity of it, and that it roared and roared--really allthe banalities about the ocean that one could realize, but if any onehad told him then that these things were banalities, he would have gapedin wonder. 

"Now we'll get lunch, " ordered Kerry, wandering up with the crowd. "Comeon, Amory, tear yourself away and get practical. "

"We'll try the best hotel first, " he went on, "and thence and so forth. "

They strolled along the boardwalk to the most imposing hostelry insight, and, entering the dining-room, scattered about a table. 

"Eight Bronxes, " commanded Alec, "and a club sandwich and Juliennes. Thefood for one. Hand the rest around. "

Amory ate little, having seized a chair where he could watch the sea andfeel the rock of it. When luncheon was over they sat and smoked quietly. 

"What's the bill?"

Some one scanned it. 

"Eight twenty-five. "

"Rotten overcharge. We'll give them two dollars and one for the waiter. Kerry, collect the small change. "

The waiter approached, and Kerry gravely handed him a dollar, tossed twodollars on the check, and turned away. They sauntered leisurely towardthe door, pursued in a moment by the suspicious Ganymede. 

"Some mistake, sir. "

Kerry took the bill and examined it critically. 

"No mistake!" he said, shaking his head gravely, and, tearing it intofour pieces, he handed the scraps to the waiter, who was so dumfoundedthat he stood motionless and expressionless while they walked out. 

"Won't he send after us?"

"No, " said Kerry; "for a minute he'll think we're the proprietor's sonsor something; then he'll look at the check again and call the manager, and in the meantime--"

They left the car at Asbury and street-car'd to Allenhurst, wherethey investigated the crowded pavilions for beauty. At four there wererefreshments in a lunch-room, and this time they paid an even smallerper cent on the total cost; something about the appearance andsavoir-faire of the crowd made the thing go, and they were not pursued. 

"You see, Amory, we're Marxian Socialists, " explained Kerry. "We don'tbelieve in property and we're putting it to the great test. "

"Night will descend, " Amory suggested. 

"Watch, and put your trust in Holiday. "

They became jovial about five-thirty and, linking arms, strolled up anddown the boardwalk in a row, chanting a monotonous ditty about the sadsea waves. Then Kerry saw a face in the crowd that attracted him and, rushing off, reappeared in a moment with one of the homeliest girlsAmory had ever set eyes on. Her pale mouth extended from ear to ear, herteeth projected in a solid wedge, and she had little, squinty eyes thatpeeped ingratiatingly over the side sweep of her nose. Kerry presentedthem formally. 

"Name of Kaluka, Hawaiian queen! Let me present Messrs. Connage, Sloane, Humbird, Ferrenby, and Blaine. "

The girl bobbed courtesies all around. Poor creature; Amory supposed shehad never before been noticed in her life--possibly she was half-witted. While she accompanied them (Kerry had invited her to supper) she saidnothing which could discountenance such a belief. 

"She prefers her native dishes, " said Alec gravely to the waiter, "butany coarse food will do. "

All through supper he addressed her in the most respectful language, while Kerry made idiotic love to her on the other side, and she giggledand grinned. Amory was content to sit and watch the by-play, thinkingwhat a light touch Kerry had, and how he could transform the barestincident into a thing of curve and contour. They all seemed to havethe spirit of it more or less, and it was a relaxation to be with them. Amory usually liked men individually, yet feared them in crowds unlessthe crowd was around him. He wondered how much each one contributed tothe party, for there was somewhat of a spiritual tax levied. Alec andKerry were the life of it, but not quite the centre. Somehow the quietHumbird, and Sloane, with his impatient superciliousness, were thecentre. 

Dick Humbird had, ever since freshman year, seemed to Amory a perfecttype of aristocrat. He was slender but well-built--black curly hair, straight features, and rather a dark skin. Everything he said soundedintangibly appropriate. He possessed infinite courage, an averagely goodmind, and a sense of honor with a clear charm and _noblesse oblige_that varied it from righteousness. He could dissipate without going topieces, and even his most bohemian adventures never seemed "running itout. " People dressed like him, tried to talk as he did. . . . Amory decidedthat he probably held the world back, but he wouldn't have changed him. . . . 

He differed from the healthy type that was essentially middle class--henever seemed to perspire. Some people couldn't be familiar with achauffeur without having it returned; Humbird could have lunched atSherry's with a colored man, yet people would have somehow known thatit was all right. He was not a snob, though he knew only half his class. His friends ranged from the highest to the lowest, but it was impossibleto "cultivate" him. Servants worshipped him, and treated him like a god. He seemed the eternal example of what the upper class tries to be. 

"He's like those pictures in the Illustrated London News of the Englishofficers who have been killed, " Amory had said to Alec. "Well, " Alechad answered, "if you want to know the shocking truth, his father was agrocery clerk who made a fortune in Tacoma real estate and came to NewYork ten years ago. "

Amory had felt a curious sinking sensation. 

This present type of party was made possible by the surging together ofthe class after club elections--as if to make a last desperate attemptto know itself, to keep together, to fight off the tightening spirit ofthe clubs. It was a let-down from the conventional heights they had allwalked so rigidly. 

After supper they saw Kaluka to the boardwalk, and then strolled backalong the beach to Asbury. The evening sea was a new sensation, for allits color and mellow age was gone, and it seemed the bleak waste thatmade the Norse sagas sad; Amory thought of Kipling's

 "Beaches of Lukanon before the sealers came. "

It was still a music, though, infinitely sorrowful. 

Ten o'clock found them penniless. They had suppered greatly on theirlast eleven cents and, singing, strolled up through the casinos andlighted arches on the boardwalk, stopping to listen approvingly to allband concerts. In one place Kerry took up a collection for the FrenchWar Orphans which netted a dollar and twenty cents, and with this theybought some brandy in case they caught cold in the night. They finishedthe day in a moving-picture show and went into solemn systematic roarsof laughter at an ancient comedy, to the startled annoyance of the restof the audience. Their entrance was distinctly strategic, for each manas he entered pointed reproachfully at the one just behind him. Sloane, bringing up the rear, disclaimed all knowledge and responsibility assoon as the others were scattered inside; then as the irate ticket-takerrushed in he followed nonchalantly. 

They reassembled later by the Casino and made arrangements for thenight. Kerry wormed permission from the watchman to sleep on theplatform and, having collected a huge pile of rugs from the booths toserve as mattresses and blankets, they talked until midnight, and thenfell into a dreamless sleep, though Amory tried hard to stay awake andwatch that marvellous moon settle on the sea. 

So they progressed for two happy days, up and down the shore bystreet-car or machine, or by shoe-leather on the crowded boardwalk;sometimes eating with the wealthy, more frequently dining frugallyat the expense of an unsuspecting restaurateur. They had their photostaken, eight poses, in a quick-development store. Kerry insisted ongrouping them as a "varsity" football team, and then as a tough gangfrom the East Side, with their coats inside out, and himself sittingin the middle on a cardboard moon. The photographer probably has themyet--at least, they never called for them. The weather was perfect, andagain they slept outside, and again Amory fell unwillingly asleep. 

Sunday broke stolid and respectable, and even the sea seemed to mumbleand complain, so they returned to Princeton via the Fords of transientfarmers, and broke up with colds in their heads, but otherwise none theworse for wandering. 

Even more than in the year before, Amory neglected his work, notdeliberately but lazily and through a multitude of other interests. Co-ordinate geometry and the melancholy hexameters of Corneille andRacine held forth small allurements, and even psychology, which he hadeagerly awaited, proved to be a dull subject full of muscular reactionsand biological phrases rather than the study of personality andinfluence. That was a noon class, and it always sent him dozing. Having found that "subjective and objective, sir, " answered most of thequestions, he used the phrase on all occasions, and it became the classjoke when, on a query being levelled at him, he was nudged awake byFerrenby or Sloane to gasp it out. 

Mostly there were parties--to Orange or the Shore, more rarely toNew York and Philadelphia, though one night they marshalled fourteenwaitresses out of Childs' and took them to ride down Fifth Avenue on topof an auto bus. They all cut more classes than were allowed, which meantan additional course the following year, but spring was too rare tolet anything interfere with their colorful ramblings. In May Amory waselected to the Sophomore Prom Committee, and when after a longevening's discussion with Alec they made out a tentative list of classprobabilities for the senior council, they placed themselves among thesurest. The senior council was composed presumably of the eighteen mostrepresentative seniors, and in view of Alec's football managership andAmory's chance of nosing out Burne Holiday as Princetonian chairman, they seemed fairly justified in this presumption. Oddly enough, theyboth placed D'Invilliers as among the possibilities, a guess that a yearbefore the class would have gaped at. 

All through the spring Amory had kept up an intermittent correspondencewith Isabelle Borge, punctuated by violent squabbles and chieflyenlivened by his attempts to find new words for love. He discoveredIsabelle to be discreetly and aggravatingly unsentimental in letters, but he hoped against hope that she would prove not too exotic a bloomto fit the large spaces of spring as she had fitted the den in theMinnehaha Club. During May he wrote thirty-page documents almostnightly, and sent them to her in bulky envelopes exteriorly labelled"Part I" and "Part II. "

"Oh, Alec, I believe I'm tired of college, " he said sadly, as theywalked the dusk together. 

"I think I am, too, in a way. "

"All I'd like would be a little home in the country, some warm country, and a wife, and just enough to do to keep from rotting. "

"Me, too. "

"I'd like to quit. "

"What does your girl say?"

"Oh!" Amory gasped in horror. "She wouldn't _think_ of marrying. . . Thatis, not now. I mean the future, you know. "

"My girl would. I'm engaged. "

"Are you really?"

"Yes. Don't say a word to anybody, please, but I am. I may not come backnext year. "

"But you're only twenty! Give up college?"

"Why, Amory, you were saying a minute ago--"

"Yes, " Amory interrupted, "but I was just wishing. I wouldn't think ofleaving college. It's just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. Isort of feel they're never coming again, and I'm not really getting allI could out of them. I wish my girl lived here. But marry--not a chance. Especially as father says the money isn't forthcoming as it used to be. "

"What a waste these nights are!" agreed Alec. 

But Amory sighed and made use of the nights. He had a snap-shot ofIsabelle, enshrined in an old watch, and at eight almost every night hewould turn off all the lights except the desk lamp and, sitting by theopen windows with the picture before him, write her rapturous letters. 

 . . . Oh it's so hard to write you what I really _feel_ when I think about you so much; you've gotten to mean to me a _dream_ that I can't put on paper any more. Your last letter came and it was wonderful! I read it over about six times, especially the last part, but I do wish, sometimes, you'd be more _frank_ and tell me what you really do think of me, yet your last letter was too good to be true, and I can hardly wait until June! Be sure and be able to come to the prom. It'll be fine, I think, and I want to bring _you_ just at the end of a wonderful year. I often think over what you said on that night and wonder how much you meant. If it were anyone but you--but you see I _thought_ you were fickle the first time I saw you and you are so popular and everthing that I can't imagine you really liking me _best_. 

 Oh, Isabelle, dear--it's a wonderful night. Somebody is playing "Love Moon" on a mandolin far across the campus, and the music seems to bring you into the window. Now he's playing "Good-by, Boys, I'm Through, " and how well it suits me. For I am through with everything. I have decided never to take a cocktail again, and I know I'll never again fall in love--I couldn't--you've been too much a part of my days and nights to ever let me think of another girl. I meet them all the time and they don't interest me. I'm not pretending to be blasé, because it's not that. It's just that I'm in love. Oh, _dearest_ Isabelle (somehow I can't call you just Isabelle, and I'm afraid I'll come out with the "dearest" before your family this June), you've got to come to the prom, and then I'll come up to your house for a day and everything'll be perfect. . . . 

And so on in an eternal monotone that seemed to both of them infinitelycharming, infinitely new. 

 *****

June came and the days grew so hot and lazy that they could not worryeven about exams, but spent dreamy evenings on the court of Cottage, talking of long subjects until the sweep of country toward Stony Brookbecame a blue haze and the lilacs were white around tennis-courts, andwords gave way to silent cigarettes. . . . Then down deserted Prospect andalong McCosh with song everywhere around them, up to the hot jovialityof Nassau Street. 

Tom D'Invilliers and Amory walked late in those days. A gambling feverswept through the sophomore class and they bent over the bones tillthree o'clock many a sultry night. After one session they came out ofSloane's room to find the dew fallen and the stars old in the sky. 

"Let's borrow bicycles and take a ride, " Amory suggested. 

"All right. I'm not a bit tired and this is almost the last night of theyear, really, because the prom stuff starts Monday. "

They found two unlocked bicycles in Holder Court and rode out abouthalf-past three along the Lawrenceville Road. 

"What are you going to do this summer, Amory?"

"Don't ask me--same old things, I suppose. A month or two in LakeGeneva--I'm counting on you to be there in July, you know--then there'llbe Minneapolis, and that means hundreds of summer hops, parlor-snaking, getting bored--But oh, Tom, " he added suddenly, "hasn't this year beenslick!"

"No, " declared Tom emphatically, a new Tom, clothed by Brooks, shodby Franks, "I've won this game, but I feel as if I never want to playanother. You're all right--you're a rubber ball, and somehow it suitsyou, but I'm sick of adapting myself to the local snobbishness of thiscorner of the world. I want to go where people aren't barred because ofthe color of their neckties and the roll of their coats. "

"You can't, Tom, " argued Amory, as they rolled along through thescattering night; "wherever you go now you'll always unconsciously applythese standards of 'having it' or 'lacking it. ' For better or worsewe've stamped you; you're a Princeton type!"

"Well, then, " complained Tom, his cracked voice rising plaintively, "whydo I have to come back at all? I've learned all that Princeton has tooffer. Two years more of mere pedantry and lying around a club aren'tgoing to help. They're just going to disorganize me, conventionalize mecompletely. Even now I'm so spineless that I wonder how I get away withit. "

"Oh, but you're missing the real point, Tom, " Amory interrupted. "You'vejust had your eyes opened to the snobbishness of the world in a ratherabrupt manner. Princeton invariably gives the thoughtful man a socialsense. "

"You consider you taught me that, don't you?" he asked quizzically, eying Amory in the half dark. 

Amory laughed quietly. 

"Didn't I?"

"Sometimes, " he said slowly, "I think you're my bad angel. I might havebeen a pretty fair poet. "

"Come on, that's rather hard. You chose to come to an Eastern college. Either your eyes were opened to the mean scrambling quality of people, or you'd have gone through blind, and you'd hate to have done that--beenlike Marty Kaye. "

"Yes, " he agreed, "you're right. I wouldn't have liked it. Still, it'shard to be made a cynic at twenty. "

"I was born one, " Amory murmured. "I'm a cynical idealist. " He pausedand wondered if that meant anything. 

They reached the sleeping school of Lawrenceville, and turned to rideback. 

"It's good, this ride, isn't it?" Tom said presently. 

"Yes; it's a good finish, it's knock-out; everything's good to-night. Oh, for a hot, languorous summer and Isabelle!"

"Oh, you and your Isabelle! I'll bet she's a simple one. . . Let's saysome poetry. "

So Amory declaimed "The Ode to a Nightingale" to the bushes they passed. 

"I'll never be a poet, " said Amory as he finished. "I'm not enough of asensualist really; there are only a few obvious things that I notice asprimarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea;I don't catch the subtle things like 'silver-snarling trumpets. ' I mayturn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocrepoetry. "

They rode into Princeton as the sun was making colored maps of the skybehind the graduate school, and hurried to the refreshment of a showerthat would have to serve in place of sleep. By noon the bright-costumedalumni crowded the streets with their bands and choruses, and in thetents there was great reunion under the orange-and-black banners thatcurled and strained in the wind. Amory looked long at one house whichbore the legend "Sixty-nine. " There a few gray-haired men sat and talkedquietly while the classes swept by in panorama of life. 

 *****

UNDER THE ARC-LIGHT

Then tragedy's emerald eyes glared suddenly at Amory over the edge ofJune. On the night after his ride to Lawrenceville a crowd sallied toNew York in quest of adventure, and started back to Princeton abouttwelve o'clock in two machines. It had been a gay party and differentstages of sobriety were represented. Amory was in the car behind; theyhad taken the wrong road and lost the way, and so were hurrying to catchup. 

It was a clear night and the exhilaration of the road went to Amory'shead. He had the ghost of two stanzas of a poem forming in his mind. . . . 

 So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life stirred as it went by. . . . As the still ocean paths before the shark in starred and glittering waterways, beauty-high, the moon-swathed trees divided, pair on pair, while flapping nightbirds cried across the air. . . . 

 A moment by an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a yellow moon--then silence, where crescendo laughter fades. . . The car swung out again to the winds of June, mellowed the shadows where the distance grew, then crushed the yellow shadows into blue. . . . 

They jolted to a stop, and Amory peered up, startled. A woman wasstanding beside the road, talking to Alec at the wheel. Afterwardhe remembered the harpy effect that her old kimono gave her, and thecracked hollowness of her voice as she spoke:

"You Princeton boys?"

"Yes. "

"Well, there's one of you killed here, and two others about dead. "

"_My God!_"

"Look!" She pointed and they gazed in horror. Under the full light ofa roadside arc-light lay a form, face downward in a widening circle ofblood. 

They sprang from the car. Amory thought of the back of that head--thathair--that hair. . . And then they turned the form over. 

"It's Dick--Dick Humbird!"

"Oh, Christ!"

"Feel his heart!"

Then the insistent voice of the old crone in a sort of croaking triumph:

"He's quite dead, all right. The car turned over. Two of the men thatweren't hurt just carried the others in, but this one's no use. "

Amory rushed into the house and the rest followed with a limp mass thatthey laid on the sofa in the shoddy little front parlor. Sloane, withhis shoulder punctured, was on another lounge. He was half delirious, and kept calling something about a chemistry lecture at 8:10. 

"I don't know what happened, " said Ferrenby in a strained voice. "Dickwas driving and he wouldn't give up the wheel; we told him he'd beendrinking too much--then there was this damn curve--oh, my _God!_. . . " Hethrew himself face downward on the floor and broke into dry sobs. 

The doctor had arrived, and Amory went over to the couch, where someone handed him a sheet to put over the body. With a sudden hardness, heraised one of the hands and let it fall back inertly. The brow was coldbut the face not expressionless. He looked at the shoe-laces--Dick hadtied them that morning. _He_ had tied them--and now he was this heavywhite mass. All that remained of the charm and personality of the DickHumbird he had known--oh, it was all so horrible and unaristocratic andclose to the earth. All tragedy has that strain of the grotesqueand squalid--so useless, futile. . . The way animals die. . . . Amory wasreminded of a cat that had lain horribly mangled in some alley of hischildhood. 

"Some one go to Princeton with Ferrenby. "

Amory stepped outside the door and shivered slightly at the late nightwind--a wind that stirred a broken fender on the mass of bent metal to aplaintive, tinny sound. 

 *****

CRESCENDO!

Next day, by a merciful chance, passed in a whirl. When Amory was byhimself his thoughts zigzagged inevitably to the picture of that redmouth yawning incongruously in the white face, but with a determinedeffort he piled present excitement upon the memory of it and shut itcoldly away from his mind. 

Isabelle and her mother drove into town at four, and they rode upsmiling Prospect Avenue, through the gay crowd, to have tea at Cottage. The clubs had their annual dinners that night, so at seven he loaned herto a freshman and arranged to meet her in the gymnasium at eleven, whenthe upper classmen were admitted to the freshman dance. She was all hehad expected, and he was happy and eager to make that night the centreof every dream. At nine the upper classes stood in front of the clubsas the freshman torchlight parade rioted past, and Amory wondered if thedress-suited groups against the dark, stately backgrounds and underthe flare of the torches made the night as brilliant to the staring, cheering freshmen as it had been to him the year before. 

The next day was another whirl. They lunched in a gay party of six in aprivate dining-room at the club, while Isabelle and Amory looked at eachother tenderly over the fried chicken and knew that their love was to beeternal. They danced away the prom until five, and the stags cut in onIsabelle with joyous abandon, which grew more and more enthusiastic asthe hour grew late, and their wines, stored in overcoat pockets in thecoat room, made old weariness wait until another day. The stag line isa most homogeneous mass of men. It fairly sways with a single soul. Adark-haired beauty dances by and there is a half-gasping sound as theripple surges forward and some one sleeker than the rest darts out andcuts in. Then when the six-foot girl (brought by Kaye in your class, andto whom he has been trying to introduce you all evening) gallops by, the line surges back and the groups face about and become intent on farcorners of the hall, for Kaye, anxious and perspiring, appears elbowingthrough the crowd in search of familiar faces. 

"I say, old man, I've got an awfully nice--"

"Sorry, Kaye, but I'm set for this one. I've got to cut in on a fella. "

"Well, the next one?"

"What--ah--er--I swear I've got to go cut in--look me up when she's gota dance free. "

It delighted Amory when Isabelle suggested that they leave for a whileand drive around in her car. For a delicious hour that passed too soonthey glided the silent roads about Princeton and talked from the surfaceof their hearts in shy excitement. Amory felt strangely ingenuous andmade no attempt to kiss her. 

Next day they rode up through the Jersey country, had luncheon in NewYork, and in the afternoon went to see a problem play at which Isabellewept all through the second act, rather to Amory's embarrassment--thoughit filled him with tenderness to watch her. He was tempted to lean overand kiss away her tears, and she slipped her hand into his under coverof darkness to be pressed softly. 

Then at six they arrived at the Borges' summer place on Long Island, andAmory rushed up-stairs to change into a dinner coat. As he put in hisstuds he realized that he was enjoying life as he would probably neverenjoy it again. Everything was hallowed by the haze of his own youth. Hehad arrived, abreast of the best in his generation at Princeton. He wasin love and his love was returned. Turning on all the lights, he lookedat himself in the mirror, trying to find in his own face the qualitiesthat made him see clearer than the great crowd of people, that made himdecide firmly, and able to influence and follow his own will. There waslittle in his life now that he would have changed. . . . Oxford might havebeen a bigger field. 

Silently he admired himself. How conveniently well he looked, and howwell a dinner coat became him. He stepped into the hall and thenwaited at the top of the stairs, for he heard footsteps coming. It wasIsabelle, and from the top of her shining hair to her little goldenslippers she had never seemed so beautiful. 

"Isabelle!" he cried, half involuntarily, and held out his arms. As inthe story-books, she ran into them, and on that half-minute, as theirlips first touched, rested the high point of vanity, the crest of hisyoung egotism. 

CHAPTER 3. The Egotist Considers

"Ouch! Let me go!"

He dropped his arms to his sides. 

"What's the matter?"

"Your shirt stud--it hurt me--look!" She was looking down at her neck, where a little blue spot about the size of a pea marred its pallor. 

"Oh, Isabelle, " he reproached himself, "I'm a goopher. Really, I'msorry--I shouldn't have held you so close. "

She looked up impatiently. 

"Oh, Amory, of course you couldn't help it, and it didn't hurt much; butwhat _are_ we going to do about it?"

"_Do_ about it?" he asked. "Oh--that spot; it'll disappear in a second. "

"It isn't, " she said, after a moment of concentrated gazing, "it's stillthere--and it looks like Old Nick--oh, Amory, what'll we do! It's _just_the height of your shoulder. "

"Massage it, " he suggested, repressing the faintest inclination tolaugh. 

She rubbed it delicately with the tips of her fingers, and then a teargathered in the corner of her eye, and slid down her cheek. 

"Oh, Amory, " she said despairingly, lifting up a most pathetic face, "I'll just make my whole neck _flame_ if I rub it. What'll I do?"

A quotation sailed into his head and he couldn't resist repeating italoud. 

 "All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this little hand. "

She looked up and the sparkle of the tear in her eye was like ice. 

"You're not very sympathetic. "

Amory mistook her meaning. 

"Isabelle, darling, I think it'll--"

"Don't touch me!" she cried. "Haven't I enough on my mind and you standthere and _laugh!_"

Then he slipped again. 

"Well, it _is_ funny, Isabelle, and we were talking the other day abouta sense of humor being--"

She was looking at him with something that was not a smile, rather thefaint, mirthless echo of a smile, in the corners of her mouth. 

"Oh, shut up!" she cried suddenly, and fled down the hallway toward herroom. Amory stood there, covered with remorseful confusion. 

"Damn!"

When Isabelle reappeared she had thrown a light wrap about hershoulders, and they descended the stairs in a silence that enduredthrough dinner. 

"Isabelle, " he began rather testily, as they arranged themselves in thecar, bound for a dance at the Greenwich Country Club, "you're angry, andI'll be, too, in a minute. Let's kiss and make up. "

Isabelle considered glumly. 

"I hate to be laughed at, " she said finally. 

"I won't laugh any more. I'm not laughing now, am I?"

"You did. "

"Oh, don't be so darned feminine. "

Her lips curled slightly. 

"I'll be anything I want. "

Amory kept his temper with difficulty. He became aware that he had notan ounce of real affection for Isabelle, but her coldness piqued him. Hewanted to kiss her, kiss her a lot, because then he knew he could leavein the morning and not care. On the contrary, if he didn't kiss her, itwould worry him. . . . It would interfere vaguely with his idea of himselfas a conqueror. It wasn't dignified to come off second best, _pleading_, with a doughty warrior like Isabelle. 

Perhaps she suspected this. At any rate, Amory watched the night thatshould have been the consummation of romance glide by with great mothsoverhead and the heavy fragrance of roadside gardens, but without thosebroken words, those little sighs. . . . 

Afterward they suppered on ginger ale and devil's food in the pantry, and Amory announced a decision. 

"I'm leaving early in the morning. "

"Why?"

"Why not?" he countered. 

"There's no need. "

"However, I'm going. "

"Well, if you insist on being ridiculous--"

"Oh, don't put it that way, " he objected. 

"--just because I won't let you kiss me. Do you think--"

"Now, Isabelle, " he interrupted, "you know it's not that--evensuppose it is. We've reached the stage where we either ought tokiss--or--or--nothing. It isn't as if you were refusing on moralgrounds. "

She hesitated. 

"I really don't know what to think about you, " she began, in a feeble, perverse attempt at conciliation. "You're so funny. "

"How?"

"Well, I thought you had a lot of self-confidence and all that; rememberyou told me the other day that you could do anything you wanted, or getanything you wanted?"

Amory flushed. He _had_ told her a lot of things. 

"Yes. "

"Well, you didn't seem to feel so self-confident to-night. Maybe you'rejust plain conceited. "

"No, I'm not, " he hesitated. "At Princeton--"

"Oh, you and Princeton! You'd think that was the world, the way youtalk! Perhaps you _can_ write better than anybody else on your oldPrincetonian; maybe the freshmen _do_ think you're important--"

"You don't understand--"

"Yes, I do, " she interrupted. "I _do_, because you're always talkingabout yourself and I used to like it; now I don't. "

"Have I to-night?"

"That's just the point, " insisted Isabelle. "You got all upset to-night. You just sat and watched my eyes. Besides, I have to think all the timeI'm talking to you--you're so critical. "

"I make you think, do I?" Amory repeated with a touch of vanity. 

"You're a nervous strain"--this emphatically--"and when you analyzeevery little emotion and instinct I just don't have 'em. "

"I know. " Amory admitted her point and shook his head helplessly. 

"Let's go. " She stood up. 

He rose abstractedly and they walked to the foot of the stairs. 

"What train can I get?"

"There's one about 9:11 if you really must go. "

"Yes, I've got to go, really. Good night. "

"Good night. "

They were at the head of the stairs, and as Amory turned into his roomhe thought he caught just the faintest cloud of discontent in her face. He lay awake in the darkness and wondered how much he cared--how muchof his sudden unhappiness was hurt vanity--whether he was, after all, temperamentally unfitted for romance. 

When he awoke, it was with a glad flood of consciousness. The early windstirred the chintz curtains at the windows and he was idly puzzled notto be in his room at Princeton with his school football picture overthe bureau and the Triangle Club on the wall opposite. Then thegrandfather's clock in the hall outside struck eight, and the memoryof the night before came to him. He was out of bed, dressing, like thewind; he must get out of the house before he saw Isabelle. What hadseemed a melancholy happening, now seemed a tiresome anticlimax. He wasdressed at half past, so he sat down by the window; felt that the sinewsof his heart were twisted somewhat more than he had thought. What anironic mockery the morning seemed!--bright and sunny, and full of thesmell of the garden; hearing Mrs. Borge's voice in the sun-parlor below, he wondered where was Isabelle. 

There was a knock at the door. 

"The car will be around at ten minutes of nine, sir. "

He returned to his contemplation of the outdoors, and began repeatingover and over, mechanically, a verse from Browning, which he had oncequoted to Isabelle in a letter:

 "Each life unfulfilled, you see, It hangs still, patchy and scrappy; We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired--been happy. "

But his life would not be unfulfilled. He took a sombre satisfaction inthinking that perhaps all along she had been nothing except what he hadread into her; that this was her high point, that no one else would evermake her think. Yet that was what she had objected to in him; and Amorywas suddenly tired of thinking, thinking!

"Damn her!" he said bitterly, "she's spoiled my year!"

 *****

THE SUPERMAN GROWS CARELESS

On a dusty day in September Amory arrived in Princeton and joined thesweltering crowd of conditioned men who thronged the streets. It seemeda stupid way to commence his upper-class years, to spend four hours amorning in the stuffy room of a tutoring school, imbibing the infiniteboredom of conic sections. Mr. Rooney, pander to the dull, conducted theclass and smoked innumerable Pall Malls as he drew diagrams and workedequations from six in the morning until midnight. 

"Now, Langueduc, if I used that formula, where would my A point be?"

Langueduc lazily shifts his six-foot-three of football material andtries to concentrate. 

"Oh--ah--I'm damned if I know, Mr. Rooney. "

"Oh, why of course, of course you can't _use_ that formula. _That's_what I wanted you to say. "

"Why, sure, of course. "

"Do you see why?"

"You bet--I suppose so. "

"If you don't see, tell me. I'm here to show you. "

"Well, Mr. Rooney, if you don't mind, I wish you'd go over that again. "

"Gladly. Now here's 'A'. . . "

The room was a study in stupidity--two huge stands for paper, Mr. Rooneyin his shirt-sleeves in front of them, and slouched around on chairs, a dozen men: Fred Sloane, the pitcher, who absolutely _had_ to geteligible; "Slim" Langueduc, who would beat Yale this fall, if only hecould master a poor fifty per cent; McDowell, gay young sophomore, whothought it was quite a sporting thing to be tutoring here with all theseprominent athletes. 

"Those poor birds who haven't a cent to tutor, and have to study duringthe term are the ones I pity, " he announced to Amory one day, with aflaccid camaraderie in the droop of the cigarette from his pale lips. "Ishould think it would be such a bore, there's so much else to do in NewYork during the term. I suppose they don't know what they miss, anyhow. "There was such an air of "you and I" about Mr. McDowell that Amory verynearly pushed him out of the open window when he said this. . . . NextFebruary his mother would wonder why he didn't make a club and increasehis allowance. . . Simple little nut. . . . 

Through the smoke and the air of solemn, dense earnestness that filledthe room would come the inevitable helpless cry:

"I don't get it! Repeat that, Mr. Rooney!" Most of them were so stupidor careless that they wouldn't admit when they didn't understand, andAmory was of the latter. He found it impossible to study conic sections;something in their calm and tantalizing respectability breathingdefiantly through Mr. Rooney's fetid parlors distorted their equationsinto insoluble anagrams. He made a last night's effort with theproverbial wet towel, and then blissfully took the exam, wonderingunhappily why all the color and ambition of the spring before had fadedout. Somehow, with the defection of Isabelle the idea of undergraduatesuccess had loosed its grasp on his imagination, and he contemplated apossible failure to pass off his condition with equanimity, even thoughit would arbitrarily mean his removal from the Princetonian board andthe slaughter of his chances for the Senior Council. 

There was always his luck. 

He yawned, scribbled his honor pledge on the cover, and sauntered fromthe room. 

"If you don't pass it, " said the newly arrived Alec as they sat on thewindow-seat of Amory's room and mused upon a scheme of wall decoration, "you're the world's worst goopher. Your stock will go down like anelevator at the club and on the campus. "

"Oh, hell, I know it. Why rub it in?"

"'Cause you deserve it. Anybody that'd risk what you were in line for_ought_ to be ineligible for Princetonian chairman. "

"Oh, drop the subject, " Amory protested. "Watch and wait and shut up. I don't want every one at the club asking me about it, as if I were aprize potato being fattened for a vegetable show. " One evening a weeklater Amory stopped below his own window on the way to Renwick's, and, seeing a light, called up:

"Oh, Tom, any mail?"

Alec's head appeared against the yellow square of light. 

"Yes, your result's here. "

His heart clamored violently. 

"What is it, blue or pink?"

"Don't know. Better come up. "

He walked into the room and straight over to the table, and thensuddenly noticed that there were other people in the room. 

"'Lo, Kerry. " He was most polite. "Ah, men of Princeton. " They seemedto be mostly friends, so he picked up the envelope marked "Registrar'sOffice, " and weighed it nervously. 

"We have here quite a slip of paper. "

"Open it, Amory. "

"Just to be dramatic, I'll let you know that if it's blue, my name iswithdrawn from the editorial board of the Prince, and my short career isover. "

He paused, and then saw for the first time Ferrenby's eyes, wearing ahungry look and watching him eagerly. Amory returned the gaze pointedly. 

"Watch my face, gentlemen, for the primitive emotions. "

He tore it open and held the slip up to the light. 

"Well?"

"Pink or blue?"

"Say what it is. "

"We're all ears, Amory. "

"Smile or swear--or something. "

There was a pause. . . A small crowd of seconds swept by. . . Then he lookedagain and another crowd went on into time. 

"Blue as the sky, gentlemen. . . . "

 *****

AFTERMATH

What Amory did that year from early September to late in the spring wasso purposeless and inconsecutive that it seems scarcely worth recording. He was, of course, immediately sorry for what he had lost. Hisphilosophy of success had tumbled down upon him, and he looked for thereasons. 

"Your own laziness, " said Alec later. 

"No--something deeper than that. I've begun to feel that I was meant tolose this chance. "

"They're rather off you at the club, you know; every man that doesn'tcome through makes our crowd just so much weaker. "

"I hate that point of view. "

"Of course, with a little effort you could still stage a comeback. "

"No--I'm through--as far as ever being a power in college is concerned. "

"But, Amory, honestly, what makes me the angriest isn't the fact thatyou won't be chairman of the Prince and on the Senior Council, but justthat you didn't get down and pass that exam. "

"Not me, " said Amory slowly; "I'm mad at the concrete thing. My ownidleness was quite in accord with my system, but the luck broke. "

"Your system broke, you mean. "

"Maybe. "

"Well, what are you going to do? Get a better one quick, or just bumaround for two more years as a has-been?"

"I don't know yet. . . "

"Oh, Amory, buck up!"

"Maybe. "

Amory's point of view, though dangerous, was not far from the true one. If his reactions to his environment could be tabulated, the chart wouldhave appeared like this, beginning with his earliest years:

 1. The fundamental Amory. 

 2. Amory plus Beatrice. 

 3. Amory plus Beatrice plus Minneapolis. 

Then St. Regis' had pulled him to pieces and started him over again:

 4. Amory plus St. Regis'. 

 5. Amory plus St. Regis' plus Princeton. 

That had been his nearest approach to success through conformity. Thefundamental Amory, idle, imaginative, rebellious, had been nearly snowedunder. He had conformed, he had succeeded, but as his imagination wasneither satisfied nor grasped by his own success, he had listlessly, half-accidentally chucked the whole thing and become again:

 6. The fundamental Amory. 

 *****

FINANCIAL

His father died quietly and inconspicuously at Thanksgiving. Theincongruity of death with either the beauties of Lake Geneva or with hismother's dignified, reticent attitude diverted him, and he looked at thefuneral with an amused tolerance. He decided that burial was after allpreferable to cremation, and he smiled at his old boyhood choice, slow oxidation in the top of a tree. The day after the ceremony hewas amusing himself in the great library by sinking back on a couch ingraceful mortuary attitudes, trying to determine whether he would, whenhis day came, be found with his arms crossed piously over his chest(Monsignor Darcy had once advocated this posture as being the mostdistinguished), or with his hands clasped behind his head, a more paganand Byronic attitude. 

What interested him much more than the final departure of his fatherfrom things mundane was a tri-cornered conversation between Beatrice, Mr. Barton, of Barton and Krogman, their lawyers, and himself, that tookplace several days after the funeral. For the first time he came intoactual cognizance of the family finances, and realized what a tidyfortune had once been under his father's management. He took aledger labelled "1906" and ran through it rather carefully. The totalexpenditure that year had come to something over one hundred and tenthousand dollars. Forty thousand of this had been Beatrice's own income, and there had been no attempt to account for it: it was all under theheading, "Drafts, checks, and letters of credit forwarded to BeatriceBlaine. " The dispersal of the rest was rather minutely itemized: thetaxes and improvements on the Lake Geneva estate had come to almost ninethousand dollars; the general up-keep, including Beatrice's electric anda French car, bought that year, was over thirty-five thousand dollars. The rest was fully taken care of, and there were invariably items whichfailed to balance on the right side of the ledger. 

In the volume for 1912 Amory was shocked to discover the decrease in thenumber of bond holdings and the great drop in the income. In the case ofBeatrice's money this was not so pronounced, but it was obvious that hisfather had devoted the previous year to several unfortunate gambles inoil. Very little of the oil had been burned, but Stephen Blaine hadbeen rather badly singed. The next year and the next and the next showedsimilar decreases, and Beatrice had for the first time begun using herown money for keeping up the house. Yet her doctor's bill for 1913 hadbeen over nine thousand dollars. 

About the exact state of things Mr. Barton was quite vague and confused. There had been recent investments, the outcome of which was forthe present problematical, and he had an idea there were furtherspeculations and exchanges concerning which he had not been consulted. 

It was not for several months that Beatrice wrote Amory the fullsituation. The entire residue of the Blaine and O'Hara fortunesconsisted of the place at Lake Geneva and approximately a half milliondollars, invested now in fairly conservative six-per-cent holdings. Infact, Beatrice wrote that she was putting the money into railroad andstreet-car bonds as fast as she could conveniently transfer it. 

 "I am quite sure, " she wrote to Amory, "that if there is one thing we can be positive of, it is that people will not stay in one place. This Ford person has certainly made the most of that idea. So I am instructing Mr. Barton to specialize on such things as Northern Pacific and these Rapid Transit Companies, as they call the street-cars. I shall never forgive myself for not buying Bethlehem Steel. I've heard the most fascinating stories. You must go into finance, Amory. I'm sure you would revel in it. You start as a messenger or a teller, I believe, and from that you go up--almost indefinitely. I'm sure if I were a man I'd love the handling of money; it has become quite a senile passion with me. Before I get any farther I want to discuss something. A Mrs. Bispam, an overcordial little lady whom I met at a tea the other day, told me that her son, he is at Yale, wrote her that all the boys there wore their summer underwear all during the winter, and also went about with their heads wet and in low shoes on the coldest days. Now, Amory, I don't know whether that is a fad at Princeton too, but I don't want you to be so foolish. It not only inclines a young man to pneumonia and infantile paralysis, but to all forms of lung trouble, to which you are particularly inclined. You cannot experiment with your health. I have found that out. I will not make myself ridiculous as some mothers no doubt do, by insisting that you wear overshoes, though I remember one Christmas you wore them around constantly without a single buckle latched, making such a curious swishing sound, and you refused to buckle them because it was not the thing to do. The very next Christmas you would not wear even rubbers, though I begged you. You are nearly twenty years old now, dear, and I can't be with you constantly to find whether you are doing the sensible thing. 

 "This has been a very _practical_ letter. I warned you in my last that the lack of money to do the things one wants to makes one quite prosy and domestic, but there is still plenty for everything if we are not too extravagant. Take care of yourself, my dear boy, and do try to write at least _once_ a week, because I imagine all sorts of horrible things if I don't hear from you. Affectionately, MOTHER. "

 *****

FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE TERM "PERSONAGE"

Monsignor Darcy invited Amory up to the Stuart palace on the Hudson fora week at Christmas, and they had enormous conversations around the openfire. Monsignor was growing a trifle stouter and his personality hadexpanded even with that, and Amory felt both rest and security insinking into a squat, cushioned chair and joining him in the middle-agedsanity of a cigar. 

"I've felt like leaving college, Monsignor. "

"Why?"

"All my career's gone up in smoke; you think it's petty and all that, but--"

"Not at all petty. I think it's most important. I want to hear the wholething. Everything you've been doing since I saw you last. "

Amory talked; he went thoroughly into the destruction of his egotistichighways, and in a half-hour the listless quality had left his voice. 

"What would you do if you left college?" asked Monsignor. 

"Don't know. I'd like to travel, but of course this tiresome warprevents that. Anyways, mother would hate not having me graduate. I'mjust at sea. Kerry Holiday wants me to go over with him and join theLafayette Esquadrille. "

"You know you wouldn't like to go. "

"Sometimes I would--to-night I'd go in a second. "

"Well, you'd have to be very much more tired of life than I think youare. I know you. "

"I'm afraid you do, " agreed Amory reluctantly. "It just seemed an easyway out of everything--when I think of another useless, draggy year. "

"Yes, I know; but to tell you the truth, I'm not worried about you; youseem to me to be progressing perfectly naturally. "

"No, " Amory objected. "I've lost half my personality in a year. "

"Not a bit of it!" scoffed Monsignor. "You've lost a great amount ofvanity and that's all. "

"Lordy! I feel, anyway, as if I'd gone through another fifth form at St. Regis's. "

"No. " Monsignor shook his head. "That was a misfortune; this has beena good thing. Whatever worth while comes to you, won't be through thechannels you were searching last year. "

"What could be more unprofitable than my present lack of pep?"

"Perhaps in itself. . . But you're developing. This has given you time tothink and you're casting off a lot of your old luggage about success andthe superman and all. People like us can't adopt whole theories, as youdid. If we can do the next thing, and have an hour a day to think in, we can accomplish marvels, but as far as any high-handed scheme of blinddominance is concerned--we'd just make asses of ourselves. "

"But, Monsignor, I can't do the next thing. "

"Amory, between you and me, I have only just learned to do it myself. Ican do the one hundred things beyond the next thing, but I stub my toeon that, just as you stubbed your toe on mathematics this fall. "

"Why do we have to do the next thing? It never seems the sort of thing Ishould do. "

"We have to do it because we're not personalities, but personages. "

"That's a good line--what do you mean?"

"A personality is what you thought you were, what this Kerry and Sloaneyou tell me of evidently are. Personality is a physical matter almostentirely; it lowers the people it acts on--I've seen it vanish in along sickness. But while a personality is active, it overrides 'the nextthing. ' Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thoughtof apart from what he's done. He's a bar on which a thousand things havebeen hung--glittering things sometimes, as ours are; but he uses thosethings with a cold mentality back of them. "

"And several of my most glittering possessions had fallen off when Ineeded them. " Amory continued the simile eagerly. 

"Yes, that's it; when you feel that your garnered prestige and talentsand all that are hung out, you need never bother about anybody; you cancope with them without difficulty. "

"But, on the other hand, if I haven't my possessions, I'm helpless!"

"Absolutely. "

"That's certainly an idea. "

"Now you've a clean start--a start Kerry or Sloane can constitutionallynever have. You brushed three or four ornaments down, and, in a fit ofpique, knocked off the rest of them. The thing now is to collect somenew ones, and the farther you look ahead in the collecting the better. But remember, do the next thing!"

"How clear you can make things!"

So they talked, often about themselves, sometimes of philosophy andreligion, and life as respectively a game or a mystery. The priestseemed to guess Amory's thoughts before they were clear in his own head, so closely related were their minds in form and groove. 

"Why do I make lists?" Amory asked him one night. "Lists of all sorts ofthings?"

"Because you're a mediaevalist, " Monsignor answered. "We both are. It'sthe passion for classifying and finding a type. "

"It's a desire to get something definite. "

"It's the nucleus of scholastic philosophy. "

"I was beginning to think I was growing eccentric till I came up here. It was a pose, I guess. "

"Don't worry about that; for you not posing may be the biggest pose ofall. Pose--"

"Yes?"

"But do the next thing. "

After Amory returned to college he received several letters fromMonsignor which gave him more egotistic food for consumption. 

 I am afraid that I gave you too much assurance of your inevitable safety, and you must remember that I did that through faith in your springs of effort; not in the silly conviction that you will arrive without struggle. Some nuances of character you will have to take for granted in yourself, though you must be careful in confessing them to others. You are unsentimental, almost incapable of affection, astute without being cunning and vain without being proud. 

 Don't let yourself feel worthless; often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don't worry about losing your "personality, " as you persist in calling it; at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 P. M. 

 If you write me letters, please let them be natural ones. Your last, that dissertation on architecture, was perfectly awful-- so "highbrow" that I picture you living in an intellectual and emotional vacuum; and beware of trying to classify people too definitely into types; you will find that all through their youth they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with the world. An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da Vinci would be a more valuable beacon to you at present. 

 You are bound to go up and down, just as I did in my youth, but do keep your clarity of mind, and if fools or sages dare to criticise don't blame yourself too much. 

 You say that convention is all that really keeps you straight in this "woman proposition"; but it's more than that, Amory; it's the fear that what you begin you can't stop; you would run amuck, and I know whereof I speak; it's that half-miraculous sixth sense by which you detect evil, it's the half-realized fear of God in your heart. 

 Whatever your metier proves to be--religion, architecture, literature--I'm sure you would be much safer anchored to the Church, but I won't risk my influence by arguing with you even though I am secretly sure that the "black chasm of Romanism" yawns beneath you. Do write me soon. 

 With affectionate regards, THAYER DARCY. 

Even Amory's reading paled during this period; he delved further intothe misty side streets of literature: Huysmans, Walter Pater, TheophileGautier, and the racier sections of Rabelais, Boccaccio, Petronius, andSuetonius. One week, through general curiosity, he inspected the privatelibraries of his classmates and found Sloane's as typical as any: setsof Kipling, O. Henry, John Fox, Jr. , and Richard Harding Davis; "WhatEvery Middle-Aged Woman Ought to Know, " "The Spell of the Yukon";a "gift" copy of James Whitcomb Riley, an assortment of battered, annotated schoolbooks, and, finally, to his surprise, one of his ownlate discoveries, the collected poems of Rupert Brooke. 

Together with Tom D'Invilliers, he sought among the lights of Princetonfor some one who might found the Great American Poetic Tradition. 

The undergraduate body itself was rather more interesting that year thanhad been the entirely Philistine Princeton of two years before. Thingshad livened surprisingly, though at the sacrifice of much of thespontaneous charm of freshman year. In the old Princeton they wouldnever have discovered Tanaduke Wylie. Tanaduke was a sophomore, withtremendous ears and a way of saying, "The earth swirls down throughthe ominous moons of preconsidered generations!" that made them vaguelywonder why it did not sound quite clear, but never question that it wasthe utterance of a supersoul. At least so Tom and Amory took him. Theytold him in all earnestness that he had a mind like Shelley's, andfeatured his ultrafree free verse and prose poetry in the NassauLiterary Magazine. But Tanaduke's genius absorbed the many colors of theage, and he took to the Bohemian life, to their great disappointment. Hetalked of Greenwich Village now instead of "noon-swirled moons, " andmet winter muses, unacademic, and cloistered by Forty-second Streetand Broadway, instead of the Shelleyan dream-children with whom he hadregaled their expectant appreciation. So they surrendered Tanaduke tothe futurists, deciding that he and his flaming ties would do betterthere. Tom gave him the final advice that he should stop writing for twoyears and read the complete works of Alexander Pope four times, but onAmory's suggestion that Pope for Tanaduke was like foot-ease for stomachtrouble, they withdrew in laughter, and called it a coin's toss whetherthis genius was too big or too petty for them. 

Amory rather scornfully avoided the popular professors who dispensedeasy epigrams and thimblefuls of Chartreuse to groups of admirers everynight. He was disappointed, too, at the air of general uncertainty onevery subject that seemed linked with the pedantic temperament; hisopinions took shape in a miniature satire called "In a Lecture-Room, "which he persuaded Tom to print in the Nassau Lit. 

 "Good-morning, Fool. . . Three times a week You hold us helpless while you speak, Teasing our thirsty souls with the Sleek 'yeas' of your philosophy. . . Well, here we are, your hundred sheep, Tune up, play on, pour forth. . . We sleep. . . You are a student, so they say; You hammered out the other day A syllabus, from what we know Of some forgotten folio; You'd sniffled through an era's must, Filling your nostrils up with dust, And then, arising from your knees, Published, in one gigantic sneeze. . . But here's a neighbor on my right, An Eager Ass, considered bright; Asker of questions. . . . How he'll stand, With earnest air and fidgy hand, After this hour, telling you He sat all night and burrowed through Your book. . . . Oh, you'll be coy and he Will simulate precosity, And pedants both, you'll smile and smirk, And leer, and hasten back to work. . . . 

 'Twas this day week, sir, you returned A theme of mine, from which I learned (Through various comment on the side Which you had scrawled) that I defied The _highest rules of criticism_ For _cheap_ and _careless_ witticism. . . . 'Are you quite sure that this could be?' And 'Shaw is no authority!' But Eager Ass, with what he's sent, Plays havoc with your best per cent. 

 Still--still I meet you here and there. . . When Shakespeare's played you hold a chair, And some defunct, moth-eaten star Enchants the mental prig you are. . . A radical comes down and shocks The atheistic orthodox? You're representing Common Sense, Mouth open, in the audience. And, sometimes, even chapel lures That conscious tolerance of yours, That broad and beaming view of truth (Including Kant and General Booth. . . ) And so from shock to shock you live, A hollow, pale affirmative. . . 

 The hour's up. . . And roused from rest One hundred children of the blest Cheat you a word or two with feet That down the noisy aisle-ways beat. . . Forget on _narrow-minded earth_ The Mighty Yawn that gave you birth. "

In April, Kerry Holiday left college and sailed for France to enroll inthe Lafayette Esquadrille. Amory's envy and admiration of this stepwas drowned in an experience of his own to which he never succeeded ingiving an appropriate value, but which, nevertheless, haunted him forthree years afterward. 

 *****

THE DEVIL

Healy's they left at twelve and taxied to Bistolary's. There were AxiaMarlowe and Phoebe Column, from the Summer Garden show, Fred Sloaneand Amory. The evening was so very young that they felt ridiculous withsurplus energy, and burst into the cafe like Dionysian revellers. 

"Table for four in the middle of the floor, " yelled Phoebe. "Hurry, olddear, tell 'em we're here!"

"Tell 'em to play 'Admiration'!" shouted Sloane. "You two order; Phoebeand I are going to shake a wicked calf, " and they sailed off in themuddled crowd. Axia and Amory, acquaintances of an hour, jostled behinda waiter to a table at a point of vantage; there they took seats andwatched. 

"There's Findle Margotson, from New Haven!" she cried above the uproar. "'Lo, Findle! Whoo-ee!"

"Oh, Axia!" he shouted in salutation. "C'mon over to our table. " "No!"Amory whispered. 

"Can't do it, Findle; I'm with somebody else! Call me up to-morrow aboutone o'clock!"

Findle, a nondescript man-about-Bisty's, answered incoherently andturned back to the brilliant blonde whom he was endeavoring to steeraround the room. 

"There's a natural damn fool, " commented Amory. 

"Oh, he's all right. Here's the old jitney waiter. If you ask me, I wanta double Daiquiri. "

"Make it four. "

The crowd whirled and changed and shifted. They were mostly from thecolleges, with a scattering of the male refuse of Broadway, and women oftwo types, the higher of which was the chorus girl. On the whole it wasa typical crowd, and their party as typical as any. About three-fourthsof the whole business was for effect and therefore harmless, ended atthe door of the cafe, soon enough for the five-o'clock train back toYale or Princeton; about one-fourth continued on into the dimmer hoursand gathered strange dust from strange places. Their party was scheduledto be one of the harmless kind. Fred Sloane and Phoebe Column were oldfriends; Axia and Amory new ones. But strange things are prepared evenin the dead of night, and the unusual, which lurks least in the cafe, home of the prosaic and inevitable, was preparing to spoil for himthe waning romance of Broadway. The way it took was so inexpressiblyterrible, so unbelievable, that afterward he never thought of it asexperience; but it was a scene from a misty tragedy, played far behindthe veil, and that it meant something definite he knew. 

About one o'clock they moved to Maxim's, and two found them inDeviniere's. Sloane had been drinking consecutively and was in a stateof unsteady exhilaration, but Amory was quite tiresomely sober; theyhad run across none of those ancient, corrupt buyers of champagne whousually assisted their New York parties. They were just through dancingand were making their way back to their chairs when Amory became awarethat some one at a near-by table was looking at him. He turned andglanced casually. . . A middle-aged man dressed in a brown sack suit, itwas, sitting a little apart at a table by himself and watching theirparty intently. At Amory's glance he smiled faintly. Amory turned toFred, who was just sitting down. 

"Who's that pale fool watching us?" he complained indignantly. 

"Where?" cried Sloane. "We'll have him thrown out!" He rose to his feetand swayed back and forth, clinging to his chair. "Where is he?"

Axia and Phoebe suddenly leaned and whispered to each other across thetable, and before Amory realized it they found themselves on their wayto the door. 

"Where now?"

"Up to the flat, " suggested Phoebe. "We've got brandy and fizz--andeverything's slow down here to-night. "

Amory considered quickly. He hadn't been drinking, and decided that ifhe took no more, it would be reasonably discreet for him to trot alongin the party. In fact, it would be, perhaps, the thing to do in order tokeep an eye on Sloane, who was not in a state to do his own thinking. Sohe took Axia's arm and, piling intimately into a taxicab, they drove outover the hundreds and drew up at a tall, white-stone apartment-house. . . . Never would he forget that street. . . . It was a broad street, linedon both sides with just such tall, white-stone buildings, dotted withdark windows; they stretched along as far as the eye could see, floodedwith a bright moonlight that gave them a calcium pallor. He imaginedeach one to have an elevator and a colored hall-boy and a key-rack; eachone to be eight stories high and full of three and four room suites. Hewas rather glad to walk into the cheeriness of Phoebe's living-room andsink onto a sofa, while the girls went rummaging for food. 

"Phoebe's great stuff, " confided Sloane, sotto voce. 

"I'm only going to stay half an hour, " Amory said sternly. He wonderedif it sounded priggish. 

"Hell y' say, " protested Sloane. "We're here now--don't le's rush. "

"I don't like this place, " Amory said sulkily, "and I don't want anyfood. "

Phoebe reappeared with sandwiches, brandy bottle, siphon, and fourglasses. 

"Amory, pour 'em out, " she said, "and we'll drink to Fred Sloane, whohas a rare, distinguished edge. "

"Yes, " said Axia, coming in, "and Amory. I like Amory. " She sat downbeside him and laid her yellow head on his shoulder. 

"I'll pour, " said Sloane; "you use siphon, Phoebe. "

They filled the tray with glasses. 

"Ready, here she goes!"

Amory hesitated, glass in hand. 

There was a minute while temptation crept over him like a warm wind, and his imagination turned to fire, and he took the glass from Phoebe'shand. That was all; for at the second that his decision came, he lookedup and saw, ten yards from him, the man who had been in the cafe, andwith his jump of astonishment the glass fell from his uplifted hand. There the man half sat, half leaned against a pile of pillows on thecorner divan. His face was cast in the same yellow wax as in the cafe, neither the dull, pasty color of a dead man--rather a sort of virilepallor--nor unhealthy, you'd have called it; but like a strong man who'dworked in a mine or done night shifts in a damp climate. Amory lookedhim over carefully and later he could have drawn him after a fashion, down to the merest details. His mouth was the kind that is called frank, and he had steady gray eyes that moved slowly from one to the otherof their group, with just the shade of a questioning expression. Amorynoticed his hands; they weren't fine at all, but they had versatilityand a tenuous strength. . . They were nervous hands that sat lightlyalong the cushions and moved constantly with little jerky openings andclosings. Then, suddenly, Amory perceived the feet, and with a rush ofblood to the head he realized he was afraid. The feet were all wrong . . . With a sort of wrongness that he felt rather than knew. . . . It was likeweakness in a good woman, or blood on satin; one of those terribleincongruities that shake little things in the back of the brain. He woreno shoes, but, instead, a sort of half moccasin, pointed, though, likethe shoes they wore in the fourteenth century, and with the little endscurling up. They were a darkish brown and his toes seemed to fill themto the end. . . . They were unutterably terrible. . . . 

He must have said something, or looked something, for Axia's voice cameout of the void with a strange goodness. 

"Well, look at Amory! Poor old Amory's sick--old head going 'round?"

"Look at that man!" cried Amory, pointing toward the corner divan. 

"You mean that purple zebra!" shrieked Axia facetiously. "Ooo-ee!Amory's got a purple zebra watching him!"

Sloane laughed vacantly. 

"Ole zebra gotcha, Amory?"

There was a silence. . . . The man regarded Amory quizzically. . . . Then thehuman voices fell faintly on his ear:

"Thought you weren't drinking, " remarked Axia sardonically, but hervoice was good to hear; the whole divan that held the man was alive;alive like heat waves over asphalt, like wriggling worms. . . . 

"Come back! Come back!" Axia's arm fell on his. "Amory, dear, you aren'tgoing, Amory!" He was half-way to the door. 

"Come on, Amory, stick 'th us!"

"Sick, are you?"

"Sit down a second!"

"Take some water. "

"Take a little brandy. . . . "

The elevator was close, and the colored boy was half asleep, paled toa livid bronze. . . Axia's beseeching voice floated down the shaft. Thosefeet. . . Those feet. . . 

As they settled to the lower floor the feet came into view in the sicklyelectric light of the paved hall. 

 *****

IN THE ALLEY

Down the long street came the moon, and Amory turned his back on it andwalked. Ten, fifteen steps away sounded the footsteps. They were like aslow dripping, with just the slightest insistence in their fall. Amory's shadow lay, perhaps, ten feet ahead of him, and soft shoes waspresumably that far behind. With the instinct of a child Amory edged inunder the blue darkness of the white buildings, cleaving the moonlightfor haggard seconds, once bursting into a slow run with clumsystumblings. After that he stopped suddenly; he must keep hold, hethought. His lips were dry and he licked them. 

If he met any one good--were there any good people left in the world ordid they all live in white apartment-houses now? Was every one followedin the moonlight? But if he met some one good who'd know what he meantand hear this damned scuffle. . . Then the scuffling grew suddenly nearer, and a black cloud settled over the moon. When again the pale sheenskimmed the cornices, it was almost beside him, and Amory thought heheard a quiet breathing. Suddenly he realized that the footsteps werenot behind, had never been behind, they were ahead and he was noteluding but following. . . Following. He began to run, blindly, his heartknocking heavily, his hands clinched. Far ahead a black dot showeditself, resolved slowly into a human shape. But Amory was beyond thatnow; he turned off the street and darted into an alley, narrow anddark and smelling of old rottenness. He twisted down a long, sinuousblackness, where the moonlight was shut away except for tiny glintsand patches. . . Then suddenly sank panting into a corner by a fence, exhausted. The steps ahead stopped, and he could hear them shiftslightly with a continuous motion, like waves around a dock. 

He put his face in his hands and covered eyes and ears as well ashe could. During all this time it never occurred to him that he wasdelirious or drunk. He had a sense of reality such as material thingscould never give him. His intellectual content seemed to submitpassively to it, and it fitted like a glove everything that had everpreceded it in his life. It did not muddle him. It was like a problemwhose answer he knew on paper, yet whose solution he was unable tograsp. He was far beyond horror. He had sunk through the thin surface ofthat, now moved in a region where the feet and the fear of white wallswere real, living things, things he must accept. Only far inside hissoul a little fire leaped and cried that something was pulling him down, trying to get him inside a door and slam it behind him. After that doorwas slammed there would be only footfalls and white buildings in themoonlight, and perhaps he would be one of the footfalls. 

During the five or ten minutes he waited in the shadow of the fence, there was somehow this fire. . . That was as near as he could name itafterward. He remembered calling aloud:

"I want some one stupid. Oh, send some one stupid!" This to theblack fence opposite him, in whose shadows the footsteps shuffled. . . Shuffled. He supposed "stupid" and "good" had become somehowintermingled through previous association. When he called thus it wasnot an act of will at all--will had turned him away from the movingfigure in the street; it was almost instinct that called, just the pileon pile of inherent tradition or some wild prayer from way over thenight. Then something clanged like a low gong struck at a distance, and before his eyes a face flashed over the two feet, a face pale anddistorted with a sort of infinite evil that twisted it like flame inthe wind; _but he knew, for the half instant that the gong tanged andhummed, that it was the face of Dick Humbird. _

Minutes later he sprang to his feet, realizing dimly that there was nomore sound, and that he was alone in the graying alley. It was cold, andhe started on a steady run for the light that showed the street at theother end. 

 *****

AT THE WINDOW

It was late morning when he woke and found the telephone beside his bedin the hotel tolling frantically, and remembered that he had left wordto be called at eleven. Sloane was snoring heavily, his clothes in apile by his bed. They dressed and ate breakfast in silence, and thensauntered out to get some air. Amory's mind was working slowly, tryingto assimilate what had happened and separate from the chaotic imagerythat stacked his memory the bare shreds of truth. If the morning hadbeen cold and gray he could have grasped the reins of the past in aninstant, but it was one of those days that New York gets sometimes inMay, when the air on Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine. How much or howlittle Sloane remembered Amory did not care to know; he apparently hadnone of the nervous tension that was gripping Amory and forcing his mindback and forth like a shrieking saw. 

Then Broadway broke upon them, and with the babel of noise and thepainted faces a sudden sickness rushed over Amory. 

"For God's sake, let's go back! Let's get off of this--this place!"

Sloane looked at him in amazement. 

"What do you mean?"

"This street, it's ghastly! Come on! let's get back to the Avenue!"

"Do you mean to say, " said Sloane stolidly, "that 'cause you had somesort of indigestion that made you act like a maniac last night, you'renever coming on Broadway again?"

Simultaneously Amory classed him with the crowd, and he seemed no longerSloane of the debonair humor and the happy personality, but only one ofthe evil faces that whirled along the turbid stream. 

"Man!" he shouted so loud that the people on the corner turned andfollowed them with their eyes, "it's filthy, and if you can't see it, you're filthy, too!"

"I can't help it, " said Sloane doggedly. "What's the matter with you?Old remorse getting you? You'd be in a fine state if you'd gone throughwith our little party. "

"I'm going, Fred, " said Amory slowly. His knees were shaking under him, and he knew that if he stayed another minute on this street he wouldkeel over where he stood. "I'll be at the Vanderbilt for lunch. " And hestrode rapidly off and turned over to Fifth Avenue. Back at the hotel hefelt better, but as he walked into the barber-shop, intending to get ahead massage, the smell of the powders and tonics brought back Axia'ssidelong, suggestive smile, and he left hurriedly. In the doorway of hisroom a sudden blackness flowed around him like a divided river. 

When he came to himself he knew that several hours had passed. Hepitched onto the bed and rolled over on his face with a deadly fear thathe was going mad. He wanted people, people, some one sane and stupid andgood. He lay for he knew not how long without moving. He could feelthe little hot veins on his forehead standing out, and his terror hadhardened on him like plaster. He felt he was passing up again throughthe thin crust of horror, and now only could he distinguish the shadowytwilight he was leaving. He must have fallen asleep again, for when henext recollected himself he had paid the hotel bill and was steppinginto a taxi at the door. It was raining torrents. 

On the train for Princeton he saw no one he knew, only a crowd offagged-looking Philadelphians. The presence of a painted woman acrossthe aisle filled him with a fresh burst of sickness and he changed toanother car, tried to concentrate on an article in a popular magazine. He found himself reading the same paragraphs over and over, so heabandoned this attempt and leaning over wearily pressed his hot foreheadagainst the damp window-pane. The car, a smoker, was hot and stuffy withmost of the smells of the state's alien population; he opened a windowand shivered against the cloud of fog that drifted in over him. The twohours' ride were like days, and he nearly cried aloud with joy when thetowers of Princeton loomed up beside him and the yellow squares of lightfiltered through the blue rain. 

Tom was standing in the centre of the room, pensively relighting acigar-stub. Amory fancied he looked rather relieved on seeing him. 

"Had a hell of a dream about you last night, " came in the cracked voicethrough the cigar smoke. "I had an idea you were in some trouble. "

"Don't tell me about it!" Amory almost shrieked. "Don't say a word; I'mtired and pepped out. "

Tom looked at him queerly and then sank into a chair and opened hisItalian note-book. Amory threw his coat and hat on the floor, loosenedhis collar, and took a Wells novel at random from the shelf. "Wells issane, " he thought, "and if he won't do I'll read Rupert Brooke. "

Half an hour passed. Outside the wind came up, and Amory started asthe wet branches moved and clawed with their finger-nails at thewindow-pane. Tom was deep in his work, and inside the room only theoccasional scratch of a match or the rustle of leather as they shiftedin their chairs broke the stillness. Then like a zigzag of lightningcame the change. Amory sat bolt upright, frozen cold in his chair. Tomwas looking at him with his mouth drooping, eyes fixed. 

"God help us!" Amory cried. 

"Oh, my heavens!" shouted Tom, "look behind!" Quick as a flash Amorywhirled around. He saw nothing but the dark window-pane. "It's gonenow, " came Tom's voice after a second in a still terror. "Something waslooking at you. "

Trembling violently, Amory dropped into his chair again. 

"I've got to tell you, " he said. "I've had one hell of an experience. I think I've--I've seen the devil or--something like him. What face didyou just see?--or no, " he added quickly, "don't tell me!"

And he gave Tom the story. It was midnight when he finished, and afterthat, with all lights burning, two sleepy, shivering boys read to eachother from "The New Machiavelli, " until dawn came up out of WitherspoonHall, and the Princetonian fell against the door, and the May birdshailed the sun on last night's rain. 

CHAPTER 4. Narcissus Off Duty

During Princeton's transition period, that is, during Amory's lasttwo years there, while he saw it change and broaden and live up to itsGothic beauty by better means than night parades, certain individualsarrived who stirred it to its plethoric depths. Some of them had beenfreshmen, and wild freshmen, with Amory; some were in the class below;and it was in the beginning of his last year and around small tables atthe Nassau Inn that they began questioning aloud the institutions thatAmory and countless others before him had questioned so long in secret. First, and partly by accident, they struck on certain books, a definitetype of biographical novel that Amory christened "quest" books. In the"quest" book the hero set off in life armed with the best weapons andavowedly intending to use them as such weapons are usually used, to pushtheir possessors ahead as selfishly and blindly as possible, but theheroes of the "quest" books discovered that there might be a moremagnificent use for them. "None Other Gods, " "Sinister Street, " and "TheResearch Magnificent" were examples of such books; it was the latterof these three that gripped Burne Holiday and made him wonder in thebeginning of senior year how much it was worth while being a diplomaticautocrat around his club on Prospect Avenue and basking in the highlights of class office. It was distinctly through the channels ofaristocracy that Burne found his way. Amory, through Kerry, had had avague drifting acquaintance with him, but not until January of senioryear did their friendship commence. 

"Heard the latest?" said Tom, coming in late one drizzly evening withthat triumphant air he always wore after a successful conversationalbout. 

"No. Somebody flunked out? Or another ship sunk?"

"Worse than that. About one-third of the junior class are going toresign from their clubs. "

"What!"

"Actual fact!"

"Why!"

"Spirit of reform and all that. Burne Holiday is behind it. The clubpresidents are holding a meeting to-night to see if they can find ajoint means of combating it. "

"Well, what's the idea of the thing?"

"Oh, clubs injurious to Princeton democracy; cost a lot; draw sociallines, take time; the regular line you get sometimes from disappointedsophomores. Woodrow thought they should be abolished and all that. "

"But this is the real thing?"

"Absolutely. I think it'll go through. "

"For Pete's sake, tell me more about it. "

"Well, " began Tom, "it seems that the idea developed simultaneously inseveral heads. I was talking to Burne awhile ago, and he claims thatit's a logical result if an intelligent person thinks long enoughabout the social system. They had a 'discussion crowd' and the point ofabolishing the clubs was brought up by some one--everybody there leapedat it--it had been in each one's mind, more or less, and it just neededa spark to bring it out. "

"Fine! I swear I think it'll be most entertaining. How do they feel upat Cap and Gown?"

"Wild, of course. Every one's been sitting and arguing and swearing andgetting mad and getting sentimental and getting brutal. It's the same atall the clubs; I've been the rounds. They get one of the radicals in thecorner and fire questions at him. "

"How do the radicals stand up?"

"Oh, moderately well. Burne's a damn good talker, and so obviouslysincere that you can't get anywhere with him. It's so evident thatresigning from his club means so much more to him than preventing itdoes to us that I felt futile when I argued; finally took a positionthat was brilliantly neutral. In fact, I believe Burne thought for awhile that he'd converted me. "

"And you say almost a third of the junior class are going to resign?"

"Call it a fourth and be safe. "

"Lord--who'd have thought it possible!"

There was a brisk knock at the door, and Burne himself came in. "Hello, Amory--hello, Tom. "

Amory rose. 

"'Evening, Burne. Don't mind if I seem to rush; I'm going to Renwick's. "

Burne turned to him quickly. 

"You probably know what I want to talk to Tom about, and it isn't a bitprivate. I wish you'd stay. "

"I'd be glad to. " Amory sat down again, and as Burne perched on a tableand launched into argument with Tom, he looked at this revolutionarymore carefully than he ever had before. Broad-browed and strong-chinned, with a fineness in the honest gray eyes that were like Kerry's, Burne was a man who gave an immediate impression of bigness andsecurity--stubborn, that was evident, but his stubbornness wore nostolidity, and when he had talked for five minutes Amory knew that thiskeen enthusiasm had in it no quality of dilettantism. 

The intense power Amory felt later in Burne Holiday differed from theadmiration he had had for Humbird. This time it began as purely amental interest. With other men of whom he had thought as primarilyfirst-class, he had been attracted first by their personalities, andin Burne he missed that immediate magnetism to which he usuallyswore allegiance. But that night Amory was struck by Burne's intenseearnestness, a quality he was accustomed to associate only with thedread stupidity, and by the great enthusiasm that struck dead chords inhis heart. Burne stood vaguely for a land Amory hoped he was driftingtoward--and it was almost time that land was in sight. Tom and Amory andAlec had reached an impasse; never did they seem to have new experiencesin common, for Tom and Alec had been as blindly busy with theircommittees and boards as Amory had been blindly idling, and the thingsthey had for dissection--college, contemporary personality and thelike--they had hashed and rehashed for many a frugal conversationalmeal. 

That night they discussed the clubs until twelve, and, in the main, theyagreed with Burne. To the roommates it did not seem such a vital subjectas it had in the two years before, but the logic of Burne's objectionsto the social system dovetailed so completely with everything they hadthought, that they questioned rather than argued, and envied the sanitythat enabled this man to stand out so against all traditions. 

Then Amory branched off and found that Burne was deep in other thingsas well. Economics had interested him and he was turning socialist. Pacifism played in the back of his mind, and he read The Masses andLyoff Tolstoi faithfully. 

"How about religion?" Amory asked him. 

"Don't know. I'm in a muddle about a lot of things--I've just discoveredthat I've a mind, and I'm starting to read. "

"Read what?"

"Everything. I have to pick and choose, of course, but mostly things tomake me think. I'm reading the four gospels now, and the 'Varieties ofReligious Experience. '"

"What chiefly started you?"

"Wells, I guess, and Tolstoi, and a man named Edward Carpenter. I'vebeen reading for over a year now--on a few lines, on what I consider theessential lines. "

"Poetry?"

"Well, frankly, not what you call poetry, or for your reasons--you twowrite, of course, and look at things differently. Whitman is the manthat attracts me. "

"Whitman?"

"Yes; he's a definite ethical force. "

"Well, I'm ashamed to say that I'm a blank on the subject of Whitman. How about you, Tom?"

Tom nodded sheepishly. 

"Well, " continued Burne, "you may strike a few poems that are tiresome, but I mean the mass of his work. He's tremendous--like Tolstoi. Theyboth look things in the face, and, somehow, different as they are, standfor somewhat the same things. "

"You have me stumped, Burne, " Amory admitted. "I've read 'Anna Karenina'and the 'Kreutzer Sonata' of course, but Tolstoi is mostly in theoriginal Russian as far as I'm concerned. "

"He's the greatest man in hundreds of years, " cried Burneenthusiastically. "Did you ever see a picture of that shaggy old head ofhis?"

They talked until three, from biology to organized religion, and whenAmory crept shivering into bed it was with his mind aglow with ideasand a sense of shock that some one else had discovered the path he mighthave followed. Burne Holiday was so evidently developing--and Amoryhad considered that he was doing the same. He had fallen into a deepcynicism over what had crossed his path, plotted the imperfectability ofman and read Shaw and Chesterton enough to keep his mind from the edgesof decadence--now suddenly all his mental processes of the last year anda half seemed stale and futile--a petty consummation of himself. . . Andlike a sombre background lay that incident of the spring before, thatfilled half his nights with a dreary terror and made him unable to pray. He was not even a Catholic, yet that was the only ghost of a code thathe had, the gaudy, ritualistic, paradoxical Catholicism whose prophetwas Chesterton, whose claqueurs were such reformed rakes of literatureas Huysmans and Bourget, whose American sponsor was Ralph Adams Cram, with his adulation of thirteenth-century cathedrals--a Catholicism whichAmory found convenient and ready-made, without priest or sacraments orsacrifice. 

He could not sleep, so he turned on his reading-lamp and, taking downthe "Kreutzer Sonata, " searched it carefully for the germs of Burne'senthusiasm. Being Burne was suddenly so much realler than being clever. Yet he sighed. . . Here were other possible clay feet. 

He thought back through two years, of Burne as a hurried, nervousfreshman, quite submerged in his brother's personality. Then heremembered an incident of sophomore year, in which Burne had beensuspected of the leading role. 

Dean Hollister had been heard by a large group arguing with ataxi-driver, who had driven him from the junction. In the course of thealtercation the dean remarked that he "might as well buy the taxicab. "He paid and walked off, but next morning he entered his private officeto find the taxicab itself in the space usually occupied by his desk, bearing a sign which read "Property of Dean Hollister. Bought and Paidfor. ". . . It took two expert mechanics half a day to dissemble it intoits minutest parts and remove it, which only goes to prove the rareenergy of sophomore humor under efficient leadership. 

Then again, that very fall, Burne had caused a sensation. A certainPhyllis Styles, an intercollegiate prom-trotter, had failed to get heryearly invitation to the Harvard-Princeton game. 

Jesse Ferrenby had brought her to a smaller game a few weeks before, and had pressed Burne into service--to the ruination of the latter'smisogyny. 

"Are you coming to the Harvard game?" Burne had asked indiscreetly, merely to make conversation. 

"If you ask me, " cried Phyllis quickly. 

"Of course I do, " said Burne feebly. He was unversed in the arts ofPhyllis, and was sure that this was merely a vapid form of kidding. Before an hour had passed he knew that he was indeed involved. Phyllishad pinned him down and served him up, informed him the train she wasarriving by, and depressed him thoroughly. Aside from loathing Phyllis, he had particularly wanted to stag that game and entertain some Harvardfriends. 

"She'll see, " he informed a delegation who arrived in his room to joshhim. "This will be the last game she ever persuades any young innocentto take her to!"

"But, Burne--why did you _invite_ her if you didn't want her?"

"Burne, you _know_ you're secretly mad about her--that's the _real_trouble. "

"What can _you_ do, Burne? What can _you_ do against Phyllis?"

But Burne only shook his head and muttered threats which consistedlargely of the phrase: "She'll see, she'll see!"

The blithesome Phyllis bore her twenty-five summers gayly from thetrain, but on the platform a ghastly sight met her eyes. There wereBurne and Fred Sloane arrayed to the last dot like the lurid figureson college posters. They had bought flaring suits with huge peg-toptrousers and gigantic padded shoulders. On their heads were rakishcollege hats, pinned up in front and sporting bright orange-and-blackbands, while from their celluloid collars blossomed flaming orange ties. They wore black arm-bands with orange "P's, " and carried canesflying Princeton pennants, the effect completed by socks and peepinghandkerchiefs in the same color motifs. On a clanking chain they led alarge, angry tom-cat, painted to represent a tiger. 

A good half of the station crowd was already staring at them, tornbetween horrified pity and riotous mirth, and as Phyllis, with hersvelte jaw dropping, approached, the pair bent over and emitted acollege cheer in loud, far-carrying voices, thoughtfully adding thename "Phyllis" to the end. She was vociferously greeted and escortedenthusiastically across the campus, followed by half a hundred villageurchins--to the stifled laughter of hundreds of alumni and visitors, half of whom had no idea that this was a practical joke, but thoughtthat Burne and Fred were two varsity sports showing their girl acollegiate time. 

Phyllis's feelings as she was paraded by the Harvard and Princetonstands, where sat dozens of her former devotees, can be imagined. Shetried to walk a little ahead, she tried to walk a little behind--butthey stayed close, that there should be no doubt whom she was with, talking in loud voices of their friends on the football team, until shecould almost hear her acquaintances whispering:

"Phyllis Styles must be _awfully hard up_ to have to come with _thosetwo_. "

That had been Burne, dynamically humorous, fundamentally serious. Fromthat root had blossomed the energy that he was now trying to orient withprogress. . . . 

So the weeks passed and March came and the clay feet that Amory lookedfor failed to appear. About a hundred juniors and seniors resignedfrom their clubs in a final fury of righteousness, and the clubs inhelplessness turned upon Burne their finest weapon: ridicule. Every onewho knew him liked him--but what he stood for (and he began to stand formore all the time) came under the lash of many tongues, until a frailerman than he would have been snowed under. 

"Don't you mind losing prestige?" asked Amory one night. They had takento exchanging calls several times a week. 

"Of course I don't. What's prestige, at best?"

"Some people say that you're just a rather original politician. "

He roared with laughter. 

"That's what Fred Sloane told me to-day. I suppose I have it coming. "

One afternoon they dipped into a subject that had interested Amory fora long time--the matter of the bearing of physical attributes on a man'smake-up. Burne had gone into the biology of this, and then:

"Of course health counts--a healthy man has twice the chance of beinggood, " he said. 

"I don't agree with you--I don't believe in 'muscular Christianity. '"

"I do--I believe Christ had great physical vigor. "

"Oh, no, " Amory protested. "He worked too hard for that. I imagine thatwhen he died he was a broken-down man--and the great saints haven't beenstrong. "

"Half of them have. "

"Well, even granting that, I don't think health has anything to do withgoodness; of course, it's valuable to a great saint to be able to standenormous strains, but this fad of popular preachers rising on theirtoes in simulated virility, bellowing that calisthenics will save theworld--no, Burne, I can't go that. "

"Well, let's waive it--we won't get anywhere, and besides I haven'tquite made up my mind about it myself. Now, here's something I _do_know--personal appearance has a lot to do with it. "

"Coloring?" Amory asked eagerly. 

"Yes. "

"That's what Tom and I figured, " Amory agreed. "We took the year-booksfor the last ten years and looked at the pictures of the senior council. I know you don't think much of that august body, but it does representsuccess here in a general way. Well, I suppose only about thirty-fiveper cent of every class here are blonds, are really light--yet_two-thirds_ of every senior council are light. We looked at picturesof ten years of them, mind you; that means that out of every _fifteen_light-haired men in the senior class _one_ is on the senior council, andof the dark-haired men it's only one in _fifty_. "

"It's true, " Burne agreed. "The light-haired man _is_ a higher type, generally speaking. I worked the thing out with the Presidents ofthe United States once, and found that way over half of them werelight-haired--yet think of the preponderant number of brunettes in therace. "

"People unconsciously admit it, " said Amory. "You'll notice a blondperson is _expected_ to talk. If a blond girl doesn't talk we call her a'doll'; if a light-haired man is silent he's considered stupid. Yetthe world is full of 'dark silent men' and 'languorous brunettes' whohaven't a brain in their heads, but somehow are never accused of thedearth. "

"And the large mouth and broad chin and rather big nose undoubtedly makethe superior face. "

"I'm not so sure. " Amory was all for classical features. 

"Oh, yes--I'll show you, " and Burne pulled out of his desk aphotographic collection of heavily bearded, shaggy celebrities--Tolstoi, Whitman, Carpenter, and others. 

"Aren't they wonderful?"

Amory tried politely to appreciate them, and gave up laughingly. 

"Burne, I think they're the ugliest-looking crowd I ever came across. They look like an old man's home. "

"Oh, Amory, look at that forehead on Emerson; look at Tolstoi's eyes. "His tone was reproachful. 

Amory shook his head. 

"No! Call them remarkable-looking or anything you want--but ugly theycertainly are. "

Unabashed, Burne ran his hand lovingly across the spacious foreheads, and piling up the pictures put them back in his desk. 

Walking at night was one of his favorite pursuits, and one night hepersuaded Amory to accompany him. 

"I hate the dark, " Amory objected. "I didn't use to--except when I wasparticularly imaginative, but now, I really do--I'm a regular fool aboutit. "

"That's useless, you know. "

"Quite possibly. "

"We'll go east, " Burne suggested, "and down that string of roads throughthe woods. "

"Doesn't sound very appealing to me, " admitted Amory reluctantly, "butlet's go. "

They set off at a good gait, and for an hour swung along in a briskargument until the lights of Princeton were luminous white blots behindthem. 

"Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid, " said Burneearnestly. "And this very walking at night is one of the things I wasafraid about. I'm going to tell you why I can walk anywhere now and notbe afraid. "

"Go on, " Amory urged eagerly. They were striding toward the woods, Burne's nervous, enthusiastic voice warming to his subject. 

"I used to come out here alone at night, oh, three months ago, and Ialways stopped at that cross-road we just passed. There were the woodslooming up ahead, just as they do now, there were dogs howling andthe shadows and no human sound. Of course, I peopled the woods witheverything ghastly, just like you do; don't you?"

"I do, " Amory admitted. 

"Well, I began analyzing it--my imagination persisted in stickinghorrors into the dark--so I stuck my imagination into the dark instead, and let it look out at me--I let it play stray dog or escaped convictor ghost, and then saw myself coming along the road. That made it allright--as it always makes everything all right to project yourselfcompletely into another's place. I knew that if I were the dog or theconvict or the ghost I wouldn't be a menace to Burne Holiday any morethan he was a menace to me. Then I thought of my watch. I'd better goback and leave it and then essay the woods. No; I decided, it'sbetter on the whole that I should lose a watch than that I should turnback--and I did go into them--not only followed the road through them, but walked into them until I wasn't frightened any more--did it untilone night I sat down and dozed off in there; then I knew I was throughbeing afraid of the dark. "

"Lordy, " Amory breathed. "I couldn't have done that. I'd have come outhalf-way, and the first time an automobile passed and made the darkthicker when its lamps disappeared, I'd have come in. "

"Well, " Burne said suddenly, after a few moments' silence, "we'rehalf-way through, let's turn back. "

On the return he launched into a discussion of will. 

"It's the whole thing, " he asserted. "It's the one dividing line betweengood and evil. I've never met a man who led a rotten life and didn'thave a weak will. "

"How about great criminals?"

"They're usually insane. If not, they're weak. There is no such thing asa strong, sane criminal. "

"Burne, I disagree with you altogether; how about the superman?"

"Well?"

"He's evil, I think, yet he's strong and sane. "

"I've never met him. I'll bet, though, that he's stupid or insane. "

"I've met him over and over and he's neither. That's why I think you'rewrong. "

"I'm sure I'm not--and so I don't believe in imprisonment except for theinsane. "

On this point Amory could not agree. It seemed to him that lifeand history were rife with the strong criminal, keen, but oftenself-deluding; in politics and business one found him and among theold statesmen and kings and generals; but Burne never agreed and theircourses began to split on that point. 

Burne was drawing farther and farther away from the world about him. Heresigned the vice-presidency of the senior class and took to reading andwalking as almost his only pursuits. He voluntarily attended graduatelectures in philosophy and biology, and sat in all of them with a ratherpathetically intent look in his eyes, as if waiting for something thelecturer would never quite come to. Sometimes Amory would see him squirmin his seat; and his face would light up; he was on fire to debate apoint. 

He grew more abstracted on the street and was even accused of becominga snob, but Amory knew it was nothing of the sort, and once when Burnepassed him four feet off, absolutely unseeingly, his mind a thousandmiles away, Amory almost choked with the romantic joy of watching him. Burne seemed to be climbing heights where others would be forever unableto get a foothold. 

"I tell you, " Amory declared to Tom, "he's the first contemporary I'veever met whom I'll admit is my superior in mental capacity. "

"It's a bad time to admit it--people are beginning to think he's odd. "

"He's way over their heads--you know you think so yourself when youtalk to him--Good Lord, Tom, you _used_ to stand out against 'people. 'Success has completely conventionalized you. "

Tom grew rather annoyed. 

"What's he trying to do--be excessively holy?"

"No! not like anybody you've ever seen. Never enters the PhiladelphianSociety. He has no faith in that rot. He doesn't believe that publicswimming-pools and a kind word in time will right the wrongs of theworld; moreover, he takes a drink whenever he feels like it. "

"He certainly is getting in wrong. "

"Have you talked to him lately?"

"No. "

"Then you haven't any conception of him. "

The argument ended nowhere, but Amory noticed more than ever how thesentiment toward Burne had changed on the campus. 

"It's odd, " Amory said to Tom one night when they had grown moreamicable on the subject, "that the people who violently disapprove ofBurne's radicalism are distinctly the Pharisee class--I mean they're thebest-educated men in college--the editors of the papers, like yourselfand Ferrenby, the younger professors. . . . The illiterate athletes likeLangueduc think he's getting eccentric, but they just say, 'Good oldBurne has got some queer ideas in his head, ' and pass on--the Phariseeclass--Gee! they ridicule him unmercifully. "

The next morning he met Burne hurrying along McCosh walk after arecitation. 

"Whither bound, Tsar?"

"Over to the Prince office to see Ferrenby, " he waved a copy of themorning's Princetonian at Amory. "He wrote this editorial. "

"Going to flay him alive?"

"No--but he's got me all balled up. Either I've misjudged him or he'ssuddenly become the world's worst radical. "

Burne hurried on, and it was several days before Amory heard an accountof the ensuing conversation. Burne had come into the editor's sanctumdisplaying the paper cheerfully. 

"Hello, Jesse. "

"Hello there, Savonarola. "

"I just read your editorial. "

"Good boy--didn't know you stooped that low. "

"Jesse, you startled me. "

"How so?"

"Aren't you afraid the faculty'll get after you if you pull thisirreligious stuff?"

"What?"

"Like this morning. "

"What the devil--that editorial was on the coaching system. "

"Yes, but that quotation--"

Jesse sat up. 

"What quotation?"

"You know: 'He who is not with me is against me. '"

"Well--what about it?"

Jesse was puzzled but not alarmed. 

"Well, you say here--let me see. " Burne opened the paper and read:"'_He who is not with me is against me_, as that gentleman said whowas notoriously capable of only coarse distinctions and puerilegeneralities. '"

"What of it?" Ferrenby began to look alarmed. "Oliver Cromwell said it, didn't he? or was it Washington, or one of the saints? Good Lord, I'veforgotten. "

Burne roared with laughter. 

"Oh, Jesse, oh, good, kind Jesse. "

"Who said it, for Pete's sake?"

"Well, " said Burne, recovering his voice, "St. Matthew attributes it toChrist. "

"My God!" cried Jesse, and collapsed backward into the waste-basket. 

 *****

AMORY WRITES A POEM

The weeks tore by. Amory wandered occasionally to New York on the chanceof finding a new shining green auto-bus, that its stick-of-candyglamour might penetrate his disposition. One day he ventured into astock-company revival of a play whose name was faintly familiar. Thecurtain rose--he watched casually as a girl entered. A few phrases rangin his ear and touched a faint chord of memory. Where--? When--?

Then he seemed to hear a voice whispering beside him, a very soft, vibrant voice: "Oh, I'm such a poor little fool; _do_ tell me when I dowrong. "

The solution came in a flash and he had a quick, glad memory ofIsabelle. 

He found a blank space on his programme, and began to scribble rapidly:

 "Here in the figured dark I watch once more, There, with the curtain, roll the years away; Two years of years--there was an idle day Of ours, when happy endings didn't bore Our unfermented souls; I could adore Your eager face beside me, wide-eyed, gay, Smiling a repertoire while the poor play Reached me as a faint ripple reaches shore. 

 "Yawning and wondering an evening through, I watch alone. . . And chatterings, of course, Spoil the one scene which, somehow, _did_ have charms; You wept a bit, and I grew sad for you Right here! Where Mr. X defends divorce And What's-Her-Name falls fainting in his arms. "

 *****

STILL CALM

"Ghosts are such dumb things, " said Alec, "they're slow-witted. I canalways outguess a ghost. "

"How?" asked Tom. 

"Well, it depends where. Take a bedroom, for example. If you use _any_discretion a ghost can never get you in a bedroom. "

"Go on, s'pose you think there's maybe a ghost in your bedroom--whatmeasures do you take on getting home at night?" demanded Amory, interested. 

"Take a stick" answered Alec, with ponderous reverence, "one about thelength of a broom-handle. Now, the first thing to do is to get the room_cleared_--to do this you rush with your eyes closed into your studyand turn on the lights--next, approaching the closet, carefully run thestick in the door three or four times. Then, if nothing happens, you canlook in. _Always, always_ run the stick in viciously first--_never_ lookfirst!"

"Of course, that's the ancient Celtic school, " said Tom gravely. 

"Yes--but they usually pray first. Anyway, you use this method to clearthe closets and also for behind all doors--"

"And the bed, " Amory suggested. 

"Oh, Amory, no!" cried Alec in horror. "That isn't the way--the bedrequires different tactics--let the bed alone, as you value yourreason--if there is a ghost in the room and that's only about a third ofthe time, it is _almost always_ under the bed. "

"Well" Amory began. 

Alec waved him into silence. 

"Of _course_ you never look. You stand in the middle of the floor andbefore he knows what you're going to do make a sudden leap for thebed--never walk near the bed; to a ghost your ankle is your mostvulnerable part--once in bed, you're safe; he may lie around under thebed all night, but you're safe as daylight. If you still have doubtspull the blanket over your head. "

"All that's very interesting, Tom. "

"Isn't it?" Alec beamed proudly. "All my own, too--the Sir Oliver Lodgeof the new world. "

Amory was enjoying college immensely again. The sense of going forwardin a direct, determined line had come back; youth was stirring andshaking out a few new feathers. He had even stored enough surplus energyto sally into a new pose. 

"What's the idea of all this 'distracted' stuff, Amory?" asked Alec oneday, and then as Amory pretended to be cramped over his book in a daze:"Oh, don't try to act Burne, the mystic, to me. "

Amory looked up innocently. 

"What?"

"What?" mimicked Alec. "Are you trying to read yourself into a rhapsodywith--let's see the book. "

He snatched it; regarded it derisively. 

"Well?" said Amory a little stiffly. 

"'The Life of St. Teresa, '" read Alec aloud. "Oh, my gosh!"

"Say, Alec. "

"What?"

"Does it bother you?"

"Does what bother me?"

"My acting dazed and all that?"

"Why, no--of course it doesn't _bother_ me. "

"Well, then, don't spoil it. If I enjoy going around telling peopleguilelessly that I think I'm a genius, let me do it. "

"You're getting a reputation for being eccentric, " said Alec, laughing, "if that's what you mean. "

Amory finally prevailed, and Alec agreed to accept his face value in thepresence of others if he was allowed rest periods when they were alone;so Amory "ran it out" at a great rate, bringing the most eccentriccharacters to dinner, wild-eyed grad students, preceptors with strangetheories of God and government, to the cynical amazement of thesupercilious Cottage Club. 

As February became slashed by sun and moved cheerfully into March, Amory went several times to spend week-ends with Monsignor; once hetook Burne, with great success, for he took equal pride and delight indisplaying them to each other. Monsignor took him several times to seeThornton Hancock, and once or twice to the house of a Mrs. Lawrence, atype of Rome-haunting American whom Amory liked immediately. 

Then one day came a letter from Monsignor, which appended an interestingP. S. :

 "Do you know, " it ran, "that your third cousin, Clara Page, widowed six months and very poor, is living in Philadelphia? I don't think you've ever met her, but I wish, as a favor to me, you'd go to see her. To my mind, she's rather a remarkable woman, and just about your age. "

Amory sighed and decided to go, as a favor. . . . 

 *****

CLARA

She was immemorial. . . . Amory wasn't good enough for Clara, Clara ofripply golden hair, but then no man was. Her goodness was above theprosy morals of the husband-seeker, apart from the dull literature offemale virtue. 

Sorrow lay lightly around her, and when Amory found her in Philadelphiahe thought her steely blue eyes held only happiness; a latent strength, a realism, was brought to its fullest development by the facts thatshe was compelled to face. She was alone in the world, with two smallchildren, little money, and, worst of all, a host of friends. He sawher that winter in Philadelphia entertaining a houseful of men for anevening, when he knew she had not a servant in the house except thelittle colored girl guarding the babies overhead. He saw one of thegreatest libertines in that city, a man who was habitually drunk andnotorious at home and abroad, sitting opposite her for an evening, discussing _girls' boarding-schools_ with a sort of innocent excitement. What a twist Clara had to her mind! She could make fascinating andalmost brilliant conversation out of the thinnest air that ever floatedthrough a drawing-room. 

The idea that the girl was poverty-stricken had appealed to Amory'ssense of situation. He arrived in Philadelphia expecting to be toldthat 921 Ark Street was in a miserable lane of hovels. He was evendisappointed when it proved to be nothing of the sort. It was an oldhouse that had been in her husband's family for years. An elderly aunt, who objected to having it sold, had put ten years' taxes with alawyer and pranced off to Honolulu, leaving Clara to struggle with theheating-problem as best she could. So no wild-haired woman with a hungrybaby at her breast and a sad Amelia-like look greeted him. Instead, Amory would have thought from his reception that she had not a care inthe world. 

A calm virility and a dreamy humor, marked contrasts to herlevel-headedness--into these moods she slipped sometimes as a refuge. She could do the most prosy things (though she was wise enough neverto stultify herself with such "household arts" as _knitting_ and_embroidery_), yet immediately afterward pick up a book and let herimagination rove as a formless cloud with the wind. Deepest of all inher personality was the golden radiance that she diffused around her. As an open fire in a dark room throws romance and pathos into the quietfaces at its edge, so she cast her lights and shadows around the roomsthat held her, until she made of her prosy old uncle a man of quaint andmeditative charm, metamorphosed the stray telegraph boy into a Puck-likecreature of delightful originality. At first this quality of herssomehow irritated Amory. He considered his own uniqueness sufficient, and it rather embarrassed him when she tried to read new interests intohim for the benefit of what other adorers were present. He felt as ifa polite but insistent stage-manager were attempting to make him give anew interpretation of a part he had conned for years. 

But Clara talking, Clara telling a slender tale of a hatpin and aninebriated man and herself. . . . People tried afterward to repeat heranecdotes but for the life of them they could make them sound likenothing whatever. They gave her a sort of innocent attention and thebest smiles many of them had smiled for long; there were few tears inClara, but people smiled misty-eyed at her. 

Very occasionally Amory stayed for little half-hours after the rest ofthe court had gone, and they would have bread and jam and tea late inthe afternoon or "maple-sugar lunches, " as she called them, at night. 

"You _are_ remarkable, aren't you!" Amory was becoming trite from wherehe perched in the centre of the dining-room table one six o'clock. 

"Not a bit, " she answered. She was searching out napkins in thesideboard. "I'm really most humdrum and commonplace. One of those peoplewho have no interest in anything but their children. "

"Tell that to somebody else, " scoffed Amory. "You know you're perfectlyeffulgent. " He asked her the one thing that he knew might embarrass her. It was the remark that the first bore made to Adam. 

"Tell me about yourself. " And she gave the answer that Adam must havegiven. 

"There's nothing to tell. "

But eventually Adam probably told the bore all the things he thoughtabout at night when the locusts sang in the sandy grass, and he musthave remarked patronizingly how _different_ he was from Eve, forgettinghow different she was from him. . . At any rate, Clara told Amory muchabout herself that evening. She had had a harried life from sixteen on, and her education had stopped sharply with her leisure. Browsing in herlibrary, Amory found a tattered gray book out of which fell a yellowsheet that he impudently opened. It was a poem that she had writtenat school about a gray convent wall on a gray day, and a girl withher cloak blown by the wind sitting atop of it and thinking about themany-colored world. As a rule such sentiment bored him, but this wasdone with so much simplicity and atmosphere, that it brought a pictureof Clara to his mind, of Clara on such a cool, gray day with her keenblue eyes staring out, trying to see her tragedies come marching overthe gardens outside. He envied that poem. How he would have loved tohave come along and seen her on the wall and talked nonsense or romanceto her, perched above him in the air. He began to be frightfully jealousof everything about Clara: of her past, of her babies, of the men andwomen who flocked to drink deep of her cool kindness and rest theirtired minds as at an absorbing play. 

"_Nobody_ seems to bore you, " he objected. 

"About half the world do, " she admitted, "but I think that's a prettygood average, don't you?" and she turned to find something in Browningthat bore on the subject. She was the only person he ever met whocould look up passages and quotations to show him in the middle ofthe conversation, and yet not be irritating to distraction. She did itconstantly, with such a serious enthusiasm that he grew fond of watchingher golden hair bent over a book, brow wrinkled ever so little athunting her sentence. 

Through early March he took to going to Philadelphia for week-ends. Almost always there was some one else there and she seemed not anxiousto see him alone, for many occasions presented themselves when a wordfrom her would have given him another delicious half-hour of adoration. But he fell gradually in love and began to speculate wildly on marriage. Though this design flowed through his brain even to his lips, stillhe knew afterward that the desire had not been deeply rooted. Once hedreamt that it had come true and woke up in a cold panic, for in hisdream she had been a silly, flaxen Clara, with the gold gone out of herhair and platitudes falling insipidly from her changeling tongue. Butshe was the first fine woman he ever knew and one of the few good peoplewho ever interested him. She made her goodness such an asset. Amoryhad decided that most good people either dragged theirs after them as aliability, or else distorted it to artificial geniality, and of coursethere were the ever-present prig and Pharisee--(but Amory never included_them_ as being among the saved). 

 *****

ST. CECILIA

 "Over her gray and velvet dress, Under her molten, beaten hair, Color of rose in mock distress Flushes and fades and makes her fair; Fills the air from her to him With light and languor and little sighs, Just so subtly he scarcely knows. . . Laughing lightning, color of rose. "

"Do you like me?"

"Of course I do, " said Clara seriously. 

"Why?"

"Well, we have some qualities in common. Things that are spontaneous ineach of us--or were originally. "

"You're implying that I haven't used myself very well?"

Clara hesitated. 

"Well, I can't judge. A man, of course, has to go through a lot more, and I've been sheltered. "

"Oh, don't stall, please, Clara, " Amory interrupted; "but do talk aboutme a little, won't you?"

"Surely, I'd adore to. " She didn't smile. 

"That's sweet of you. First answer some questions. Am I painfullyconceited?"

"Well--no, you have tremendous vanity, but it'll amuse the people whonotice its preponderance. "

"I see. "

"You're really humble at heart. You sink to the third hell of depressionwhen you think you've been slighted. In fact, you haven't muchself-respect. "

"Centre of target twice, Clara. How do you do it? You never let me say aword. "

"Of course not--I can never judge a man while he's talking. But I'm notthrough; the reason you have so little real self-confidence, even thoughyou gravely announce to the occasional philistine that you think you'rea genius, is that you've attributed all sorts of atrocious faults toyourself and are trying to live up to them. For instance, you're alwayssaying that you are a slave to high-balls. "

"But I am, potentially. "

"And you say you're a weak character, that you've no will. "

"Not a bit of will--I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to myhatred of boredom, to most of my desires--"

"You are not!" She brought one little fist down onto the other. "You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, yourimagination. "

"You certainly interest me. If this isn't boring you, go on. "

"I notice that when you want to stay over an extra day from college yougo about it in a sure way. You never decide at first while the merits ofgoing or staying are fairly clear in your mind. You let your imaginationshinny on the side of your desires for a few hours, and then you decide. Naturally your imagination, after a little freedom, thinks up a millionreasons why you should stay, so your decision when it comes isn't true. It's biassed. "

"Yes, " objected Amory, "but isn't it lack of will-power to let myimagination shinny on the wrong side?"

"My dear boy, there's your big mistake. This has nothing to do withwill-power; that's a crazy, useless word, anyway; you lack judgment--thejudgment to decide at once when you know your imagination will play youfalse, given half a chance. "

"Well, I'll be darned!" exclaimed Amory in surprise, "that's the lastthing I expected. "

Clara didn't gloat. She changed the subject immediately. But she hadstarted him thinking and he believed she was partly right. He felt likea factory-owner who after accusing a clerk of dishonesty finds that hisown son, in the office, is changing the books once a week. His poor, mistreated will that he had been holding up to the scorn of himself andhis friends, stood before him innocent, and his judgment walked off toprison with the unconfinable imp, imagination, dancing in mocking gleebeside him. Clara's was the only advice he ever asked without dictatingthe answer himself--except, perhaps, in his talks with Monsignor Darcy. 

How he loved to do any sort of thing with Clara! Shopping with her was arare, epicurean dream. In every store where she had ever traded she waswhispered about as the beautiful Mrs. Page. 

"I'll bet she won't stay single long. "

"Well, don't scream it out. She ain't lookin' for no advice. "

"_Ain't_ she beautiful!"

 (Enter a floor-walker--silence till he moves forward, smirking. )

"Society person, ain't she?"

"Yeah, but poor now, I guess; so they say. "

"Gee! girls, _ain't_ she some kid!"

And Clara beamed on all alike. Amory believed that tradespeople gave herdiscounts, sometimes to her knowledge and sometimes without it. He knewshe dressed very well, had always the best of everything in the house, and was inevitably waited upon by the head floor-walker at the veryleast. 

Sometimes they would go to church together on Sunday and he would walkbeside her and revel in her cheeks moist from the soft water in the newair. She was very devout, always had been, and God knows what heightsshe attained and what strength she drew down to herself when she kneltand bent her golden hair into the stained-glass light. 

"St. Cecelia, " he cried aloud one day, quite involuntarily, and thepeople turned and peered, and the priest paused in his sermon and Claraand Amory turned to fiery red. 

That was the last Sunday they had, for he spoiled it all that night. Hecouldn't help it. 

They were walking through the March twilight where it was as warm asJune, and the joy of youth filled his soul so that he felt he mustspeak. 

"I think, " he said and his voice trembled, "that if I lost faith in youI'd lose faith in God. "

She looked at him with such a startled face that he asked her thematter. 

"Nothing, " she said slowly, "only this: five men have said that to mebefore, and it frightens me. "

"Oh, Clara, is that your fate!"

She did not answer. 

"I suppose love to you is--" he began. 

She turned like a flash. 

"I have never been in love. "

They walked along, and he realized slowly how much she had told him. . . Never in love. . . . She seemed suddenly a daughter of light alone. Hisentity dropped out of her plane and he longed only to touch her dresswith almost the realization that Joseph must have had of Mary's eternalsignificance. But quite mechanically he heard himself saying:

"And I love you--any latent greatness that I've got is. . . Oh, I can'ttalk, but Clara, if I come back in two years in a position to marryyou--"

She shook her head. 

"No, " she said; "I'd never marry again. I've got my two children and Iwant myself for them. I like you--I like all clever men, you more thanany--but you know me well enough to know that I'd never marry a cleverman--" She broke off suddenly. 

"Amory. "

"What?"

"You're not in love with me. You never wanted to marry me, did you?"

"It was the twilight, " he said wonderingly. "I didn't feel as though Iwere speaking aloud. But I love you--or adore you--or worship you--"

"There you go--running through your catalogue of emotions in fiveseconds. "

He smiled unwillingly. 

"Don't make me out such a light-weight, Clara; you _are_ depressingsometimes. "

"You're not a light-weight, of all things, " she said intently, takinghis arm and opening wide her eyes--he could see their kindliness in thefading dusk. "A light-weight is an eternal nay. "

"There's so much spring in the air--there's so much lazy sweetness inyour heart. "

She dropped his arm. 

"You're all fine now, and I feel glorious. Give me a cigarette. You'venever seen me smoke, have you? Well, I do, about once a month. "

And then that wonderful girl and Amory raced to the corner like two madchildren gone wild with pale-blue twilight. 

"I'm going to the country for to-morrow, " she announced, as she stoodpanting, safe beyond the flare of the corner lamp-post. "These days aretoo magnificent to miss, though perhaps I feel them more in the city. "

"Oh, Clara!" Amory said; "what a devil you could have been if the Lordhad just bent your soul a little the other way!"

"Maybe, " she answered; "but I think not. I'm never really wild and neverhave been. That little outburst was pure spring. "

"And you are, too, " said he. 

They were walking along now. 

"No--you're wrong again, how can a person of your own self-reputedbrains be so constantly wrong about me? I'm the opposite of everythingspring ever stood for. It's unfortunate, if I happen to look like whatpleased some soppy old Greek sculptor, but I assure you that if itweren't for my face I'd be a quiet nun in the convent without"--thenshe broke into a run and her raised voice floated back to him as hefollowed--"my precious babies, which I must go back and see. "

She was the only girl he ever knew with whom he could understand howanother man might be preferred. Often Amory met wives whom he had knownas debutantes, and looking intently at them imagined that he foundsomething in their faces which said:

"Oh, if I could only have gotten _you!_" Oh, the enormous conceit of theman!

But that night seemed a night of stars and singing and Clara's brightsoul still gleamed on the ways they had trod. 

"Golden, golden is the air--" he chanted to the little pools of water. . . . "Golden is the air, golden notes from golden mandolins, goldenfrets of golden violins, fair, oh, wearily fair. . . . Skeins from braidedbasket, mortals may not hold; oh, what young extravagant God, who wouldknow or ask it?. . . Who could give such gold. . . "

 *****

AMORY IS RESENTFUL

Slowly and inevitably, yet with a sudden surge at the last, while Amorytalked and dreamed, war rolled swiftly up the beach and washed the sandswhere Princeton played. Every night the gymnasium echoed as platoonafter platoon swept over the floor and shuffled out the basket-ballmarkings. When Amory went to Washington the next week-end he caught someof the spirit of crisis which changed to repulsion in the Pullman carcoming back, for the berths across from him were occupied by stinkingaliens--Greeks, he guessed, or Russians. He thought how much easierpatriotism had been to a homogeneous race, how much easier it would havebeen to fight as the Colonies fought, or as the Confederacy fought. Andhe did no sleeping that night, but listened to the aliens guffaw andsnore while they filled the car with the heavy scent of latest America. 

In Princeton every one bantered in public and told themselves privatelythat their deaths at least would be heroic. The literary students readRupert Brooke passionately; the lounge-lizards worried over whether thegovernment would permit the English-cut uniform for officers; a few ofthe hopelessly lazy wrote to the obscure branches of the War Department, seeking an easy commission and a soft berth. 

Then, after a week, Amory saw Burne and knew at once that argument wouldbe futile--Burne had come out as a pacifist. The socialist magazines, a great smattering of Tolstoi, and his own intense longing for a causethat would bring out whatever strength lay in him, had finally decidedhim to preach peace as a subjective ideal. 

"When the German army entered Belgium, " he began, "if the inhabitantshad gone peaceably about their business, the German army would have beendisorganized in--"

"I know, " Amory interrupted, "I've heard it all. But I'm not going totalk propaganda with you. There's a chance that you're right--but evenso we're hundreds of years before the time when non-resistance can touchus as a reality. "

"But, Amory, listen--"

"Burne, we'd just argue--"

"Very well. "

"Just one thing--I don't ask you to think of your family or friends, because I know they don't count a picayune with you beside your senseof duty--but, Burne, how do you know that the magazines you read andthe societies you join and these idealists you meet aren't just plain_German?_"

"Some of them are, of course. "

"How do you know they aren't _all_ pro-German--just a lot of weakones--with German-Jewish names. "

"That's the chance, of course, " he said slowly. "How much or how littleI'm taking this stand because of propaganda I've heard, I don't know;naturally I think that it's my most innermost conviction--it seems apath spread before me just now. "

Amory's heart sank. 

"But think of the cheapness of it--no one's really going to martyr youfor being a pacifist--it's just going to throw you in with the worst--"

"I doubt it, " he interrupted. 

"Well, it all smells of Bohemian New York to me. "

"I know what you mean, and that's why I'm not sure I'll agitate. "

"You're one man, Burne--going to talk to people who won't listen--withall God's given you. "

"That's what Stephen must have thought many years ago. But he preachedhis sermon and they killed him. He probably thought as he was dying whata waste it all was. But you see, I've always felt that Stephen's deathwas the thing that occurred to Paul on the road to Damascus, and senthim to preach the word of Christ all over the world. "

"Go on. "

"That's all--this is my particular duty. Even if right now I'm just apawn--just sacrificed. God! Amory--you don't think I like the Germans!"

"Well, I can't say anything else--I get to the end of all the logicabout non-resistance, and there, like an excluded middle, stands thehuge spectre of man as he is and always will be. And this spectre standsright beside the one logical necessity of Tolstoi's, and the otherlogical necessity of Nietzsche's--" Amory broke off suddenly. "When areyou going?"

"I'm going next week. "

"I'll see you, of course. "

As he walked away it seemed to Amory that the look in his face borea great resemblance to that in Kerry's when he had said good-by underBlair Arch two years before. Amory wondered unhappily why he could nevergo into anything with the primal honesty of those two. 

"Burne's a fanatic, " he said to Tom, "and he's dead wrong and, I'minclined to think, just an unconscious pawn in the hands of anarchisticpublishers and German-paid rag wavers--but he haunts me--just leavingeverything worth while--"

Burne left in a quietly dramatic manner a week later. He sold all hispossessions and came down to the room to say good-by, with a batteredold bicycle, on which he intended to ride to his home in Pennsylvania. 

"Peter the Hermit bidding farewell to Cardinal Richelieu, " suggestedAlec, who was lounging in the window-seat as Burne and Amory shookhands. 

But Amory was not in a mood for that, and as he saw Burne's long legspropel his ridiculous bicycle out of sight beyond Alexander Hall, he knew he was going to have a bad week. Not that he doubted thewar--Germany stood for everything repugnant to him; for materialism andthe direction of tremendous licentious force; it was just that Burne'sface stayed in his memory and he was sick of the hysteria he wasbeginning to hear. 

"What on earth is the use of suddenly running down Goethe, " he declaredto Alec and Tom. "Why write books to prove he started the war--or thatthat stupid, overestimated Schiller is a demon in disguise?"

"Have you ever read anything of theirs?" asked Tom shrewdly. 

"No, " Amory admitted. 

"Neither have I, " he said laughing. 

"People will shout, " said Alec quietly, "but Goethe's on his same oldshelf in the library--to bore any one that wants to read him!"

Amory subsided, and the subject dropped. 

"What are you going to do, Amory?"

"Infantry or aviation, I can't make up my mind--I hate mechanics, butthen of course aviation's the thing for me--"

"I feel as Amory does, " said Tom. "Infantry or aviation--aviation soundslike the romantic side of the war, of course--like cavalry used to be, you know; but like Amory I don't know a horse-power from a piston-rod. "

Somehow Amory's dissatisfaction with his lack of enthusiasm culminatedin an attempt to put the blame for the whole war on the ancestors of hisgeneration. . . All the people who cheered for Germany in 1870. . . . Allthe materialists rampant, all the idolizers of German science andefficiency. So he sat one day in an English lecture and heard "LocksleyHall" quoted and fell into a brown study with contempt for Tennyson andall he stood for--for he took him as a representative of the Victorians. 

 Victorians, Victorians, who never learned to weep Who sowed the bitter harvest that your children go to reap--

scribbled Amory in his note-book. The lecturer was saying somethingabout Tennyson's solidity and fifty heads were bent to take notes. Amoryturned over to a fresh page and began scrawling again. 

 "They shuddered when they found what Mr. Darwin was about, They shuddered when the waltz came in and Newman hurried out--"

But the waltz came in much earlier; he crossed that out. 

"And entitled A Song in the Time of Order, " came the professor's voice, droning far away. "Time of Order"--Good Lord! Everything crammed inthe box and the Victorians sitting on the lid smiling serenely. . . . WithBrowning in his Italian villa crying bravely: "All's for the best. "Amory scribbled again. 

 "You knelt up in the temple and he bent to hear you pray, You thanked him for your 'glorious gains'--reproached him for 'Cathay. '"

Why could he never get more than a couplet at a time? Now he neededsomething to rhyme with:

 "You would keep Him straight with science, tho He had gone wrong before. . . "

Well, anyway. . . . 

 "You met your children in your home--'I've fixed it up!' you cried, Took your fifty years of Europe, and then virtuously--died. "

"That was to a great extent Tennyson's idea, " came the lecturer's voice. "Swinburne's Song in the Time of Order might well have been Tennyson'stitle. He idealized order against chaos, against waste. "

At last Amory had it. He turned over another page and scrawledvigorously for the twenty minutes that was left of the hour. Then hewalked up to the desk and deposited a page torn out of his note-book. 

"Here's a poem to the Victorians, sir, " he said coldly. 

The professor picked it up curiously while Amory backed rapidly throughthe door. 

Here is what he had written:

 "Songs in the time of order You left for us to sing, Proofs with excluded middles, Answers to life in rhyme, Keys of the prison warder And ancient bells to ring, Time was the end of riddles, We were the end of time. . . 

 Here were domestic oceans And a sky that we might reach, Guns and a guarded border, Gantlets--but not to fling, Thousands of old emotions And a platitude for each, Songs in the time of order-- And tongues, that we might sing. "

 *****

THE END OF MANY THINGS

Early April slipped by in a haze--a haze of long evenings on the clubveranda with the graphophone playing "Poor Butterfly" inside. . . For"Poor Butterfly" had been the song of that last year. The war seemedscarcely to touch them and it might have been one of the senior springsof the past, except for the drilling every other afternoon, yet Amoryrealized poignantly that this was the last spring under the old regime. 

"This is the great protest against the superman, " said Amory. 

"I suppose so, " Alec agreed. 

"He's absolutely irreconcilable with any Utopia. As long as he occurs, there's trouble and all the latent evil that makes a crowd list and swaywhen he talks. "

"And of course all that he is is a gifted man without a moral sense. "

"That's all. I think the worst thing to contemplate is this--it'sall happened before, how soon will it happen again? Fifty years afterWaterloo Napoleon was as much a hero to English school childrenas Wellington. How do we know our grandchildren won't idolize VonHindenburg the same way?"

"What brings it about?"

"Time, damn it, and the historian. If we could only learn to lookon evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony ormagnificence. "

"God! Haven't we raked the universe over the coals for four years?"

Then the night came that was to be the last. Tom and Amory, bound in themorning for different training-camps, paced the shadowy walks as usualand seemed still to see around them the faces of the men they knew. 

"The grass is full of ghosts to-night. "

"The whole campus is alive with them. "

They paused by Little and watched the moon rise, to make silver of theslate roof of Dodd and blue the rustling trees. 

"You know, " whispered Tom, "what we feel now is the sense of all thegorgeous youth that has rioted through here in two hundred years. "

A last burst of singing flooded up from Blair Arch--broken voices forsome long parting. 

"And what we leave here is more than this class; it's the whole heritageof youth. We're just one generation--we're breaking all the links thatseemed to bind us here to top-booted and high-stocked generations. We'vewalked arm and arm with Burr and Light-Horse Harry Lee through halfthese deep-blue nights. "

"That's what they are, " Tom tangented off, "deep blue--a bit of colorwould spoil them, make them exotic. Spires, against a sky that'sa promise of dawn, and blue light on the slate roofs--it hurts. . . Rather--"

"Good-by, Aaron Burr, " Amory called toward deserted Nassau Hall, "youand I knew strange corners of life. "

His voice echoed in the stillness. 

"The torches are out, " whispered Tom. "Ah, Messalina, the long shadowsare building minarets on the stadium--"

For an instant the voices of freshman year surged around them and thenthey looked at each other with faint tears in their eyes. 

"Damn!"

"Damn!"

The last light fades and drifts across the land--the low, long land, thesunny land of spires; the ghosts of evening tune again their lyres andwander singing in a plaintive band down the long corridors of trees;pale fires echo the night from tower top to tower: Oh, sleep thatdreams, and dream that never tires, press from the petals of the lotusflower something of this to keep, the essence of an hour. 

No more to wait the twilight of the moon in this sequestered vale ofstar and spire, for one eternal morning of desire passes to time andearthy afternoon. Here, Heraclitus, did you find in fire and shiftingthings the prophecy you hurled down the dead years; this midnightmy desire will see, shadowed among the embers, furled in flame, thesplendor and the sadness of the world. 

INTERLUDE

May, 1917-February, 1919

A letter dated January, 1918, written by Monsignor Darcy to Amory, whois a second lieutenant in the 171st Infantry, Port of Embarkation, CampMills, Long Island. 

MY DEAR BOY:

All you need tell me of yourself is that you still are; for the rest Imerely search back in a restive memory, a thermometer that records onlyfevers, and match you with what I was at your age. But men will chatterand you and I will still shout our futilities to each other acrossthe stage until the last silly curtain falls _plump!_ upon our bobbingheads. But you are starting the spluttering magic-lantern show of lifewith much the same array of slides as I had, so I need to write you ifonly to shriek the colossal stupidity of people. . . . 

This is the end of one thing: for better or worse you will never againbe quite the Amory Blaine that I knew, never again will we meet as wehave met, because your generation is growing hard, much harder than mineever grew, nourished as they were on the stuff of the nineties. 

Amory, lately I reread Aeschylus and there in the divine irony of the"Agamemnon" I find the only answer to this bitter age--all the worldtumbled about our ears, and the closest parallel ages back in thathopeless resignation. There are times when I think of the men out thereas Roman legionaries, miles from their corrupt city, stemming back thehordes. . . Hordes a little more menacing, after all, than the corruptcity. . . Another blind blow at the race, furies that we passed withovations years ago, over whose corpses we bleated triumphantly allthrough the Victorian era. . . . 

And afterward an out-and-out materialistic world--and the CatholicChurch. I wonder where you'll fit in. Of one thing I'm sure--Celticyou'll live and Celtic you'll die; so if you don't use heaven as acontinual referendum for your ideas you'll find earth a continual recallto your ambitions. 

Amory, I've discovered suddenly that I'm an old man. Like all oldmen, I've had dreams sometimes and I'm going to tell you of them. I'veenjoyed imagining that you were my son, that perhaps when I was youngI went into a state of coma and begat you, and when I came to, had norecollection of it. . . It's the paternal instinct, Amory--celibacy goesdeeper than the flesh. . . . 

Sometimes I think that the explanation of our deep resemblance is somecommon ancestor, and I find that the only blood that the Darcys andthe O'Haras have in common is that of the O'Donahues. . . Stephen was hisname, I think. . . . 

When the lightning strikes one of us it strikes both: you had hardlyarrived at the port of embarkation when I got my papers to start forRome, and I am waiting every moment to be told where to take ship. Evenbefore you get this letter I shall be on the ocean; then will come yourturn. You went to war as a gentleman should, just as you went to schooland college, because it was the thing to do. It's better to leave theblustering and tremulo-heroism to the middle classes; they do it so muchbetter. 

Do you remember that week-end last March when you brought Burne Holidayfrom Princeton to see me? What a magnificent boy he is! It gave me afrightful shock afterward when you wrote that he thought me splendid;how could he be so deceived? Splendid is the one thing that neither younor I are. We are many other things--we're extraordinary, we're clever, we could be said, I suppose, to be brilliant. We can attract people, we can make atmosphere, we can almost lose our Celtic souls in Celticsubtleties, we can almost always have our own way; but splendid--rathernot!

I am going to Rome with a wonderful dossier and letters of introductionthat cover every capital in Europe, and there will be "no small stir"when I get there. How I wish you were with me! This sounds like a rathercynical paragraph, not at all the sort of thing that a middle-agedclergyman should write to a youth about to depart for the war; the onlyexcuse is that the middle-aged clergyman is talking to himself. Thereare deep things in us and you know what they are as well as I do. Wehave great faith, though yours at present is uncrystallized; we have aterrible honesty that all our sophistry cannot destroy and, above all, achildlike simplicity that keeps us from ever being really malicious. 

I have written a keen for you which follows. I am sorry your cheeks arenot up to the description I have written of them, but you _will_ smokeand read all night--

At any rate here it is:

A Lament for a Foster Son, and He going to the War Against the King ofForeign. 

 "Ochone He is gone from me the son of my mind And he in his golden youth like Angus Oge Angus of the bright birds And his mind strong and subtle like the mind of Cuchulin on Muirtheme. 

 Awirra sthrue His brow is as white as the milk of the cows of Maeve And his cheeks like the cherries of the tree And it bending down to Mary and she feeding the Son of God. 

 Aveelia Vrone His hair is like the golden collar of the Kings at Tara And his eyes like the four gray seas of Erin. And they swept with the mists of rain. 

 Mavrone go Gudyo He to be in the joyful and red battle Amongst the chieftains and they doing great deeds of valor His life to go from him It is the chords of my own soul would be loosed. 

 A Vich Deelish My heart is in the heart of my son And my life is in his life surely A man can be twice young In the life of his sons only. 

 Jia du Vaha Alanav May the Son of God be above him and beneath him, before him and behind him May the King of the elements cast a mist over the eyes of the King of Foreign, May the Queen of the Graces lead him by the hand the way he can go through the midst of his enemies and they not seeing him

 May Patrick of the Gael and Collumb of the Churches and the five thousand Saints of Erin be better than a shield to him And he got into the fight. Och Ochone. "

Amory--Amory--I feel, somehow, that this is all; one or both of us isnot going to last out this war. . . . I've been trying to tell you how muchthis reincarnation of myself in you has meant in the last few years. . . Curiously alike we are. . . Curiously unlike. Good-by, dear boy, and Godbe with you. THAYER DARCY. 

 *****

EMBARKING AT NIGHT

Amory moved forward on the deck until he found a stool under an electriclight. He searched in his pocket for note-book and pencil and then beganto write, slowly, laboriously:

 "We leave to-night. . . Silent, we filled the still, deserted street, A column of dim gray, And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat Along the moonless way; The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet That turned from night and day. 

 And so we linger on the windless decks, See on the spectre shore Shades of a thousand days, poor gray-ribbed wrecks. . . Oh, shall we then deplore Those futile years! See how the sea is white! The clouds have broken and the heavens burn To hollow highways, paved with gravelled light The churning of the waves about the stern Rises to one voluminous nocturne, . . . We leave to-night. "

A letter from Amory, headed "Brest, March 11th, 1919, " to Lieutenant T. P. D'Invilliers, Camp Gordon, Ga. 

DEAR BAUDELAIRE:--

We meet in Manhattan on the 30th of this very mo. ; we then proceed totake a very sporty apartment, you and I and Alec, who is at me elbow asI write. I don't know what I'm going to do but I have a vague dream ofgoing into politics. Why is it that the pick of the young Englishmenfrom Oxford and Cambridge go into politics and in the U. S. A. We leaveit to the muckers?--raised in the ward, educated in the assembly andsent to Congress, fat-paunched bundles of corruption, devoid of "bothideas and ideals" as the debaters used to say. Even forty years ago wehad good men in politics, but we, we are brought up to pile up a millionand "show what we are made of. " Sometimes I wish I'd been an Englishman;American life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy. 

Since poor Beatrice died I'll probably have a little money, but verydarn little. I can forgive mother almost everything except the fact thatin a sudden burst of religiosity toward the end, she left half of whatremained to be spent in stained-glass windows and seminary endowments. Mr. Barton, my lawyer, writes me that my thousands are mostly in streetrailways and that the said Street R. R. S are losing money because of thefive-cent fares. Imagine a salary list that gives $350 a month to a manthat can't read and write!--yet I believe in it, even though I'veseen what was once a sizable fortune melt away between speculation, extravagance, the democratic administration, and the income tax--modern, that's me all over, Mabel. 

At any rate we'll have really knock-out rooms--you can get a job on somefashion magazine, and Alec can go into the Zinc Company or whatever itis that his people own--he's looking over my shoulder and he says it'sa brass company, but I don't think it matters much, do you? There'sprobably as much corruption in zinc-made money as brass-made money. Asfor the well-known Amory, he would write immortal literature if he weresure enough about anything to risk telling any one else about it. There is no more dangerous gift to posterity than a few cleverly turnedplatitudes. 

Tom, why don't you become a Catholic? Of course to be a good one you'dhave to give up those violent intrigues you used to tell me about, but you'd write better poetry if you were linked up to tall goldencandlesticks and long, even chants, and even if the American priests arerather burgeois, as Beatrice used to say, still you need only go to thesporty churches, and I'll introduce you to Monsignor Darcy who really isa wonder. 

Kerry's death was a blow, so was Jesse's to a certain extent. And I havea great curiosity to know what queer corner of the world has swallowedBurne. Do you suppose he's in prison under some false name? I confessthat the war instead of making me orthodox, which is the correctreaction, has made me a passionate agnostic. The Catholic Church has hadits wings clipped so often lately that its part was timidly negligible, and they haven't any good writers any more. I'm sick of Chesterton. 

I've only discovered one soldier who passed through the much-advertisedspiritual crisis, like this fellow, Donald Hankey, and the one I knewwas already studying for the ministry, so he was ripe for it. I honestlythink that's all pretty much rot, though it seemed to give sentimentalcomfort to those at home; and may make fathers and mothers appreciatetheir children. This crisis-inspired religion is rather valueless andfleeting at best. I think four men have discovered Paris to one thatdiscovered God. 

But us--you and me and Alec--oh, we'll get a Jap butler and dress fordinner and have wine on the table and lead a contemplative, emotionlesslife until we decide to use machine-guns with the property owners--orthrow bombs with the Bolshevik God! Tom, I hope something happens. I'mrestless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling inlove and growing domestic. 

The place at Lake Geneva is now for rent but when I land I'm going Westto see Mr. Barton and get some details. Write me care of the Blackstone, Chicago. 

 S'ever, dear Boswell, SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

BOOK TWO--The Education of a Personage

CHAPTER 1. The Debutante

The time is February. The place is a large, dainty bedroom in theConnage house on Sixty-eighth Street, New York. A girl's room: pinkwalls and curtains and a pink bedspread on a cream-colored bed. Pink andcream are the motifs of the room, but the only article of furniturein full view is a luxurious dressing-table with a glass top and athree-sided mirror. On the walls there is an expensive print of "CherryRipe, " a few polite dogs by Landseer, and the "King of the Black Isles, "by Maxfield Parrish. 

Great disorder consisting of the following items: (1) seven or eightempty cardboard boxes, with tissue-paper tongues hanging panting fromtheir mouths; (2) an assortment of street dresses mingled with theirsisters of the evening, all upon the table, all evidently new; (3) aroll of tulle, which has lost its dignity and wound itself tortuouslyaround everything in sight, and (4) upon the two small chairs, acollection of lingerie that beggars description. One would enjoy seeingthe bill called forth by the finery displayed and one is possessed bya desire to see the princess for whose benefit--Look! There's some one!Disappointment! This is only a maid hunting for something--she liftsa heap from a chair--Not there; another heap, the dressing-table, thechiffonier drawers. She brings to light several beautiful chemises andan amazing pajama but this does not satisfy her--she goes out. 

An indistinguishable mumble from the next room. 

Now, we are getting warm. This is Alec's mother, Mrs. Connage, ample, dignified, rouged to the dowager point and quite worn out. Her lips movesignificantly as she looks for IT. Her search is less thorough than themaid's but there is a touch of fury in it, that quite makes up for itssketchiness. She stumbles on the tulle and her "damn" is quite audible. She retires, empty-handed. 

More chatter outside and a girl's voice, a very spoiled voice, says: "Ofall the stupid people--"

After a pause a third seeker enters, not she of the spoiled voice, buta younger edition. This is Cecelia Connage, sixteen, pretty, shrewd, andconstitutionally good-humored. She is dressed for the evening in a gownthe obvious simplicity of which probably bores her. She goes to thenearest pile, selects a small pink garment and holds it up appraisingly. 

CECELIA: Pink?

ROSALIND: (Outside) Yes!

CECELIA: _Very_ snappy?

ROSALIND: Yes!

CECELIA: I've got it!

(She sees herself in the mirror of the dressing-table and commences toshimmy enthusiastically. )

ROSALIND: (Outside) What are you doing--trying it on?

(CECELIA ceases and goes out carrying the garment at the right shoulder. 

From the other door, enters ALEC CONNAGE. He looks around quickly and ina huge voice shouts: Mama! There is a chorus of protest from next doorand encouraged he starts toward it, but is repelled by another chorus. )

ALEC: So _that's_ where you all are! Amory Blaine is here. 

CECELIA: (Quickly) Take him down-stairs. 

ALEC: Oh, he _is_ down-stairs. 

MRS. CONNAGE: Well, you can show him where his room is. Tell him I'msorry that I can't meet him now. 

ALEC: He's heard a lot about you all. I wish you'd hurry. Father'stelling him all about the war and he's restless. He's sort oftemperamental. 

(This last suffices to draw CECELIA into the room. )

CECELIA: (Seating herself high upon lingerie) How do youmean--temperamental? You used to say that about him in letters. 

ALEC: Oh, he writes stuff. 

CECELIA: Does he play the piano?

ALEC: Don't think so. 

CECELIA: (Speculatively) Drink?

ALEC: Yes--nothing queer about him. 

CECELIA: Money?

ALEC: Good Lord--ask him, he used to have a lot, and he's got someincome now. 

(MRS. CONNAGE appears. )

MRS. CONNAGE: Alec, of course we're glad to have any friend of yours--

ALEC: You certainly ought to meet Amory. 

MRS. CONNAGE: Of course, I want to. But I think it's so childish of youto leave a perfectly good home to go and live with two other boys insome impossible apartment. I hope it isn't in order that you can alldrink as much as you want. (She pauses. ) He'll be a little neglectedto-night. This is Rosalind's week, you see. When a girl comes out, sheneeds _all_ the attention. 

ROSALIND: (Outside) Well, then, prove it by coming here and hooking me. 

(MRS. CONNAGE goes. )

ALEC: Rosalind hasn't changed a bit. 

CECELIA: (In a lower tone) She's awfully spoiled. 

ALEC: She'll meet her match to-night. 

CECELIA: Who--Mr. Amory Blaine?

(ALEC nods. )

CECELIA: Well, Rosalind has still to meet the man she can't outdistance. Honestly, Alec, she treats men terribly. She abuses them and cuts themand breaks dates with them and yawns in their faces--and they come backfor more. 

ALEC: They love it. 

CECELIA: They hate it. She's a--she's a sort of vampire, I think--andshe can make girls do what she wants usually--only she hates girls. 

ALEC: Personality runs in our family. 

CECELIA: (Resignedly) I guess it ran out before it got to me. 

ALEC: Does Rosalind behave herself?

CECELIA: Not particularly well. Oh, she's average--smokes sometimes, drinks punch, frequently kissed--Oh, yes--common knowledge--one of theeffects of the war, you know. 

(Emerges MRS. CONNAGE. )

MRS. CONNAGE: Rosalind's almost finished so I can go down and meet yourfriend. 

(ALEC and his mother go out. )

ROSALIND: (Outside) Oh, mother--

CECELIA: Mother's gone down. 

(And now ROSALIND enters. ROSALIND is--utterly ROSALIND. She is one ofthose girls who need never make the slightest effort to have men fall inlove with them. Two types of men seldom do: dull men are usually afraidof her cleverness and intellectual men are usually afraid of her beauty. All others are hers by natural prerogative. 

If ROSALIND could be spoiled the process would have been complete bythis time, and as a matter of fact, her disposition is not all it shouldbe; she wants what she wants when she wants it and she is prone to makeevery one around her pretty miserable when she doesn't get it--but inthe true sense she is not spoiled. Her fresh enthusiasm, her will togrow and learn, her endless faith in the inexhaustibility of romance, her courage and fundamental honesty--these things are not spoiled. 

There are long periods when she cordially loathes her whole family. She is quite unprincipled; her philosophy is carpe diem for herselfand laissez faire for others. She loves shocking stories: she has thatcoarse streak that usually goes with natures that are both fine and big. She wants people to like her, but if they do not it never worries her orchanges her. She is by no means a model character. 

The education of all beautiful women is the knowledge of men. ROSALINDhad been disappointed in man after man as individuals, but she had greatfaith in man as a sex. Women she detested. They represented qualitiesthat she felt and despised in herself--incipient meanness, conceit, cowardice, and petty dishonesty. She once told a roomful of hermother's friends that the only excuse for women was the necessity fora disturbing element among men. She danced exceptionally well, drewcleverly but hastily, and had a startling facility with words, which sheused only in love-letters. 

But all criticism of ROSALIND ends in her beauty. There was that shadeof glorious yellow hair, the desire to imitate which supports the dyeindustry. There was the eternal kissable mouth, small, slightly sensual, and utterly disturbing. There were gray eyes and an unimpeachable skinwith two spots of vanishing color. She was slender and athletic, withoutunderdevelopment, and it was a delight to watch her move about a room, walk along a street, swing a golf club, or turn a "cartwheel. "

A last qualification--her vivid, instant personality escaped thatconscious, theatrical quality that AMORY had found in ISABELLE. MONSIGNOR DARCY would have been quite up a tree whether to call hera personality or a personage. She was perhaps the delicious, inexpressible, once-in-a-century blend. 

On the night of her debut she is, for all her strange, stray wisdom, quite like a happy little girl. Her mother's maid has just done herhair, but she has decided impatiently that she can do a better jobherself. She is too nervous just now to stay in one place. To thatwe owe her presence in this littered room. She is going to speak. ISABELLE'S alto tones had been like a violin, but if you could hearROSALIND, you would say her voice was musical as a waterfall. )

ROSALIND: Honestly, there are only two costumes in the world that Ireally enjoy being in--(Combing her hair at the dressing-table. ) One'sa hoop skirt with pantaloons; the other's a one-piece bathing-suit. I'mquite charming in both of them. 

CECELIA: Glad you're coming out?

ROSALIND: Yes; aren't you?

CECELIA: (Cynically) You're glad so you can get married and live on LongIsland with the _fast younger married set_. You want life to be a chainof flirtation with a man for every link. 

ROSALIND: _Want_ it to be one! You mean I've _found_ it one. 

CECELIA: Ha!

ROSALIND: Cecelia, darling, you don't know what a trial it is tobe--like me. I've got to keep my face like steel in the street to keepmen from winking at me. If I laugh hard from a front row in the theatre, the comedian plays to me for the rest of the evening. If I drop myvoice, my eyes, my handkerchief at a dance, my partner calls me up onthe 'phone every day for a week. 

CECELIA: It must be an awful strain. 

ROSALIND: The unfortunate part is that the only men who interest me atall are the totally ineligible ones. Now--if I were poor I'd go on thestage. 

CECELIA: Yes, you might as well get paid for the amount of acting youdo. 

ROSALIND: Sometimes when I've felt particularly radiant I've thought, why should this be wasted on one man?

CECELIA: Often when you're particularly sulky, I've wondered why itshould all be wasted on just one family. (Getting up. ) I think I'll godown and meet Mr. Amory Blaine. I like temperamental men. 

ROSALIND: There aren't any. Men don't know how to be really angry orreally happy--and the ones that do, go to pieces. 

CECELIA: Well, I'm glad I don't have all your worries. I'm engaged. 

ROSALIND: (With a scornful smile) Engaged? Why, you little lunatic!If mother heard you talking like that she'd send you off toboarding-school, where you belong. 

CECELIA: You won't tell her, though, because I know things I couldtell--and you're too selfish!

ROSALIND: (A little annoyed) Run along, little girl! Who are you engagedto, the iceman? the man that keeps the candy-store?

CECELIA: Cheap wit--good-by, darling, I'll see you later. 

ROSALIND: Oh, be _sure_ and do that--you're such a help. 

(Exit CECELIA. ROSALIND finished her hair and rises, humming. She goesup to the mirror and starts to dance in front of it on the soft carpet. She watches not her feet, but her eyes--never casually but alwaysintently, even when she smiles. The door suddenly opens and then slamsbehind AMORY, very cool and handsome as usual. He melts into instantconfusion. )

HE: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought--

SHE: (Smiling radiantly) Oh, you're Amory Blaine, aren't you?

HE: (Regarding her closely) And you're Rosalind?

SHE: I'm going to call you Amory--oh, come in--it's all right--mother'llbe right in--(under her breath) unfortunately. 

HE: (Gazing around) This is sort of a new wrinkle for me. 

SHE: This is No Man's Land. 

HE: This is where you--you--(pause)

SHE: Yes--all those things. (She crosses to the bureau. ) See, here's myrouge--eye pencils. 

HE: I didn't know you were that way. 

SHE: What did you expect?

HE: I thought you'd be sort of--sort of--sexless, you know, swim andplay golf. 

SHE: Oh, I do--but not in business hours. 

HE: Business?

SHE: Six to two--strictly. 

HE: I'd like to have some stock in the corporation. 

SHE: Oh, it's not a corporation--it's just "Rosalind, Unlimited. "Fifty-one shares, name, good-will, and everything goes at $25, 000 ayear. 

HE: (Disapprovingly) Sort of a chilly proposition. 

SHE: Well, Amory, you don't mind--do you? When I meet a man that doesn'tbore me to death after two weeks, perhaps it'll be different. 

HE: Odd, you have the same point of view on men that I have on women. 

SHE: I'm not really feminine, you know--in my mind. 

HE: (Interested) Go on. 

SHE: No, you--you go on--you've made me talk about myself. That'sagainst the rules. 

HE: Rules?

SHE: My own rules--but you--Oh, Amory, I hear you're brilliant. Thefamily expects _so_ much of you. 

HE: How encouraging!

SHE: Alec said you'd taught him to think. Did you? I didn't believe anyone could. 

HE: No. I'm really quite dull. 

(He evidently doesn't intend this to be taken seriously. )

SHE: Liar. 

HE: I'm--I'm religious--I'm literary. I've--I've even written poems. 

SHE: Vers libre--splendid! (She declaims. )

 "The trees are green, The birds are singing in the trees, The girl sips her poison The bird flies away the girl dies. "

HE: (Laughing) No, not that kind. 

SHE: (Suddenly) I like you. 

HE: Don't. 

SHE: Modest too--

HE: I'm afraid of you. I'm always afraid of a girl--until I've kissedher. 

SHE: (Emphatically) My dear boy, the war is over. 

HE: So I'll always be afraid of you. 

SHE: (Rather sadly) I suppose you will. 

(A slight hesitation on both their parts. )

HE: (After due consideration) Listen. This is a frightful thing to ask. 

SHE: (Knowing what's coming) After five minutes. 

HE: But will you--kiss me? Or are you afraid?

SHE: I'm never afraid--but your reasons are so poor. 

HE: Rosalind, I really _want_ to kiss you. 

SHE: So do I. 

(They kiss--definitely and thoroughly. )

HE: (After a breathless second) Well, is your curiosity satisfied?

SHE: Is yours?

HE: No, it's only aroused. 

(He looks it. )

SHE: (Dreamily) I've kissed dozens of men. I suppose I'll kiss dozensmore. 

HE: (Abstractedly) Yes, I suppose you could--like that. 

SHE: Most people like the way I kiss. 

HE: (Remembering himself) Good Lord, yes. Kiss me once more, Rosalind. 

SHE: No--my curiosity is generally satisfied at one. 

HE: (Discouraged) Is that a rule?

SHE: I make rules to fit the cases. 

HE: You and I are somewhat alike--except that I'm years older inexperience. 

SHE: How old are you?

HE: Almost twenty-three. You?

SHE: Nineteen--just. 

HE: I suppose you're the product of a fashionable school. 

SHE: No--I'm fairly raw material. I was expelled from Spence--I'veforgotten why. 

HE: What's your general trend?

SHE: Oh, I'm bright, quite selfish, emotional when aroused, fond ofadmiration--

HE: (Suddenly) I don't want to fall in love with you--

SHE: (Raising her eyebrows) Nobody asked you to. 

HE: (Continuing coldly) But I probably will. I love your mouth. 

SHE: Hush! Please don't fall in love with my mouth--hair, eyes, shoulders, slippers--but _not_ my mouth. Everybody falls in love with mymouth. 

HE: It's quite beautiful. 

SHE: It's too small. 

HE: No it isn't--let's see. 

(He kisses her again with the same thoroughness. )

SHE: (Rather moved) Say something sweet. 

HE: (Frightened) Lord help me. 

SHE: (Drawing away) Well, don't--if it's so hard. 

HE: Shall we pretend? So soon?

SHE: We haven't the same standards of time as other people. 

HE: Already it's--other people. 

SHE: Let's pretend. 

HE: No--I can't--it's sentiment. 

SHE: You're not sentimental?

HE: No, I'm romantic--a sentimental person thinks things will last--aromantic person hopes against hope that they won't. Sentiment isemotional. 

SHE: And you're not? (With her eyes half-closed. ) You probably flatteryourself that that's a superior attitude. 

HE: Well--Rosalind, Rosalind, don't argue--kiss me again. 

SHE: (Quite chilly now) No--I have no desire to kiss you. 

HE: (Openly taken aback) You wanted to kiss me a minute ago. 

SHE: This is now. 

HE: I'd better go. 

SHE: I suppose so. 

(He goes toward the door. )

SHE: Oh!

(He turns. )

SHE: (Laughing) Score--Home Team: One hundred--Opponents: Zero. 

(He starts back. )

SHE: (Quickly) Rain--no game. 

(He goes out. )

(She goes quietly to the chiffonier, takes out a cigarette-case andhides it in the side drawer of a desk. Her mother enters, note-book inhand. )

MRS. CONNAGE: Good--I've been wanting to speak to you alone before we godown-stairs. 

ROSALIND: Heavens! you frighten me!

MRS. CONNAGE: Rosalind, you've been a very expensive proposition. 

ROSALIND: (Resignedly) Yes. 

MRS. CONNAGE: And you know your father hasn't what he once had. 

ROSALIND: (Making a wry face) Oh, please don't talk about money. 

MRS. CONNAGE: You can't do anything without it. This is our last year inthis house--and unless things change Cecelia won't have the advantagesyou've had. 

ROSALIND: (Impatiently) Well--what is it?

MRS. CONNAGE: So I ask you to please mind me in several things I've putdown in my note-book. The first one is: don't disappear with young men. There may be a time when it's valuable, but at present I want you on thedance-floor where I can find you. There are certain men I want to haveyou meet and I don't like finding you in some corner of the conservatoryexchanging silliness with any one--or listening to it. 

ROSALIND: (Sarcastically) Yes, listening to it _is_ better. 

MRS. CONNAGE: And don't waste a lot of time with the college set--littleboys nineteen and twenty years old. I don't mind a prom or a footballgame, but staying away from advantageous parties to eat in little cafesdown-town with Tom, Dick, and Harry--

ROSALIND: (Offering her code, which is, in its way, quite as high as hermother's) Mother, it's done--you can't run everything now the way youdid in the early nineties. 

MRS. CONNAGE: (Paying no attention) There are several bachelor friendsof your father's that I want you to meet to-night--youngish men. 

ROSALIND: (Nodding wisely) About forty-five?

MRS. CONNAGE: (Sharply) Why not?

ROSALIND: Oh, _quite_ all right--they know life and are so adorablytired looking (shakes her head)--but they _will_ dance. 

MRS. CONNAGE: I haven't met Mr. Blaine--but I don't think you'll carefor him. He doesn't sound like a money-maker. 

ROSALIND: Mother, I never _think_ about money. 

MRS. CONNAGE: You never keep it long enough to think about it. 

ROSALIND: (Sighs) Yes, I suppose some day I'll marry a ton of it--out ofsheer boredom. 

MRS. CONNAGE: (Referring to note-book) I had a wire from Hartford. Dawson Ryder is coming up. Now there's a young man I like, and he'sfloating in money. It seems to me that since you seem tired of HowardGillespie you might give Mr. Ryder some encouragement. This is the thirdtime he's been up in a month. 

ROSALIND: How did you know I was tired of Howard Gillespie?

MRS. CONNAGE: The poor boy looks so miserable every time he comes. 

ROSALIND: That was one of those romantic, pre-battle affairs. They'reall wrong. 

MRS. CONNAGE: (Her say said) At any rate, make us proud of you to-night. 

ROSALIND: Don't you think I'm beautiful?

MRS. CONNAGE: You know you are. 

(From down-stairs is heard the moan of a violin being tuned, the roll ofa drum. MRS. CONNAGE turns quickly to her daughter. )

MRS. CONNAGE: Come!

ROSALIND: One minute!

(Her mother leaves. ROSALIND goes to the glass where she gazes atherself with great satisfaction. She kisses her hand and touches hermirrored mouth with it. Then she turns out the lights and leaves theroom. Silence for a moment. A few chords from the piano, the discreetpatter of faint drums, the rustle of new silk, all blend on thestaircase outside and drift in through the partly opened door. Bundledfigures pass in the lighted hall. The laughter heard below becomesdoubled and multiplied. Then some one comes in, closes the door, andswitches on the lights. It is CECELIA. She goes to the chiffonier, looks in the drawers, hesitates--then to the desk whence she takes thecigarette-case and extracts one. She lights it and then, puffing andblowing, walks toward the mirror. )

CECELIA: (In tremendously sophisticated accents) Oh, yes, coming outis _such_ a farce nowadays, you know. One really plays around so muchbefore one is seventeen, that it's positively anticlimax. (Shaking handswith a visionary middle-aged nobleman. ) Yes, your grace--I b'lieveI've heard my sister speak of you. Have a puff--they're very good. They're--they're Coronas. You don't smoke? What a pity! The king doesn'tallow it, I suppose. Yes, I'll dance. 

(So she dances around the room to a tune from down-stairs, her armsoutstretched to an imaginary partner, the cigarette waving in her hand. )

 *****

SEVERAL HOURS LATER

The corner of a den down-stairs, filled by a very comfortable leatherlounge. A small light is on each side above, and in the middle, over thecouch hangs a painting of a very old, very dignified gentleman, period1860. Outside the music is heard in a fox-trot. 

ROSALIND is seated on the lounge and on her left is HOWARD GILLESPIE, avapid youth of about twenty-four. He is obviously very unhappy, and sheis quite bored. 

GILLESPIE: (Feebly) What do you mean I've changed. I feel the sametoward you. 

ROSALIND: But you don't look the same to me. 

GILLESPIE: Three weeks ago you used to say that you liked me because Iwas so blasé, so indifferent--I still am. 

ROSALIND: But not about me. I used to like you because you had browneyes and thin legs. 

GILLESPIE: (Helplessly) They're still thin and brown. You're a vampire, that's all. 

ROSALIND: The only thing I know about vamping is what's on the pianoscore. What confuses men is that I'm perfectly natural. I used to thinkyou were never jealous. Now you follow me with your eyes wherever I go. 

GILLESPIE: I love you. 

ROSALIND: (Coldly) I know it. 

GILLESPIE: And you haven't kissed me for two weeks. I had an idea thatafter a girl was kissed she was--was--won. 

ROSALIND: Those days are over. I have to be won all over again everytime you see me. 

GILLESPIE: Are you serious?

ROSALIND: About as usual. There used to be two kinds of kisses: Firstwhen girls were kissed and deserted; second, when they were engaged. Nowthere's a third kind, where the man is kissed and deserted. If Mr. Jones of the nineties bragged he'd kissed a girl, every one knew he wasthrough with her. If Mr. Jones of 1919 brags the same every one knowsit's because he can't kiss her any more. Given a decent start any girlcan beat a man nowadays. 

GILLESPIE: Then why do you play with men?

ROSALIND: (Leaning forward confidentially) For that first moment, whenhe's interested. There is a moment--Oh, just before the first kiss, awhispered word--something that makes it worth while. 

GILLESPIE: And then?

ROSALIND: Then after that you make him talk about himself. Pretty soonhe thinks of nothing but being alone with you--he sulks, he won't fight, he doesn't want to play--Victory!

(Enter DAWSON RYDER, twenty-six, handsome, wealthy, faithful to his own, a bore perhaps, but steady and sure of success. )

RYDER: I believe this is my dance, Rosalind. 

ROSALIND: Well, Dawson, so you recognize me. Now I know I haven't gottoo much paint on. Mr. Ryder, this is Mr. Gillespie. 

(They shake hands and GILLESPIE leaves, tremendously downcast. )

RYDER: Your party is certainly a success. 

ROSALIND: Is it--I haven't seen it lately. I'm weary--Do you mindsitting out a minute?

RYDER: Mind--I'm delighted. You know I loathe this "rushing" idea. See agirl yesterday, to-day, to-morrow. 

ROSALIND: Dawson!

RYDER: What?

ROSALIND: I wonder if you know you love me. 

RYDER: (Startled) What--Oh--you know you're remarkable!

ROSALIND: Because you know I'm an awful proposition. Any one who marriesme will have his hands full. I'm mean--mighty mean. 

RYDER: Oh, I wouldn't say that. 

ROSALIND: Oh, yes, I am--especially to the people nearest to me. (Sherises. ) Come, let's go. I've changed my mind and I want to dance. Motheris probably having a fit. 

(Exeunt. Enter ALEC and CECELIA. )

CECELIA: Just my luck to get my own brother for an intermission. 

ALEC: (Gloomily) I'll go if you want me to. 

CECELIA: Good heavens, no--with whom would I begin the next dance?(Sighs. ) There's no color in a dance since the French officers wentback. 

ALEC: (Thoughtfully) I don't want Amory to fall in love with Rosalind. 

CECELIA: Why, I had an idea that that was just what you did want. 

ALEC: I did, but since seeing these girls--I don't know. I'm awfullyattached to Amory. He's sensitive and I don't want him to break hisheart over somebody who doesn't care about him. 

CECELIA: He's very good looking. 

ALEC: (Still thoughtfully) She won't marry him, but a girl doesn't haveto marry a man to break his heart. 

CECELIA: What does it? I wish I knew the secret. 

ALEC: Why, you cold-blooded little kitty. It's lucky for some that theLord gave you a pug nose. 

(Enter MRS. CONNAGE. )

MRS. CONNAGE: Where on earth is Rosalind?

ALEC: (Brilliantly) Of course you've come to the best people to findout. She'd naturally be with us. 

MRS. CONNAGE: Her father has marshalled eight bachelor millionaires tomeet her. 

ALEC: You might form a squad and march through the halls. 

MRS. CONNAGE: I'm perfectly serious--for all I know she may be at theCocoanut Grove with some football player on the night of her debut. Youlook left and I'll--

ALEC: (Flippantly) Hadn't you better send the butler through the cellar?

MRS. CONNAGE: (Perfectly serious) Oh, you don't think she'd be there?

CECELIA: He's only joking, mother. 

ALEC: Mother had a picture of her tapping a keg of beer with some highhurdler. 

MRS. CONNAGE: Let's look right away. 

(They go out. ROSALIND comes in with GILLESPIE. )

GILLESPIE: Rosalind--Once more I ask you. Don't you care a blessed thingabout me?

(AMORY walks in briskly. )

AMORY: My dance. 

ROSALIND: Mr. Gillespie, this is Mr. Blaine. 

GILLESPIE: I've met Mr. Blaine. From Lake Geneva, aren't you?

AMORY: Yes. 

GILLESPIE: (Desperately) I've been there. It's in the--the Middle West, isn't it?

AMORY: (Spicily) Approximately. But I always felt that I'd rather beprovincial hot-tamale than soup without seasoning. 

GILLESPIE: What!

AMORY: Oh, no offense. 

(GILLESPIE bows and leaves. )

ROSALIND: He's too much _people_. 

AMORY: I was in love with a _people_ once. 

ROSALIND: So?

AMORY: Oh, yes--her name was Isabelle--nothing at all to her except whatI read into her. 

ROSALIND: What happened?

AMORY: Finally I convinced her that she was smarter than I was--then shethrew me over. Said I was critical and impractical, you know. 

ROSALIND: What do you mean impractical?

AMORY: Oh--drive a car, but can't change a tire. 

ROSALIND: What are you going to do?

AMORY: Can't say--run for President, write--

ROSALIND: Greenwich Village?

AMORY: Good heavens, no--I said write--not drink. 

ROSALIND: I like business men. Clever men are usually so homely. 

AMORY: I feel as if I'd known you for ages. 

ROSALIND: Oh, are you going to commence the "pyramid" story?

AMORY: No--I was going to make it French. I was Louis XIV and you wereone of my--my--(Changing his tone. ) Suppose--we fell in love. 

ROSALIND: I've suggested pretending. 

AMORY: If we did it would be very big. 

ROSALIND: Why?

AMORY: Because selfish people are in a way terribly capable of greatloves. 

ROSALIND: (Turning her lips up) Pretend. 

(Very deliberately they kiss. )

AMORY: I can't say sweet things. But you _are_ beautiful. 

ROSALIND: Not that. 

AMORY: What then?

ROSALIND: (Sadly) Oh, nothing--only I want sentiment, realsentiment--and I never find it. 

AMORY: I never find anything else in the world--and I loathe it. 

ROSALIND: It's so hard to find a male to gratify one's artistic taste. 

(Some one has opened a door and the music of a waltz surges into theroom. ROSALIND rises. )

ROSALIND: Listen! they're playing "Kiss Me Again. "

(He looks at her. )

AMORY: Well?

ROSALIND: Well?

AMORY: (Softly--the battle lost) I love you. 

ROSALIND: I love you--now. 

(They kiss. )

AMORY: Oh, God, what have I done?

ROSALIND: Nothing. Oh, don't talk. Kiss me again. 

AMORY: I don't know why or how, but I love you--from the moment I sawyou. 

ROSALIND: Me too--I--I--oh, to-night's to-night. 

(Her brother strolls in, starts and then in a loud voice says: "Oh, excuse me, " and goes. )

ROSALIND: (Her lips scarcely stirring) Don't let me go--I don't care whoknows what I do. 

AMORY: Say it!

ROSALIND: I love you--now. (They part. ) Oh--I am very youthful, thankGod--and rather beautiful, thank God--and happy, thank God, thankGod--(She pauses and then, in an odd burst of prophecy, adds) PoorAmory!

(He kisses her again. )

 *****

KISMET

Within two weeks Amory and Rosalind were deeply and passionately inlove. The critical qualities which had spoiled for each of them a dozenromances were dulled by the great wave of emotion that washed over them. 

"It may be an insane love-affair, " she told her anxious mother, "butit's not inane. "

The wave swept Amory into an advertising agency early in March, wherehe alternated between astonishing bursts of rather exceptional work andwild dreams of becoming suddenly rich and touring Italy with Rosalind. 

They were together constantly, for lunch, for dinner, and nearly everyevening--always in a sort of breathless hush, as if they feared that anyminute the spell would break and drop them out of this paradise of roseand flame. But the spell became a trance, seemed to increase from dayto day; they began to talk of marrying in July--in June. All life wastransmitted into terms of their love, all experience, all desires, allambitions, were nullified--their senses of humor crawled into corners tosleep; their former love-affairs seemed faintly laughable and scarcelyregretted juvenalia. 

For the second time in his life Amory had had a complete bouleversementand was hurrying into line with his generation. 

 *****

A LITTLE INTERLUDE

Amory wandered slowly up the avenue and thought of the night asinevitably his--the pageantry and carnival of rich dusk and dim streets. . . It seemed that he had closed the book of fading harmonies at lastand stepped into the sensuous vibrant walks of life. Everywhere thesecountless lights, this promise of a night of streets and singing--hemoved in a half-dream through the crowd as if expecting to meet Rosalindhurrying toward him with eager feet from every corner. . . . How theunforgettable faces of dusk would blend to her, the myriad footsteps, a thousand overtures, would blend to her footsteps; and there would bemore drunkenness than wine in the softness of her eyes on his. Evenhis dreams now were faint violins drifting like summer sounds upon thesummer air. 

The room was in darkness except for the faint glow of Tom's cigarettewhere he lounged by the open window. As the door shut behind him, Amorystood a moment with his back against it. 

"Hello, Benvenuto Blaine. How went the advertising business to-day?"

Amory sprawled on a couch. 

"I loathed it as usual!" The momentary vision of the bustling agency wasdisplaced quickly by another picture. 

"My God! She's wonderful!"

Tom sighed. 

"I can't tell you, " repeated Amory, "just how wonderful she is. I don'twant you to know. I don't want any one to know. "

Another sigh came from the window--quite a resigned sigh. 

"She's life and hope and happiness, my whole world now. "

He felt the quiver of a tear on his eyelid. 

"Oh, _Golly_, Tom!"

 *****

BITTER SWEET

"Sit like we do, " she whispered. 

He sat in the big chair and held out his arms so that she could nestleinside them. 

"I knew you'd come to-night, " she said softly, "like summer, just when Ineeded you most. . . Darling. . . Darling. . . "

His lips moved lazily over her face. 

"You _taste_ so good, " he sighed. 

"How do you mean, lover?"

"Oh, just sweet, just sweet. . . " he held her closer. 

"Amory, " she whispered, "when you're ready for me I'll marry you. "

"We won't have much at first. "

"Don't!" she cried. "It hurts when you reproach yourself for what youcan't give me. I've got your precious self--and that's enough for me. "

"Tell me. . . "

"You know, don't you? Oh, you know. "

"Yes, but I want to hear you say it. "

"I love you, Amory, with all my heart. "

"Always, will you?"

"All my life--Oh, Amory--"

"What?"

"I want to belong to you. I want your people to be my people. I want tohave your babies. "

"But I haven't any people. "

"Don't laugh at me, Amory. Just kiss me. "

"I'll do what you want, " he said. 

"No, I'll do what _you_ want. We're _you_--not me. Oh, you're so much apart, so much all of me. . . "

He closed his eyes. 

"I'm so happy that I'm frightened. Wouldn't it be awful if this was--wasthe high point?. . . "

She looked at him dreamily. 

"Beauty and love pass, I know. . . . Oh, there's sadness, too. I supposeall great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses andthen the death of roses--"

"Beauty means the agony of sacrifice and the end of agony. . . . "

"And, Amory, we're beautiful, I know. I'm sure God loves us--"

"He loves you. You're his most precious possession. "

"I'm not his, I'm yours. Amory, I belong to you. For the first time Iregret all the other kisses; now I know how much a kiss can mean. "

Then they would smoke and he would tell her about his day at theoffice--and where they might live. Sometimes, when he was particularlyloquacious, she went to sleep in his arms, but he loved thatRosalind--all Rosalinds--as he had never in the world loved any oneelse. Intangibly fleeting, unrememberable hours. 

 *****

AQUATIC INCIDENT

One day Amory and Howard Gillespie meeting by accident down-town tooklunch together, and Amory heard a story that delighted him. Gillespieafter several cocktails was in a talkative mood; he began by tellingAmory that he was sure Rosalind was slightly eccentric. 

He had gone with her on a swimming party up in Westchester County, andsome one mentioned that Annette Kellerman had been there one day on avisit and had dived from the top of a rickety, thirty-foot summer-house. Immediately Rosalind insisted that Howard should climb up with her tosee what it looked like. 

A minute later, as he sat and dangled his feet on the edge, a form shotby him; Rosalind, her arms spread in a beautiful swan dive, had sailedthrough the air into the clear water. 

"Of course _I_ had to go, after that--and I nearly killed myself. Ithought I was pretty good to even try it. Nobody else in the party triedit. Well, afterward Rosalind had the nerve to ask me why I stooped overwhen I dove. 'It didn't make it any easier, ' she said, 'it just took allthe courage out of it. ' I ask you, what can a man do with a girl likethat? Unnecessary, I call it. "

Gillespie failed to understand why Amory was smiling delightedly allthrough lunch. He thought perhaps he was one of these hollow optimists. 

 *****

FIVE WEEKS LATER

Again the library of the Connage house. ROSALIND is alone, sittingon the lounge staring very moodily and unhappily at nothing. She haschanged perceptibly--she is a trifle thinner for one thing; the light inher eyes is not so bright; she looks easily a year older. 

Her mother comes in, muffled in an opera-cloak. She takes in ROSALINDwith a nervous glance. 

MRS. CONNAGE: Who is coming to-night?

(ROSALIND fails to hear her, at least takes no notice. )

MRS. CONNAGE: Alec is coming up to take me to this Barrie play, "Et tu, Brutus. " (She perceives that she is talking to herself. ) Rosalind! Iasked you who is coming to-night?

ROSALIND: (Starting) Oh--what--oh--Amory--

MRS. CONNAGE: (Sarcastically) You have so _many_ admirers lately that Icouldn't imagine _which_ one. (ROSALIND doesn't answer. ) Dawson Ryderis more patient than I thought he'd be. You haven't given him an eveningthis week. 

ROSALIND: (With a very weary expression that is quite new to her face. )Mother--please--

MRS. CONNAGE: Oh, _I_ won't interfere. You've already wasted over twomonths on a theoretical genius who hasn't a penny to his name, but _go_ahead, waste your life on him. _I_ won't interfere. 

ROSALIND: (As if repeating a tiresome lesson) You know he has alittle income--and you know he's earning thirty-five dollars a week inadvertising--

MRS. CONNAGE: And it wouldn't buy your clothes. (She pauses but ROSALINDmakes no reply. ) I have your best interests at heart when I tell you notto take a step you'll spend your days regretting. It's not as if yourfather could help you. Things have been hard for him lately and he's anold man. You'd be dependent absolutely on a dreamer, a nice, well-bornboy, but a dreamer--merely _clever_. (She implies that this quality initself is rather vicious. )

ROSALIND: For heaven's sake, mother--

(A maid appears, announces Mr. Blaine who follows immediately. AMORY'Sfriends have been telling him for ten days that he "looks like the wrathof God, " and he does. As a matter of fact he has not been able to eat amouthful in the last thirty-six hours. )

AMORY: Good evening, Mrs. Connage. 

MRS. CONNAGE: (Not unkindly) Good evening, Amory. 

(AMORY and ROSALIND exchange glances--and ALEC comes in. ALEC'S attitudethroughout has been neutral. He believes in his heart that the marriagewould make AMORY mediocre and ROSALIND miserable, but he feels a greatsympathy for both of them. )

ALEC: Hi, Amory!

AMORY: Hi, Alec! Tom said he'd meet you at the theatre. 

ALEC: Yeah, just saw him. How's the advertising to-day? Write somebrilliant copy?

AMORY: Oh, it's about the same. I got a raise--(Every one looks at himrather eagerly)--of two dollars a week. (General collapse. )

MRS. CONNAGE: Come, Alec, I hear the car. 

(A good night, rather chilly in sections. After MRS. CONNAGE and ALECgo out there is a pause. ROSALIND still stares moodily at the fireplace. AMORY goes to her and puts his arm around her. )

AMORY: Darling girl. 

(They kiss. Another pause and then she seizes his hand, covers it withkisses and holds it to her breast. )

ROSALIND: (Sadly) I love your hands, more than anything. I see themoften when you're away from me--so tired; I know every line of them. Dear hands!

(Their eyes meet for a second and then she begins to cry--a tearlesssobbing. )

AMORY: Rosalind!

ROSALIND: Oh, we're so darned pitiful!

AMORY: Rosalind!

ROSALIND: Oh, I want to die!

AMORY: Rosalind, another night of this and I'll go to pieces. You'vebeen this way four days now. You've got to be more encouraging or Ican't work or eat or sleep. (He looks around helplessly as if searchingfor new words to clothe an old, shopworn phrase. ) We'll have to make astart. I like having to make a start together. (His forced hopefulnessfades as he sees her unresponsive. ) What's the matter? (He gets upsuddenly and starts to pace the floor. ) It's Dawson Ryder, that's whatit is. He's been working on your nerves. You've been with him everyafternoon for a week. People come and tell me they've seen you together, and I have to smile and nod and pretend it hasn't the slightestsignificance for me. And you won't tell me anything as it develops. 

ROSALIND: Amory, if you don't sit down I'll scream. 

AMORY: (Sitting down suddenly beside her) Oh, Lord. 

ROSALIND: (Taking his hand gently) You know I love you, don't you?

AMORY: Yes. 

ROSALIND: You know I'll always love you--

AMORY: Don't talk that way; you frighten me. It sounds as if we weren'tgoing to have each other. (She cries a little and rising from the couchgoes to the armchair. ) I've felt all afternoon that things were worse. I nearly went wild down at the office--couldn't write a line. Tell meeverything. 

ROSALIND: There's nothing to tell, I say. I'm just nervous. 

AMORY: Rosalind, you're playing with the idea of marrying Dawson Ryder. 

ROSALIND: (After a pause) He's been asking me to all day. 

AMORY: Well, he's got his nerve!

ROSALIND: (After another pause) I like him. 

AMORY: Don't say that. It hurts me. 

ROSALIND: Don't be a silly idiot. You know you're the only man I've everloved, ever will love. 

AMORY: (Quickly) Rosalind, let's get married--next week. 

ROSALIND: We can't. 

AMORY: Why not?

ROSALIND: Oh, we can't. I'd be your squaw--in some horrible place. 

AMORY: We'll have two hundred and seventy-five dollars a month all told. 

ROSALIND: Darling, I don't even do my own hair, usually. 

AMORY: I'll do it for you. 

ROSALIND: (Between a laugh and a sob) Thanks. 

AMORY: Rosalind, you _can't_ be thinking of marrying some one else. Tellme! You leave me in the dark. I can help you fight it out if you'll onlytell me. 

ROSALIND: It's just--us. We're pitiful, that's all. The very qualities Ilove you for are the ones that will always make you a failure. 

AMORY: (Grimly) Go on. 

ROSALIND: Oh--it _is_ Dawson Ryder. He's so reliable, I almost feel thathe'd be a--a background. 

AMORY: You don't love him. 

ROSALIND: I know, but I respect him, and he's a good man and a strongone. 

AMORY: (Grudgingly) Yes--he's that. 

ROSALIND: Well--here's one little thing. There was a little poor boy wemet in Rye Tuesday afternoon--and, oh, Dawson took him on his lapand talked to him and promised him an Indian suit--and next day heremembered and bought it--and, oh, it was so sweet and I couldn't helpthinking he'd be so nice to--to our children--take care of them--and Iwouldn't have to worry. 

AMORY: (In despair) Rosalind! Rosalind!

ROSALIND: (With a faint roguishness) Don't look so consciouslysuffering. 

AMORY: What power we have of hurting each other!

ROSALIND: (Commencing to sob again) It's been so perfect--you and I. Solike a dream that I'd longed for and never thought I'd find. The firstreal unselfishness I've ever felt in my life. And I can't see it fadeout in a colorless atmosphere!

AMORY: It won't--it won't!

ROSALIND: I'd rather keep it as a beautiful memory--tucked away in myheart. 

AMORY: Yes, women can do that--but not men. I'd remember always, notthe beauty of it while it lasted, but just the bitterness, the longbitterness. 

ROSALIND: Don't!

AMORY: All the years never to see you, never to kiss you, just a gateshut and barred--you don't dare be my wife. 

ROSALIND: No--no--I'm taking the hardest course, the strongest course. Marrying you would be a failure and I never fail--if you don't stopwalking up and down I'll scream!

(Again he sinks despairingly onto the lounge. )

AMORY: Come over here and kiss me. 

ROSALIND: No. 

AMORY: Don't you _want_ to kiss me?

ROSALIND: To-night I want you to love me calmly and coolly. 

AMORY: The beginning of the end. 

ROSALIND: (With a burst of insight) Amory, you're young. I'm young. People excuse us now for our poses and vanities, for treating peoplelike Sancho and yet getting away with it. They excuse us now. But you'vegot a lot of knocks coming to you--

AMORY: And you're afraid to take them with me. 

ROSALIND: No, not that. There was a poem I read somewhere--you'll sayElla Wheeler Wilcox and laugh--but listen:

 "For this is wisdom--to love and live, To take what fate or the gods may give, To ask no question, to make no prayer, To kiss the lips and caress the hair, Speed passion's ebb as we greet its flow, To have and to hold, and, in time--let go. "

AMORY: But we haven't had. 

ROSALIND: Amory, I'm yours--you know it. There have been times in thelast month I'd have been completely yours if you'd said so. But I can'tmarry you and ruin both our lives. 

AMORY: We've got to take our chance for happiness. 

ROSALIND: Dawson says I'd learn to love him. 

(AMORY with his head sunk in his hands does not move. The life seemssuddenly gone out of him. )

ROSALIND: Lover! Lover! I can't do with you, and I can't imagine lifewithout you. 

AMORY: Rosalind, we're on each other's nerves. It's just that we're bothhigh-strung, and this week--

(His voice is curiously old. She crosses to him and taking his face inher hands, kisses him. )

ROSALIND: I can't, Amory. I can't be shut away from the trees andflowers, cooped up in a little flat, waiting for you. You'd hate me in anarrow atmosphere. I'd make you hate me. 

(Again she is blinded by sudden uncontrolled tears. )

AMORY: Rosalind--

ROSALIND: Oh, darling, go--Don't make it harder! I can't stand it--

AMORY: (His face drawn, his voice strained) Do you know what you'resaying? Do you mean forever?

(There is a difference somehow in the quality of their suffering. )

ROSALIND: Can't you see--

AMORY: I'm afraid I can't if you love me. You're afraid of taking twoyears' knocks with me. 

ROSALIND: I wouldn't be the Rosalind you love. 

AMORY: (A little hysterically) I can't give you up! I can't, that's all!I've got to have you!

ROSALIND: (A hard note in her voice) You're being a baby now. 

AMORY: (Wildly) I don't care! You're spoiling our lives!

ROSALIND: I'm doing the wise thing, the only thing. 

AMORY: Are you going to marry Dawson Ryder?

ROSALIND: Oh, don't ask me. You know I'm old in some ways--inothers--well, I'm just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty thingsand cheerfulness--and I dread responsibility. I don't want to thinkabout pots and kitchens and brooms. I want to worry whether my legs willget slick and brown when I swim in the summer. 

AMORY: And you love me. 

ROSALIND: That's just why it has to end. Drifting hurts too much. Wecan't have any more scenes like this. 

(She draws his ring from her finger and hands it to him. Their eyesblind again with tears. )

AMORY: (His lips against her wet cheek) Don't! Keep it, please--oh, don't break my heart!

(She presses the ring softly into his hand. )

ROSALIND: (Brokenly) You'd better go. 

AMORY: Good-by--

(She looks at him once more, with infinite longing, infinite sadness. )

ROSALIND: Don't ever forget me, Amory--

AMORY: Good-by--

(He goes to the door, fumbles for the knob, finds it--she sees him throwback his head--and he is gone. Gone--she half starts from the lounge andthen sinks forward on her face into the pillows. )

ROSALIND: Oh, God, I want to die! (After a moment she rises and withher eyes closed feels her way to the door. Then she turns and looks oncemore at the room. Here they had sat and dreamed: that tray she had sooften filled with matches for him; that shade that they had discreetlylowered one long Sunday afternoon. Misty-eyed she stands and remembers;she speaks aloud. ) Oh, Amory, what have I done to you?

(And deep under the aching sadness that will pass in time, Rosalindfeels that she has lost something, she knows not what, she knows notwhy. )

CHAPTER 2. Experiments in Convalescence

The Knickerbocker Bar, beamed upon by Maxfield Parrish's jovial, colorful "Old King Cole, " was well crowded. Amory stopped in theentrance and looked at his wrist-watch; he wanted particularly to knowthe time, for something in his mind that catalogued and classified likedto chip things off cleanly. Later it would satisfy him in a vague way tobe able to think "that thing ended at exactly twenty minutes after eighton Thursday, June 10, 1919. " This was allowing for the walk fromher house--a walk concerning which he had afterward not the faintestrecollection. 

He was in rather grotesque condition: two days of worry and nervousness, of sleepless nights, of untouched meals, culminating in the emotionalcrisis and Rosalind's abrupt decision--the strain of it had drugged theforeground of his mind into a merciful coma. As he fumbled clumsily withthe olives at the free-lunch table, a man approached and spoke to him, and the olives dropped from his nervous hands. 

"Well, Amory. . . "

It was some one he had known at Princeton; he had no idea of the name. 

"Hello, old boy--" he heard himself saying. 

"Name's Jim Wilson--you've forgotten. "

"Sure, you bet, Jim. I remember. "

"Going to reunion?"

"You know!" Simultaneously he realized that he was not going to reunion. 

"Get overseas?"

Amory nodded, his eyes staring oddly. Stepping back to let some onepass, he knocked the dish of olives to a crash on the floor. 

"Too bad, " he muttered. "Have a drink?"

Wilson, ponderously diplomatic, reached over and slapped him on theback. 

"You've had plenty, old boy. "

Amory eyed him dumbly until Wilson grew embarrassed under the scrutiny. 

"Plenty, hell!" said Amory finally. "I haven't had a drink to-day. "

Wilson looked incredulous. 

"Have a drink or not?" cried Amory rudely. 

Together they sought the bar. 

"Rye high. "

"I'll just take a Bronx. "

Wilson had another; Amory had several more. They decided to sit down. At ten o'clock Wilson was displaced by Carling, class of '15. Amory, hishead spinning gorgeously, layer upon layer of soft satisfaction settingover the bruised spots of his spirit, was discoursing volubly on thewar. 

"'S a mental was'e, " he insisted with owl-like wisdom. "Two years mylife spent inalleshual vacuity. Los' idealism, got be physcal anmal, "he shook his fist expressively at Old King Cole, "got be Prussian 'boutev'thing, women 'specially. Use' be straight 'bout women college. Nowdon'givadam. " He expressed his lack of principle by sweeping a seltzerbottle with a broad gesture to noisy extinction on the floor, but thisdid not interrupt his speech. "Seek pleasure where find it for to-morrowdie. 'At's philos'phy for me now on. "

Carling yawned, but Amory, waxing brilliant, continued:

"Use' wonder 'bout things--people satisfied compromise, fif'y-fif'yatt'tude on life. Now don' wonder, don' wonder--" He became so emphaticin impressing on Carling the fact that he didn't wonder that he lost thethread of his discourse and concluded by announcing to the bar at largethat he was a "physcal anmal. "

"What are you celebrating, Amory?"

Amory leaned forward confidentially. 

"Cel'brating blowmylife. Great moment blow my life. Can't tell you 'boutit--"

He heard Carling addressing a remark to the bartender:

"Give him a bromo-seltzer. "

Amory shook his head indignantly. 

"None that stuff!"

"But listen, Amory, you're making yourself sick. You're white as aghost. "

Amory considered the question. He tried to look at himself in the mirrorbut even by squinting up one eye could only see as far as the row ofbottles behind the bar. 

"Like som'n solid. We go get some--some salad. "

He settled his coat with an attempt at nonchalance, but letting go ofthe bar was too much for him, and he slumped against a chair. 

"We'll go over to Shanley's, " suggested Carling, offering an elbow. 

With this assistance Amory managed to get his legs in motion enough topropel him across Forty-second Street. 

Shanley's was very dim. He was conscious that he was talking in a loudvoice, very succinctly and convincingly, he thought, about a desireto crush people under his heel. He consumed three club sandwiches, devouring each as though it were no larger than a chocolate-drop. Then Rosalind began popping into his mind again, and he found his lipsforming her name over and over. Next he was sleepy, and he had a hazy, listless sense of people in dress suits, probably waiters, gatheringaround the table. . . . 

. . . He was in a room and Carling was saying something about a knot inhis shoe-lace. 

"Nemmine, " he managed to articulate drowsily. "Sleep in 'em. . . . "

 *****

STILL ALCOHOLIC

He awoke laughing and his eyes lazily roamed his surroundings, evidentlya bedroom and bath in a good hotel. His head was whirring and pictureafter picture was forming and blurring and melting before his eyes, butbeyond the desire to laugh he had no entirely conscious reaction. Hereached for the 'phone beside his bed. 

"Hello--what hotel is this--?

"Knickerbocker? All right, send up two rye high-balls--"

He lay for a moment and wondered idly whether they'd send up a bottleor just two of those little glass containers. Then, with an effort, hestruggled out of bed and ambled into the bathroom. 

When he emerged, rubbing himself lazily with a towel, he found the barboy with the drinks and had a sudden desire to kid him. On reflection hedecided that this would be undignified, so he waved him away. 

As the new alcohol tumbled into his stomach and warmed him, the isolatedpictures began slowly to form a cinema reel of the day before. Again hesaw Rosalind curled weeping among the pillows, again he felt her tearsagainst his cheek. Her words began ringing in his ears: "Don't everforget me, Amory--don't ever forget me--"

"Hell!" he faltered aloud, and then he choked and collapsed on thebed in a shaken spasm of grief. After a minute he opened his eyes andregarded the ceiling. 

"Damned fool!" he exclaimed in disgust, and with a voluminous sigh roseand approached the bottle. After another glass he gave way looselyto the luxury of tears. Purposely he called up into his mind littleincidents of the vanished spring, phrased to himself emotions that wouldmake him react even more strongly to sorrow. 

"We were so happy, " he intoned dramatically, "so very happy. " Then hegave way again and knelt beside the bed, his head half-buried in thepillow. 

"My own girl--my own--Oh--"

He clinched his teeth so that the tears streamed in a flood from hiseyes. 

"Oh. . . My baby girl, all I had, all I wanted!. . . Oh, my girl, come back, come back! I need you. . . Need you. . . We're so pitiful . . . Just misery webrought each other. . . . She'll be shut away from me. . . . I can't see her;I can't be her friend. It's got to be that way--it's got to be--"

And then again:

"We've been so happy, so very happy. . . . "

He rose to his feet and threw himself on the bed in an ecstasy ofsentiment, and then lay exhausted while he realized slowly that he hadbeen very drunk the night before, and that his head was spinning againwildly. He laughed, rose, and crossed again to Lethe. . . . 

At noon he ran into a crowd in the Biltmore bar, and the riot beganagain. He had a vague recollection afterward of discussing French poetrywith a British officer who was introduced to him as "Captain Corn, ofhis Majesty's Foot, " and he remembered attempting to recite "Clair deLune" at luncheon; then he slept in a big, soft chair until almostfive o'clock when another crowd found and woke him; there followed analcoholic dressing of several temperaments for the ordeal of dinner. They selected theatre tickets at Tyson's for a play that had afour-drink programme--a play with two monotonous voices, with turbid, gloomy scenes, and lighting effects that were hard to follow when hiseyes behaved so amazingly. He imagined afterward that it must have been"The Jest. ". . . 

. . . Then the Cocoanut Grove, where Amory slept again on a little balconyoutside. Out in Shanley's, Yonkers, he became almost logical, and by acareful control of the number of high-balls he drank, grew quite lucidand garrulous. He found that the party consisted of five men, two ofwhom he knew slightly; he became righteous about paying his share of theexpense and insisted in a loud voice on arranging everything then andthere to the amusement of the tables around him. . . . 

Some one mentioned that a famous cabaret star was at the next table, so Amory rose and, approaching gallantly, introduced himself. . . Thisinvolved him in an argument, first with her escort and then with theheadwaiter--Amory's attitude being a lofty and exaggerated courtesy. . . He consented, after being confronted with irrefutable logic, to beingled back to his own table. 

"Decided to commit suicide, " he announced suddenly. 

"When? Next year?"

"Now. To-morrow morning. Going to take a room at the Commodore, get intoa hot bath and open a vein. "

"He's getting morbid!"

"You need another rye, old boy!"

"We'll all talk it over to-morrow. "

But Amory was not to be dissuaded, from argument at least. 

"Did you ever get that way?" he demanded confidentially fortaccio. 

"Sure!"

"Often?"

"My chronic state. "

This provoked discussion. One man said that he got so depressedsometimes that he seriously considered it. Another agreed that there wasnothing to live for. "Captain Corn, " who had somehow rejoined the party, said that in his opinion it was when one's health was bad that one feltthat way most. Amory's suggestion was that they should each order aBronx, mix broken glass in it, and drink it off. To his relief no oneapplauded the idea, so having finished his high-ball, he balanced hischin in his hand and his elbow on the table--a most delicate, scarcelynoticeable sleeping position, he assured himself--and went into a deepstupor. . . . 

He was awakened by a woman clinging to him, a pretty woman, with brown, disarranged hair and dark blue eyes. 

"Take me home!" she cried. 

"Hello!" said Amory, blinking. 

"I like you, " she announced tenderly. 

"I like you too. "

He noticed that there was a noisy man in the background and that one ofhis party was arguing with him. 

"Fella I was with's a damn fool, " confided the blue-eyed woman. "I hatehim. I want to go home with you. "

"You drunk?" queried Amory with intense wisdom. 

She nodded coyly. 

"Go home with him, " he advised gravely. "He brought you. "

At this point the noisy man in the background broke away from hisdetainers and approached. 

"Say!" he said fiercely. "I brought this girl out here and you'rebutting in!"

Amory regarded him coldly, while the girl clung to him closer. 

"You let go that girl!" cried the noisy man. 

Amory tried to make his eyes threatening. 

"You go to hell!" he directed finally, and turned his attention to thegirl. 

"Love first sight, " he suggested. 

"I love you, " she breathed and nestled close to him. She _did_ havebeautiful eyes. 

Some one leaned over and spoke in Amory's ear. 

"That's just Margaret Diamond. She's drunk and this fellow here broughther. Better let her go. "

"Let him take care of her, then!" shouted Amory furiously. "I'm no W. Y. C. A. Worker, am I?--am I?"

"Let her go!"

"It's _her_ hanging on, damn it! Let her hang!"

The crowd around the table thickened. For an instant a brawl threatened, but a sleek waiter bent back Margaret Diamond's fingers until shereleased her hold on Amory, whereupon she slapped the waiter furiouslyin the face and flung her arms about her raging original escort. 

"Oh, Lord!" cried Amory. 

"Let's go!"

"Come on, the taxis are getting scarce!"

"Check, waiter. "

"C'mon, Amory. Your romance is over. "

Amory laughed. 

"You don't know how true you spoke. No idea. 'At's the whole trouble. "

 *****

AMORY ON THE LABOR QUESTION

Two mornings later he knocked at the president's door at Bascome andBarlow's advertising agency. 

"Come in!"

Amory entered unsteadily. 

"'Morning, Mr. Barlow. "

Mr. Barlow brought his glasses to the inspection and set his mouthslightly ajar that he might better listen. 

"Well, Mr. Blaine. We haven't seen you for several days. "

"No, " said Amory. "I'm quitting. "

"Well--well--this is--"

"I don't like it here. "

"I'm sorry. I thought our relations had been quite--ah--pleasant. Youseemed to be a hard worker--a little inclined perhaps to write fancycopy--"

"I just got tired of it, " interrupted Amory rudely. "It didn't matter adamn to me whether Harebell's flour was any better than any one else's. In fact, I never ate any of it. So I got tired of telling people aboutit--oh, I know I've been drinking--"

Mr. Barlow's face steeled by several ingots of expression. 

"You asked for a position--"

Amory waved him to silence. 

"And I think I was rottenly underpaid. Thirty-five dollars a week--lessthan a good carpenter. "

"You had just started. You'd never worked before, " said Mr. Barlowcoolly. 

"But it took about ten thousand dollars to educate me where I couldwrite your darned stuff for you. Anyway, as far as length of servicegoes, you've got stenographers here you've paid fifteen a week for fiveyears. "

"I'm not going to argue with you, sir, " said Mr. Barlow rising. 

"Neither am I. I just wanted to tell you I'm quitting. "

They stood for a moment looking at each other impassively and then Amoryturned and left the office. 

 *****

A LITTLE LULL

Four days after that he returned at last to the apartment. Tom wasengaged on a book review for The New Democracy on the staff of which hewas employed. They regarded each other for a moment in silence. 

"Well?"

"Well?"

"Good Lord, Amory, where'd you get the black eye--and the jaw?"

Amory laughed. 

"That's a mere nothing. "

He peeled off his coat and bared his shoulders. 

"Look here!"

Tom emitted a low whistle. 

"What hit you?"

Amory laughed again. 

"Oh, a lot of people. I got beaten up. Fact. " He slowly replaced hisshirt. "It was bound to come sooner or later and I wouldn't have missedit for anything. "

"Who was it?"

"Well, there were some waiters and a couple of sailors and a few straypedestrians, I guess. It's the strangest feeling. You ought to getbeaten up just for the experience of it. You fall down after a while andeverybody sort of slashes in at you before you hit the ground--then theykick you. "

Tom lighted a cigarette. 

"I spent a day chasing you all over town, Amory. But you always kept alittle ahead of me. I'd say you've been on some party. "

Amory tumbled into a chair and asked for a cigarette. 

"You sober now?" asked Tom quizzically. 

"Pretty sober. Why?"

"Well, Alec has left. His family had been after him to go home and live, so he--"

A spasm of pain shook Amory. 

"Too bad. "

"Yes, it is too bad. We'll have to get some one else if we're going tostay here. The rent's going up. "

"Sure. Get anybody. I'll leave it to you, Tom. "

Amory walked into his bedroom. The first thing that met his glance wasa photograph of Rosalind that he had intended to have framed, proppedup against a mirror on his dresser. He looked at it unmoved. Afterthe vivid mental pictures of her that were his portion at present, theportrait was curiously unreal. He went back into the study. 

"Got a cardboard box?"

"No, " answered Tom, puzzled. "Why should I have? Oh, yes--there may beone in Alec's room. "

Eventually Amory found what he was looking for and, returning to hisdresser, opened a drawer full of letters, notes, part of a chain, two little handkerchiefs, and some snap-shots. As he transferred themcarefully to the box his mind wandered to some place in a book wherethe hero, after preserving for a year a cake of his lost love's soap, finally washed his hands with it. He laughed and began to hum "Afteryou've gone" . . . Ceased abruptly. . . 

The string broke twice, and then he managed to secure it, droppedthe package into the bottom of his trunk, and having slammed the lidreturned to the study. 

"Going out?" Tom's voice held an undertone of anxiety. 

"Uh-huh. "

"Where?"

"Couldn't say, old keed. "

"Let's have dinner together. "

"Sorry. I told Sukey Brett I'd eat with him. "

"Oh. "

"By-by. "

Amory crossed the street and had a high-ball; then he walked toWashington Square and found a top seat on a bus. He disembarked atForty-third Street and strolled to the Biltmore bar. 

"Hi, Amory!"

"What'll you have?"

"Yo-ho! Waiter!"

 *****

TEMPERATURE NORMAL

The advent of prohibition with the "thirsty-first" put a sudden stop tothe submerging of Amory's sorrows, and when he awoke one morning to findthat the old bar-to-bar days were over, he had neither remorse for thepast three weeks nor regret that their repetition was impossible. He hadtaken the most violent, if the weakest, method to shield himselffrom the stabs of memory, and while it was not a course he wouldhave prescribed for others, he found in the end that it had done itsbusiness: he was over the first flush of pain. 

Don't misunderstand! Amory had loved Rosalind as he would never loveanother living person. She had taken the first flush of his youth andbrought from his unplumbed depths tenderness that had surprisedhim, gentleness and unselfishness that he had never given to anothercreature. He had later love-affairs, but of a different sort: in thosehe went back to that, perhaps, more typical frame of mind, in which thegirl became the mirror of a mood in him. Rosalind had drawn out what wasmore than passionate admiration; he had a deep, undying affection forRosalind. 

But there had been, near the end, so much dramatic tragedy, culminatingin the arabesque nightmare of his three weeks' spree, that he wasemotionally worn out. The people and surroundings that he remembered asbeing cool or delicately artificial, seemed to promise him a refuge. Hewrote a cynical story which featured his father's funeral and despatchedit to a magazine, receiving in return a check for sixty dollars and arequest for more of the same tone. This tickled his vanity, but inspiredhim to no further effort. 

He read enormously. He was puzzled and depressed by "A Portrait of theArtist as a Young Man"; intensely interested by "Joan and Peter" and"The Undying Fire, " and rather surprised by his discovery through acritic named Mencken of several excellent American novels: "Vandoverand the Brute, " "The Damnation of Theron Ware, " and "Jennie Gerhardt. "Mackenzie, Chesterton, Galsworthy, Bennett, had sunk in hisappreciation from sagacious, life-saturated geniuses to merely divertingcontemporaries. Shaw's aloof clarity and brilliant consistency and thegloriously intoxicated efforts of H. G. Wells to fit the key of romanticsymmetry into the elusive lock of truth, alone won his rapt attention. 

He wanted to see Monsignor Darcy, to whom he had written when he landed, but he had not heard from him; besides he knew that a visit to Monsignorwould entail the story of Rosalind, and the thought of repeating itturned him cold with horror. 

In his search for cool people he remembered Mrs. Lawrence, a veryintelligent, very dignified lady, a convert to the church, and a greatdevotee of Monsignor's. 

He called her on the 'phone one day. Yes, she remembered him perfectly;no, Monsignor wasn't in town, was in Boston she thought; he'd promisedto come to dinner when he returned. Couldn't Amory take luncheon withher?

"I thought I'd better catch up, Mrs. Lawrence, " he said ratherambiguously when he arrived. 

"Monsignor was here just last week, " said Mrs. Lawrence regretfully. "Hewas very anxious to see you, but he'd left your address at home. "

"Did he think I'd plunged into Bolshevism?" asked Amory, interested. 

"Oh, he's having a frightful time. "

"Why?"

"About the Irish Republic. He thinks it lacks dignity. "

"So?"

"He went to Boston when the Irish President arrived and he was greatlydistressed because the receiving committee, when they rode in anautomobile, _would_ put their arms around the President. "

"I don't blame him. "

"Well, what impressed you more than anything while you were in the army?You look a great deal older. "

"That's from another, more disastrous battle, " he answered, smiling inspite of himself. "But the army--let me see--well, I discovered thatphysical courage depends to a great extent on the physical shape a manis in. I found that I was as brave as the next man--it used to worry mebefore. "

"What else?"

"Well, the idea that men can stand anything if they get used to it, andthe fact that I got a high mark in the psychological examination. "

Mrs. Lawrence laughed. Amory was finding it a great relief to be in thiscool house on Riverside Drive, away from more condensed New York andthe sense of people expelling great quantities of breath into alittle space. Mrs. Lawrence reminded him vaguely of Beatrice, notin temperament, but in her perfect grace and dignity. The house, itsfurnishings, the manner in which dinner was served, were in immensecontrast to what he had met in the great places on Long Island, wherethe servants were so obtrusive that they had positively to be bumpedout of the way, or even in the houses of more conservative "Union Club"families. He wondered if this air of symmetrical restraint, this grace, which he felt was continental, was distilled through Mrs. Lawrence's NewEngland ancestry or acquired in long residence in Italy and Spain. 

Two glasses of sauterne at luncheon loosened his tongue, and he talked, with what he felt was something of his old charm, of religion andliterature and the menacing phenomena of the social order. Mrs. Lawrencewas ostensibly pleased with him, and her interest was especially in hismind; he wanted people to like his mind again--after a while it might besuch a nice place in which to live. 

"Monsignor Darcy still thinks that you're his reincarnation, that yourfaith will eventually clarify. "

"Perhaps, " he assented. "I'm rather pagan at present. It's just thatreligion doesn't seem to have the slightest bearing on life at my age. "

When he left her house he walked down Riverside Drive with a feelingof satisfaction. It was amusing to discuss again such subjects as thisyoung poet, Stephen Vincent Benet, or the Irish Republic. Betweenthe rancid accusations of Edward Carson and Justice Cohalan he hadcompletely tired of the Irish question; yet there had been a time whenhis own Celtic traits were pillars of his personal philosophy. 

There seemed suddenly to be much left in life, if only this revivalof old interests did not mean that he was backing away from itagain--backing away from life itself. 

 *****

RESTLESSNESS

"I'm tres old and tres bored, Tom, " said Amory one day, stretchinghimself at ease in the comfortable window-seat. He always felt mostnatural in a recumbent position. 

"You used to be entertaining before you started to write, " he continued. "Now you save any idea that you think would do to print. "

Existence had settled back to an ambitionless normality. They haddecided that with economy they could still afford the apartment, whichTom, with the domesticity of an elderly cat, had grown fond of. The oldEnglish hunting prints on the wall were Tom's, and the large tapestry bycourtesy, a relic of decadent days in college, and the great profusionof orphaned candlesticks and the carved Louis XV chair in which no onecould sit more than a minute without acute spinal disorders--Tomclaimed that this was because one was sitting in the lap of Montespan'swraith--at any rate, it was Tom's furniture that decided them to stay. 

They went out very little: to an occasional play, or to dinner at theRitz or the Princeton Club. With prohibition the great rendezvous hadreceived their death wounds; no longer could one wander to the Biltmorebar at twelve or five and find congenial spirits, and both Tom and Amoryhad outgrown the passion for dancing with mid-Western or New Jerseydebbies at the Club-de-Vingt (surnamed the "Club de Gink") or the PlazaRose Room--besides even that required several cocktails "to come down tothe intellectual level of the women present, " as Amory had once put itto a horrified matron. 

Amory had lately received several alarming letters from Mr. Barton--theLake Geneva house was too large to be easily rented; the best rentobtainable at present would serve this year to little more than pay forthe taxes and necessary improvements; in fact, the lawyer suggestedthat the whole property was simply a white elephant on Amory's hands. Nevertheless, even though it might not yield a cent for the next threeyears, Amory decided with a vague sentimentality that for the present, at any rate, he would not sell the house. 

This particular day on which he announced his ennui to Tom had beenquite typical. He had risen at noon, lunched with Mrs. Lawrence, andthen ridden abstractedly homeward atop one of his beloved buses. 

"Why shouldn't you be bored, " yawned Tom. "Isn't that the conventionalframe of mind for the young man of your age and condition?"

"Yes, " said Amory speculatively, "but I'm more than bored; I amrestless. "

"Love and war did for you. "

"Well, " Amory considered, "I'm not sure that the war itself had anygreat effect on either you or me--but it certainly ruined the oldbackgrounds, sort of killed individualism out of our generation. "

Tom looked up in surprise. 

"Yes it did, " insisted Amory. "I'm not sure it didn't kill it out of thewhole world. Oh, Lord, what a pleasure it used to be to dream I might bea really great dictator or writer or religious or political leader--andnow even a Leonardo da Vinci or Lorenzo de Medici couldn't be a realold-fashioned bolt in the world. Life is too huge and complex. The worldis so overgrown that it can't lift its own fingers, and I was planningto be such an important finger--"

"I don't agree with you, " Tom interrupted. "There never were men placedin such egotistic positions since--oh, since the French Revolution. "

Amory disagreed violently. 

"You're mistaking this period when every nut is an individualist fora period of individualism. Wilson has only been powerful when he hasrepresented; he's had to compromise over and over again. Just as soonas Trotsky and Lenin take a definite, consistent stand they'll becomemerely two-minute figures like Kerensky. Even Foch hasn't halfthe significance of Stonewall Jackson. War used to be the mostindividualistic pursuit of man, and yet the popular heroes of the warhad neither authority nor responsibility: Guynemer and Sergeant York. How could a schoolboy make a hero of Pershing? A big man has no timereally to do anything but just sit and be big. "

"Then you don't think there will be any more permanent world heroes?"

"Yes--in history--not in life. Carlyle would have difficulty gettingmaterial for a new chapter on 'The Hero as a Big Man. '"

"Go on. I'm a good listener to-day. "

"People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But weno sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer orphilosopher--a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, thanthe cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can standprominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People getsick of hearing the same name over and over. "

"Then you blame it on the press?"

"Absolutely. Look at you; you're on The New Democracy, considered themost brilliant weekly in the country, read by the men who do things andall that. What's your business? Why, to be as clever, as interesting, and as brilliantly cynical as possible about every man, doctrine, book, or policy that is assigned you to deal with. The more strong lights, themore spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money theypay you, the more the people buy the issue. You, Tom d'Invilliers, ablighted Shelley, changing, shifting, clever, unscrupulous, representthe critical consciousness of the race--Oh, don't protest, I know thestuff. I used to write book reviews in college; I considered it raresport to refer to the latest honest, conscientious effort to propound atheory or a remedy as a 'welcome addition to our light summer reading. 'Come on now, admit it. "

Tom laughed, and Amory continued triumphantly. 

"We _want_ to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try tobelieve in their statesmen, but they _can't_. Too many voices, too muchscattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the caseof newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularlygrasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius canown a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands oftired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living toswallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buyshis politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a newpolitical ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: moreconfusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, theirtempering, their distillation, the reaction against them--"

He paused only to get his breath. 

"And that is why I have sworn not to put pen to paper until my ideaseither clarify or depart entirely; I have quite enough sins on my soulwithout putting dangerous, shallow epigrams into people's heads; I mightcause a poor, inoffensive capitalist to have a vulgar liaison witha bomb, or get some innocent little Bolshevik tangled up with amachine-gun bullet--"

Tom was growing restless under this lampooning of his connection withThe New Democracy. 

"What's all this got to do with your being bored?"

Amory considered that it had much to do with it. 

"How'll I fit in?" he demanded. "What am I for? To propagate the race?According to the American novels we are led to believe that the 'healthyAmerican boy' from nineteen to twenty-five is an entirely sexlessanimal. As a matter of fact, the healthier he is the less that's true. The only alternative to letting it get you is some violent interest. Well, the war is over; I believe too much in the responsibilities ofauthorship to write just now; and business, well, business speaks foritself. It has no connection with anything in the world that I'veever been interested in, except a slim, utilitarian connection witheconomics. What I'd see of it, lost in a clerkship, for the next andbest ten years of my life would have the intellectual content of anindustrial movie. "

"Try fiction, " suggested Tom. 

"Trouble is I get distracted when I start to write stories--get afraidI'm doing it instead of living--get thinking maybe life is waiting forme in the Japanese gardens at the Ritz or at Atlantic City or on thelower East Side. 

"Anyway, " he continued, "I haven't the vital urge. I wanted to be aregular human being but the girl couldn't see it that way. "

"You'll find another. "

"God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl hadbeen worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl reallyworth having won't wait for anybody. If I thought there'd be another I'dlose my remaining faith in human nature. Maybe I'll play--but Rosalindwas the only girl in the wide world that could have held me. "

"Well, " yawned Tom, "I've played confidant a good hour by the clock. Still, I'm glad to see you're beginning to have violent views again onsomething. "

"I am, " agreed Amory reluctantly. "Yet when I see a happy family itmakes me sick at my stomach--"

"Happy families try to make people feel that way, " said Tom cynically. 

 *****

TOM THE CENSOR

There were days when Amory listened. These were when Tom, wreathed insmoke, indulged in the slaughter of American literature. Words failedhim. 

"Fifty thousand dollars a year, " he would cry. "My God! Look at them, look at them--Edna Ferber, Gouverneur Morris, Fanny Hurst, Mary RobertsRinehart--not producing among 'em one story or novel that will last tenyears. This man Cobb--I don't tink he's either clever or amusing--andwhat's more, I don't think very many people do, except the editors. He'sjust groggy with advertising. And--oh Harold Bell Wright oh Zane Grey--"

"They try. "

"No, they don't even try. Some of them _can_ write, but they won't sitdown and do one honest novel. Most of them _can't_ write, I'll admit. I believe Rupert Hughes tries to give a real, comprehensive picture ofAmerican life, but his style and perspective are barbarous. Ernest Pooleand Dorothy Canfield try but they're hindered by their absolute lackof any sense of humor; but at least they crowd their work instead ofspreading it thin. Every author ought to write every book as if he weregoing to be beheaded the day he finished it. "

"Is that double entente?"

"Don't slow me up! Now there's a few of 'em that seem to have somecultural background, some intelligence and a good deal of literaryfelicity but they just simply won't write honestly; they'd all claimthere was no public for good stuff. Then why the devil is it that Wells, Conrad, Galsworthy, Shaw, Bennett, and the rest depend on America forover half their sales?"

"How does little Tommy like the poets?"

Tom was overcome. He dropped his arms until they swung loosely besidethe chair and emitted faint grunts. 

"I'm writing a satire on 'em now, calling it 'Boston Bards and HearstReviewers. '"

"Let's hear it, " said Amory eagerly. 

"I've only got the last few lines done. "

"That's very modern. Let's hear 'em, if they're funny. "

Tom produced a folded paper from his pocket and read aloud, pausing atintervals so that Amory could see that it was free verse:

 "So Walter Arensberg, Alfred Kreymborg, Carl Sandburg, Louis Untermeyer, Eunice Tietjens, Clara Shanafelt, James Oppenheim, Maxwell Bodenheim, Richard Glaenzer, Scharmel Iris, Conrad Aiken, I place your names here So that you may live If only as names, Sinuous, mauve-colored names, In the Juvenalia Of my collected editions. "

Amory roared. 

"You win the iron pansy. I'll buy you a meal on the arrogance of thelast two lines. "

Amory did not entirely agree with Tom's sweeping damnation ofAmerican novelists and poets. He enjoyed both Vachel Lindsay and BoothTarkington, and admired the conscientious, if slender, artistry of EdgarLee Masters. 

"What I hate is this idiotic drivel about 'I am God--I am man--I ridethe winds--I look through the smoke--I am the life sense. '"

"It's ghastly!"

"And I wish American novelists would give up trying to make businessromantically interesting. Nobody wants to read about it, unless it'scrooked business. If it was an entertaining subject they'd buy the lifeof James J. Hill and not one of these long office tragedies that harpalong on the significance of smoke--"

"And gloom, " said Tom. "That's another favorite, though I'll admit theRussians have the monopoly. Our specialty is stories about little girlswho break their spines and get adopted by grouchy old men because theysmile so much. You'd think we were a race of cheerful cripples and thatthe common end of the Russian peasant was suicide--"

"Six o'clock, " said Amory, glancing at his wrist-watch. "I'll buy youa grea' big dinner on the strength of the Juvenalia of your collectededitions. "

 *****

LOOKING BACKWARD

July sweltered out with a last hot week, and Amory in another surge ofunrest realized that it was just five months since he and Rosalind hadmet. Yet it was already hard for him to visualize the heart-whole boywho had stepped off the transport, passionately desiring the adventureof life. One night while the heat, overpowering and enervating, pouredinto the windows of his room he struggled for several hours in a vagueeffort to immortalize the poignancy of that time. 

 The February streets, wind-washed by night, blow full of strange half-intermittent damps, bearing on wasted walks in shining sight wet snow plashed into gleams under the lamps, like golden oil from some divine machine, in an hour of thaw and stars. 

 Strange damps--full of the eyes of many men, crowded with life borne in upon a lull. . . . Oh, I was young, for I could turn again to you, most finite and most beautiful, and taste the stuff of half-remembered dreams, sweet and new on your mouth. 

 . . . There was a tanging in the midnight air--silence was dead and sound not yet awoken--Life cracked like ice!--one brilliant note and there, radiant and pale, you stood. . . And spring had broken. (The icicles were short upon the roofs and the changeling city swooned. )

 Our thoughts were frosty mist along the eaves; our two ghosts kissed, high on the long, mazed wires--eerie half-laughter echoes here and leaves only a fatuous sigh for young desires; regret has followed after things she loved, leaving the great husk. 

 *****

ANOTHER ENDING

In mid-August came a letter from Monsignor Darcy, who had evidently juststumbled on his address:

MY DEAR BOY:--

Your last letter was quite enough to make me worry about you. It wasnot a bit like yourself. Reading between the lines I should imagine thatyour engagement to this girl is making you rather unhappy, and I see youhave lost all the feeling of romance that you had before the war. Youmake a great mistake if you think you can be romantic without religion. Sometimes I think that with both of us the secret of success, when wefind it, is the mystical element in us: something flows into us thatenlarges our personalities, and when it ebbs out our personalitiesshrink; I should call your last two letters rather shrivelled. Beware oflosing yourself in the personality of another being, man or woman. 

His Eminence Cardinal O'Neill and the Bishop of Boston are staying withme at present, so it is hard for me to get a moment to write, but I wishyou would come up here later if only for a week-end. I go to Washingtonthis week. 

What I shall do in the future is hanging in the balance. Absolutelybetween ourselves I should not be surprised to see the red hat of acardinal descend upon my unworthy head within the next eight months. Inany event, I should like to have a house in New York or Washington whereyou could drop in for week-ends. 

Amory, I'm very glad we're both alive; this war could easily have beenthe end of a brilliant family. But in regard to matrimony, you are nowat the most dangerous period of your life. You might marry in haste andrepent at leisure, but I think you won't. From what you write meabout the present calamitous state of your finances, what you want isnaturally impossible. However, if I judge you by the means I usuallychoose, I should say that there will be something of an emotional crisiswithin the next year. 

Do write me. I feel annoyingly out of date on you. 

 With greatest affection, THAYER DARCY. 

Within a week after the receipt of this letter their little householdfell precipitously to pieces. The immediate cause was the serious andprobably chronic illness of Tom's mother. So they stored the furniture, gave instructions to sublet and shook hands gloomily in the PennsylvaniaStation. Amory and Tom seemed always to be saying good-by. 

Feeling very much alone, Amory yielded to an impulse and set offsouthward, intending to join Monsignor in Washington. They missedconnections by two hours, and, deciding to spend a few days with anancient, remembered uncle, Amory journeyed up through the luxuriantfields of Maryland into Ramilly County. But instead of two days his staylasted from mid-August nearly through September, for in Maryland he metEleanor. 

CHAPTER 3. Young Irony

For years afterward when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still tohear the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills into theplaces beside his heart. The night when they rode up the slope andwatched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost a further partof him that nothing could restore; and when he lost it he lost also thepower of regretting it. Eleanor was, say, the last time that evil creptclose to Amory under the mask of beauty, the last weird mystery thatheld him with wild fascination and pounded his soul to flakes. 

With her his imagination ran riot and that is why they rode to thehighest hill and watched an evil moon ride high, for they knew then thatthey could see the devil in each other. But Eleanor--did Amory dreamher? Afterward their ghosts played, yet both of them hoped from theirsouls never to meet. Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes that drewhim or the mirror of himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity ofher mind? She will have no other adventure like Amory, and if she readsthis she will say:

"And Amory will have no other adventure like me. "

Nor will she sigh, any more than he would sigh. 

Eleanor tried to put it on paper once:

 "The fading things we only know We'll have forgotten. . . Put away. . . Desires that melted with the snow, And dreams begotten This to-day: The sudden dawns we laughed to greet, That all could see, that none could share, Will be but dawns. . . And if we meet We shall not care. 

 Dear. . . Not one tear will rise for this. . . A little while hence No regret Will stir for a remembered kiss-- Not even silence, When we've met, Will give old ghosts a waste to roam, Or stir the surface of the sea. . . If gray shapes drift beneath the foam We shall not see. "

They quarrelled dangerously because Amory maintained that _sea_ and_see_ couldn't possibly be used as a rhyme. And then Eleanor had part ofanother verse that she couldn't find a beginning for:

 ". . . But wisdom passes. . . Still the years Will feed us wisdom. . . . Age will go Back to the old-- For all our tears We shall not know. "

Eleanor hated Maryland passionately. She belonged to the oldest of theold families of Ramilly County and lived in a big, gloomy house with hergrandfather. She had been born and brought up in France. . . . I see I amstarting wrong. Let me begin again. 

Amory was bored, as he usually was in the country. He used to go forfar walks by himself--and wander along reciting "Ulalume" to thecorn-fields, and congratulating Poe for drinking himself to death inthat atmosphere of smiling complacency. One afternoon he had strolledfor several miles along a road that was new to him, and then through awood on bad advice from a colored woman. . . Losing himself entirely. Apassing storm decided to break out, and to his great impatience thesky grew black as pitch and the rain began to splatter down through thetrees, become suddenly furtive and ghostly. Thunder rolled with menacingcrashes up the valley and scattered through the woods in intermittentbatteries. He stumbled blindly on, hunting for a way out, and finally, through webs of twisted branches, caught sight of a rift in the treeswhere the unbroken lightning showed open country. He rushed to the edgeof the woods and then hesitated whether or not to cross the fields andtry to reach the shelter of the little house marked by a light far downthe valley. It was only half past five, but he could see scarcely tensteps before him, except when the lightning made everything vivid andgrotesque for great sweeps around. 

Suddenly a strange sound fell on his ears. It was a song, in a low, husky voice, a girl's voice, and whoever was singing was very closeto him. A year before he might have laughed, or trembled; but in hisrestless mood he only stood and listened while the words sank into hisconsciousness:

 "Les sanglots longs Des violons De l'automne Blessent mon coeur D'une langueur Monotone. "

The lightning split the sky, but the song went on without a quaver. Thegirl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed to come vaguelyfrom a haystack about twenty feet in front of him. 

Then it ceased: ceased and began again in a weird chant that soared andhung and fell and blended with the rain:

 "Tout suffocant Et bleme quand Sonne l'heure Je me souviens Des jours anciens Et je pleure. . . . "

"Who the devil is there in Ramilly County, " muttered Amory aloud, "whowould deliver Verlaine in an extemporaneous tune to a soaking haystack?"

"Somebody's there!" cried the voice unalarmed. "Who are you?--Manfred, St. Christopher, or Queen Victoria?"

"I'm Don Juan!" Amory shouted on impulse, raising his voice above thenoise of the rain and the wind. 

A delighted shriek came from the haystack. 

"I know who you are--you're the blond boy that likes 'Ulalume'--Irecognize your voice. "

"How do I get up?" he cried from the foot of the haystack, whither hehad arrived, dripping wet. A head appeared over the edge--it was so darkthat Amory could just make out a patch of damp hair and two eyes thatgleamed like a cat's. 

"Run back!" came the voice, "and jump and I'll catch your hand--no, notthere--on the other side. "

He followed directions and as he sprawled up the side, knee-deep in hay, a small, white hand reached out, gripped his, and helped him onto thetop. 

"Here you are, Juan, " cried she of the damp hair. "Do you mind if I dropthe Don?"

"You've got a thumb like mine!" he exclaimed. 

"And you're holding my hand, which is dangerous without seeing my face. "He dropped it quickly. 

As if in answer to his prayers came a flash of lightning and he lookedeagerly at her who stood beside him on the soggy haystack, ten feetabove the ground. But she had covered her face and he saw nothing but aslender figure, dark, damp, bobbed hair, and the small white hands withthe thumbs that bent back like his. 

"Sit down, " she suggested politely, as the dark closed in on them. "Ifyou'll sit opposite me in this hollow you can have half of the raincoat, which I was using as a water-proof tent until you so rudely interruptedme. "

"I was asked, " Amory said joyfully; "you asked me--you know you did. "

"Don Juan always manages that, " she said, laughing, "but I shan't callyou that any more, because you've got reddish hair. Instead you canrecite 'Ulalume' and I'll be Psyche, your soul. "

Amory flushed, happily invisible under the curtain of wind and rain. They were sitting opposite each other in a slight hollow in the hay withthe raincoat spread over most of them, and the rain doing for the rest. Amory was trying desperately to see Psyche, but the lightning refused toflash again, and he waited impatiently. Good Lord! supposing she wasn'tbeautiful--supposing she was forty and pedantic--heavens! Suppose, only suppose, she was mad. But he knew the last was unworthy. Here hadProvidence sent a girl to amuse him just as it sent Benvenuto Cellinimen to murder, and he was wondering if she was mad, just because sheexactly filled his mood. 

"I'm not, " she said. 

"Not what?"

"Not mad. I didn't think you were mad when I first saw you, so it isn'tfair that you should think so of me. "

"How on earth--"

As long as they knew each other Eleanor and Amory could be "on asubject" and stop talking with the definite thought of it in theirheads, yet ten minutes later speak aloud and find that their minds hadfollowed the same channels and led them each to a parallel idea, an ideathat others would have found absolutely unconnected with the first. 

"Tell me, " he demanded, leaning forward eagerly, "how do you know about'Ulalume'--how did you know the color of my hair? What's your name? Whatwere you doing here? Tell me all at once!"

Suddenly the lightning flashed in with a leap of overreaching light andhe saw Eleanor, and looked for the first time into those eyes of hers. Oh, she was magnificent--pale skin, the color of marble in starlight, slender brows, and eyes that glittered green as emeralds in the blindingglare. She was a witch, of perhaps nineteen, he judged, alert and dreamyand with the tell-tale white line over her upper lip that was a weaknessand a delight. He sank back with a gasp against the wall of hay. 

"Now you've seen me, " she said calmly, "and I suppose you're about tosay that my green eyes are burning into your brain. "

"What color is your hair?" he asked intently. "It's bobbed, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's bobbed. I don't know what color it is, " she answered, musing, "so many men have asked me. It's medium, I suppose--No one ever lookslong at my hair. I've got beautiful eyes, though, haven't I. I don'tcare what you say, I have beautiful eyes. "

"Answer my question, Madeline. "

"Don't remember them all--besides my name isn't Madeline, it's Eleanor. "

"I might have guessed it. You _look_ like Eleanor--you have that Eleanorlook. You know what I mean. "

There was a silence as they listened to the rain. 

"It's going down my neck, fellow lunatic, " she offered finally. 

"Answer my questions. "

"Well--name of Savage, Eleanor; live in big old house mile down road;nearest living relation to be notified, grandfather--Ramilly Savage;height, five feet four inches; number on watch-case, 3077 W; nose, delicate aquiline; temperament, uncanny--"

"And me, " Amory interrupted, "where did you see me?"

"Oh, you're one of _those_ men, " she answered haughtily, "must lugold self into conversation. Well, my boy, I was behind a hedge sunningmyself one day last week, and along comes a man saying in a pleasant, conceited way of talking:

 "'And now when the night was senescent' (says he) 'And the star dials pointed to morn At the end of the path a liquescent' (says he) 'And nebulous lustre was born. '

"So I poked my eyes up over the hedge, but you had started to run, forsome unknown reason, and so I saw but the back of your beautiful head. 'Oh!' says I, 'there's a man for whom many of us might sigh, ' and Icontinued in my best Irish--"

"All right, " Amory interrupted. "Now go back to yourself. "

"Well, I will. I'm one of those people who go through the world givingother people thrills, but getting few myself except those I read intomen on such nights as these. I have the social courage to go on thestage, but not the energy; I haven't the patience to write books; and Inever met a man I'd marry. However, I'm only eighteen. "

The storm was dying down softly and only the wind kept up its ghostlysurge and made the stack lean and gravely settle from side to side. Amory was in a trance. He felt that every moment was precious. He hadnever met a girl like this before--she would never seem quite the sameagain. He didn't at all feel like a character in a play, the appropriatefeeling in an unconventional situation--instead, he had a sense ofcoming home. 

"I have just made a great decision, " said Eleanor after another pause, "and that is why I'm here, to answer another of your questions. I havejust decided that I don't believe in immortality. "

"Really! how banal!"

"Frightfully so, " she answered, "but depressing with a stale, sicklydepression, nevertheless. I came out here to get wet--like a wet hen;wet hens always have great clarity of mind, " she concluded. 

"Go on, " Amory said politely. 

"Well--I'm not afraid of the dark, so I put on my slicker and rubberboots and came out. You see I was always afraid, before, to say I didn'tbelieve in God--because the lightning might strike me--but here I am andit hasn't, of course, but the main point is that this time I wasn't anymore afraid of it than I had been when I was a Christian Scientist, likeI was last year. So now I know I'm a materialist and I was fraternizingwith the hay when you came out and stood by the woods, scared to death. "

"Why, you little wretch--" cried Amory indignantly. "Scared of what?"

"_Yourself!_" she shouted, and he jumped. She clapped her hands andlaughed. "See--see! Conscience--kill it like me! Eleanor Savage, materiologist--no jumping, no starting, come early--"

"But I _have_ to have a soul, " he objected. "I can't be rational--and Iwon't be molecular. "

She leaned toward him, her burning eyes never leaving his own andwhispered with a sort of romantic finality:

"I thought so, Juan, I feared so--you're sentimental. You're not likeme. I'm a romantic little materialist. "

"I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, isthat the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romanticperson has a desperate confidence that they won't. " (This was an ancientdistinction of Amory's. )

"Epigrams. I'm going home, " she said sadly. "Let's get off the haystackand walk to the cross-roads. "

They slowly descended from their perch. She would not let him help herdown and motioning him away arrived in a graceful lump in the soft mudwhere she sat for an instant, laughing at herself. Then she jumped toher feet and slipped her hand into his, and they tiptoed across thefields, jumping and swinging from dry spot to dry spot. A transcendentdelight seemed to sparkle in every pool of water, for the moon had risenand the storm had scurried away into western Maryland. When Eleanor'sarm touched his he felt his hands grow cold with deadly fear lest heshould lose the shadow brush with which his imagination was paintingwonders of her. He watched her from the corners of his eyes as ever hedid when he walked with her--she was a feast and a folly and he wishedit had been his destiny to sit forever on a haystack and see lifethrough her green eyes. His paganism soared that night and when shefaded out like a gray ghost down the road, a deep singing came outof the fields and filled his way homeward. All night the summer mothsflitted in and out of Amory's window; all night large looming soundsswayed in mystic revery through the silver grain--and he lay awake inthe clear darkness. 

 *****

SEPTEMBER

Amory selected a blade of grass and nibbled at it scientifically. 

"I never fall in love in August or September, " he proffered. 

"When then?"

"Christmas or Easter. I'm a liturgist. "

"Easter!" She turned up her nose. "Huh! Spring in corsets!"

"Easter _would_ bore spring, wouldn't she? Easter has her hair braided, wears a tailored suit. "

 "Bind on thy sandals, oh, thou most fleet. Over the splendor and speed of thy feet--"

quoted Eleanor softly, and then added: "I suppose Hallowe'en is a betterday for autumn than Thanksgiving. "

"Much better--and Christmas eve does very well for winter, butsummer. . . "

"Summer has no day, " she said. "We can't possibly have a summer love. Somany people have tried that the name's become proverbial. Summer isonly the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of thewarm balmy nights I dream of in April. It's a sad season of life withoutgrowth. . . . It has no day. "

"Fourth of July, " Amory suggested facetiously. 

"Don't be funny!" she said, raking him with her eyes. 

"Well, what could fulfil the promise of spring?"

She thought a moment. 

"Oh, I suppose heaven would, if there was one, " she said finally, "asort of pagan heaven--you ought to be a materialist, " she continuedirrelevantly. 

"Why?"

"Because you look a good deal like the pictures of Rupert Brooke. "

To some extent Amory tried to play Rupert Brooke as long as he knewEleanor. What he said, his attitude toward life, toward her, towardhimself, were all reflexes of the dead Englishman's literary moods. Often she sat in the grass, a lazy wind playing with her short hair, her voice husky as she ran up and down the scale from Grantchester toWaikiki. There was something most passionate in Eleanor's reading aloud. They seemed nearer, not only mentally, but physically, when they read, than when she was in his arms, and this was often, for they fell halfinto love almost from the first. Yet was Amory capable of love now?He could, as always, run through the emotions in a half hour, but evenwhile they revelled in their imaginations, he knew that neither of themcould care as he had cared once before--I suppose that was why theyturned to Brooke, and Swinburne, and Shelley. Their chance was to makeeverything fine and finished and rich and imaginative; they must bendtiny golden tentacles from his imagination to hers, that would take theplace of the great, deep love that was never so near, yet never so muchof a dream. 

One poem they read over and over; Swinburne's "Triumph of Time, " andfour lines of it rang in his memory afterward on warm nights when he sawthe fireflies among dusky tree trunks and heard the low drone of manyfrogs. Then Eleanor seemed to come out of the night and stand by him, and he heard her throaty voice, with its tone of a fleecy-headed drum, repeating:

 "Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn; Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed foreborne?"

They were formally introduced two days later, and his aunt told him herhistory. The Ramillys were two: old Mr. Ramilly and his granddaughter, Eleanor. She had lived in France with a restless mother whom Amoryimagined to have been very like his own, on whose death she had come toAmerica, to live in Maryland. She had gone to Baltimore first to staywith a bachelor uncle, and there she insisted on being a debutante atthe age of seventeen. She had a wild winter and arrived in thecountry in March, having quarrelled frantically with all her Baltimorerelatives, and shocked them into fiery protest. A rather fast crowdhad come out, who drank cocktails in limousines and were promiscuouslycondescending and patronizing toward older people, and Eleanor with anesprit that hinted strongly of the boulevards, led many innocentsstill redolent of St. Timothy's and Farmington, into paths of Bohemiannaughtiness. When the story came to her uncle, a forgetful cavalier ofa more hypocritical era, there was a scene, from which Eleanor emerged, subdued but rebellious and indignant, to seek haven with her grandfatherwho hovered in the country on the near side of senility. That's as faras her story went; she told him the rest herself, but that was later. 

Often they swam and as Amory floated lazily in the water he shut hismind to all thoughts except those of hazy soap-bubble lands where thesun splattered through wind-drunk trees. How could any one possiblythink or worry, or do anything except splash and dive and loll thereon the edge of time while the flower months failed. Let the days moveover--sadness and memory and pain recurred outside, and here, once more, before he went on to meet them he wanted to drift and be young. 

There were days when Amory resented that life had changed from an evenprogress along a road stretching ever in sight, with the scenery mergingand blending, into a succession of quick, unrelated scenes--two years ofsweat and blood, that sudden absurd instinct for paternity that Rosalindhad stirred; the half-sensual, half-neurotic quality of this autumn withEleanor. He felt that it would take all time, more than he could everspare, to glue these strange cumbersome pictures into the scrap-book ofhis life. It was all like a banquet where he sat for this half-hour ofhis youth and tried to enjoy brilliant epicurean courses. 

Dimly he promised himself a time where all should be welded together. For months it seemed that he had alternated between being borne along astream of love or fascination, or left in an eddy, and in the eddieshe had not desired to think, rather to be picked up on a wave's top andswept along again. 

"The despairing, dying autumn and our love--how well they harmonize!"said Eleanor sadly one day as they lay dripping by the water. 

"The Indian summer of our hearts--" he ceased. 

"Tell me, " she said finally, "was she light or dark?"

"Light. "

"Was she more beautiful than I am?"

"I don't know, " said Amory shortly. 

One night they walked while the moon rose and poured a great burden ofglory over the garden until it seemed fairyland with Amory and Eleanor, dim phantasmal shapes, expressing eternal beauty in curious elfin lovemoods. Then they turned out of the moonlight into the trellised darknessof a vine-hung pagoda, where there were scents so plaintive as to benearly musical. 

"Light a match, " she whispered. "I want to see you. "

Scratch! Flare!

The night and the scarred trees were like scenery in a play, and to bethere with Eleanor, shadowy and unreal, seemed somehow oddly familiar. Amory thought how it was only the past that ever seemed strange andunbelievable. The match went out. 

"It's black as pitch. "

"We're just voices now, " murmured Eleanor, "little lonesome voices. Light another. "

"That was my last match. "

Suddenly he caught her in his arms. 

"You _are_ mine--you know you're mine!" he cried wildly. . . The moonlighttwisted in through the vines and listened. . . The fireflies hung upontheir whispers as if to win his glance from the glory of their eyes. 

 *****

THE END OF SUMMER

"No wind is stirring in the grass; not one wind stirs. . . The waterin the hidden pools, as glass, fronts the full moon and so intersthe golden token in its icy mass, " chanted Eleanor to the trees thatskeletoned the body of the night. "Isn't it ghostly here? If you canhold your horse's feet up, let's cut through the woods and find thehidden pools. "

"It's after one, and you'll get the devil, " he objected, "and I don'tknow enough about horses to put one away in the pitch dark. "

"Shut up, you old fool, " she whispered irrelevantly, and, leaning over, she patted him lazily with her riding-crop. "You can leave your old plugin our stable and I'll send him over to-morrow. "

"But my uncle has got to drive me to the station with this old plug atseven o'clock. "

"Don't be a spoil-sport--remember, you have a tendency toward waveringthat prevents you from being the entire light of my life. "

Amory drew his horse up close beside, and, leaning toward her, graspedher hand. 

"Say I am--_quick_, or I'll pull you over and make you ride behind me. "

She looked up and smiled and shook her head excitedly. 

"Oh, do!--or rather, don't! Why are all the exciting things souncomfortable, like fighting and exploring and ski-ing in Canada? Bythe way, we're going to ride up Harper's Hill. I think that comes in ourprogramme about five o'clock. "

"You little devil, " Amory growled. "You're going to make me stay up allnight and sleep in the train like an immigrant all day to-morrow, goingback to New York. "

"Hush! some one's coming along the road--let's go! Whoo-ee-oop!" Andwith a shout that probably gave the belated traveller a series ofshivers, she turned her horse into the woods and Amory followed slowly, as he had followed her all day for three weeks. 

The summer was over, but he had spent the days in watching Eleanor, agraceful, facile Manfred, build herself intellectual and imaginativepyramids while she revelled in the artificialities of the temperamentalteens and they wrote poetry at the dinner-table. 

 When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death:

 "Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said. . . Yet Beauty vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead. . . 

 --Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair:

 "Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his sonnet there". . . So all my words, however true, might sing you to a thousandth June, and no one ever _know_ that you were Beauty for an afternoon. 

So he wrote one day, when he pondered how coldly we thought of the "DarkLady of the Sonnets, " and how little we remembered her as the great manwanted her remembered. For what Shakespeare _must_ have desired, to havebeen able to write with such divine despair, was that the lady shouldlive. . . And now we have no real interest in her. . . . The irony of it isthat if he had cared _more_ for the poem than for the lady the sonnetwould be only obvious, imitative rhetoric and no one would ever haveread it after twenty years. . . . 

This was the last night Amory ever saw Eleanor. He was leaving in themorning and they had agreed to take a long farewell trot by the coldmoonlight. She wanted to talk, she said--perhaps the last time in herlife that she could be rational (she meant pose with comfort). So theyhad turned into the woods and rode for half an hour with scarcelya word, except when she whispered "Damn!" at a bothersomebranch--whispered it as no other girl was ever able to whisper it. Thenthey started up Harper's Hill, walking their tired horses. 

"Good Lord! It's quiet here!" whispered Eleanor; "much more lonesomethan the woods. "

"I hate woods, " Amory said, shuddering. "Any kind of foliage orunderbrush at night. Out here it's so broad and easy on the spirit. "

"The long slope of a long hill. "

"And the cold moon rolling moonlight down it. "

"And thee and me, last and most important. "

It was quiet that night--the straight road they followed up to the edgeof the cliff knew few footsteps at any time. Only an occasional negrocabin, silver-gray in the rock-ribbed moonlight, broke the long line ofbare ground; behind lay the black edge of the woods like a dark frostingon white cake, and ahead the sharp, high horizon. It was much colder--socold that it settled on them and drove all the warm nights from theirminds. 

"The end of summer, " said Eleanor softly. "Listen to the beat of ourhorses' hoofs--'tump-tump-tump-a-tump. ' Have you ever been feverishand had all noises divide into 'tump-tump-tump' until you could sweareternity was divisible into so many tumps? That's the way I feel--oldhorses go tump-tump. . . . I guess that's the only thing that separateshorses and clocks from us. Human beings can't go 'tump-tump-tump'without going crazy. "

The breeze freshened and Eleanor pulled her cape around her andshivered. 

"Are you very cold?" asked Amory. 

"No, I'm thinking about myself--my black old inside self, the real one, with the fundamental honesty that keeps me from being absolutely wickedby making me realize my own sins. "

They were riding up close by the cliff and Amory gazed over. Where thefall met the ground a hundred feet below, a black stream made a sharpline, broken by tiny glints in the swift water. 

"Rotten, rotten old world, " broke out Eleanor suddenly, "and thewretchedest thing of all is me--oh, _why_ am I a girl? Why am I not astupid--? Look at you; you're stupider than I am, not much, but some, and you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes ofsentiment, and you can do anything and be justified--and here am I withthe brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of futurematrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, butnow what's in store for me--I have to marry, that goes without saying. Who? I'm too bright for most men, and yet I have to descend to theirlevel and let them patronize my intellect in order to get theirattention. Every year that I don't marry I've got less chance for afirst-class man. At the best I can have my choice from one or two citiesand, of course, I have to marry into a dinner-coat. 

"Listen, " she leaned close again, "I like clever men and good-lookingmen, and, of course, no one cares more for personality than I do. Oh, just one person in fifty has any glimmer of what sex is. I'm hipped onFreud and all that, but it's rotten that every bit of _real_ love inthe world is ninety-nine per cent passion and one little soupcon ofjealousy. " She finished as suddenly as she began. 

"Of course, you're right, " Amory agreed. "It's a rather unpleasantoverpowering force that's part of the machinery under everything. It'slike an actor that lets you see his mechanics! Wait a minute till Ithink this out. . . . "

He paused and tried to get a metaphor. They had turned the cliff andwere riding along the road about fifty feet to the left. 

"You see every one's got to have some cloak to throw around it. Themediocre intellects, Plato's second class, use the remnants of romanticchivalry diluted with Victorian sentiment--and we who consider ourselvesthe intellectuals cover it up by pretending that it's another side ofus, has nothing to do with our shining brains; we pretend that the factthat we realize it is really absolving us from being a prey to it. Butthe truth is that sex is right in the middle of our purest abstractions, so close that it obscures vision. . . . I can kiss you now and will. . . . "He leaned toward her in his saddle, but she drew away. 

"I can't--I can't kiss you now--I'm more sensitive. "

"You're more stupid then, " he declared rather impatiently. "Intellect isno protection from sex any more than convention is. . . "

"What is?" she fired up. "The Catholic Church or the maxims ofConfucius?"

Amory looked up, rather taken aback. 

"That's your panacea, isn't it?" she cried. "Oh, you're just an oldhypocrite, too. Thousands of scowling priests keeping the degenerateItalians and illiterate Irish repentant with gabble-gabble about thesixth and ninth commandments. It's just all cloaks, sentiment andspiritual rouge and panaceas. I'll tell you there is no God, not evena definite abstract goodness; so it's all got to be worked out for theindividual by the individual here in high white foreheads like mine, andyou're too much the prig to admit it. " She let go her reins and shookher little fists at the stars. 

"If there's a God let him strike me--strike me!"

"Talking about God again after the manner of atheists, " Amory saidsharply. His materialism, always a thin cloak, was torn to shreds byEleanor's blasphemy. . . . She knew it and it angered him that she knew it. 

"And like most intellectuals who don't find faith convenient, " hecontinued coldly, "like Napoleon and Oscar Wilde and the rest of yourtype, you'll yell loudly for a priest on your death-bed. "

Eleanor drew her horse up sharply and he reined in beside her. 

"Will I?" she said in a queer voice that scared him. "Will I? Watch!_I'm going over the cliff!_" And before he could interfere she hadturned and was riding breakneck for the end of the plateau. 

He wheeled and started after her, his body like ice, his nerves in avast clangor. There was no chance of stopping her. The moon was under acloud and her horse would step blindly over. Then some ten feet fromthe edge of the cliff she gave a sudden shriek and flung herselfsideways--plunged from her horse and, rolling over twice, landed ina pile of brush five feet from the edge. The horse went over with afrantic whinny. In a minute he was by Eleanor's side and saw that hereyes were open. 

"Eleanor!" he cried. 

She did not answer, but her lips moved and her eyes filled with suddentears. 

"Eleanor, are you hurt?"

"No; I don't think so, " she said faintly, and then began weeping. 

"My horse dead?"

"Good God--Yes!"

"Oh!" she wailed. "I thought I was going over. I didn't know--"

He helped her gently to her feet and boosted her onto his saddle. Sothey started homeward; Amory walking and she bent forward on the pommel, sobbing bitterly. 

"I've got a crazy streak, " she faltered, "twice before I've done thingslike that. When I was eleven mother went--went mad--stark raving crazy. We were in Vienna--"

All the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amory's lovewaned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kissgood night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretchedto meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hatingeach other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself inEleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewnabout the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone andthere were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silencesbetween. . . But naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turnedhomeward and let new lights come in with the sun. 

 *****

A POEM THAT ELEANOR SENT AMORY SEVERAL YEARS LATER

 "Here, Earth-born, over the lilt of the water, Lisping its music and bearing a burden of light, Bosoming day as a laughing and radiant daughter. . . Here we may whisper unheard, unafraid of the night. Walking alone. . . Was it splendor, or what, we were bound with, Deep in the time when summer lets down her hair? Shadows we loved and the patterns they covered the ground with Tapestries, mystical, faint in the breathless air. 

 That was the day. . . And the night for another story, Pale as a dream and shadowed with pencilled trees-- Ghosts of the stars came by who had sought for glory, Whispered to us of peace in the plaintive breeze, Whispered of old dead faiths that the day had shattered, Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon; That was the urge that we knew and the language that mattered That was the debt that we paid to the usurer June. 

 Here, deepest of dreams, by the waters that bring not Anything back of the past that we need not know, What if the light is but sun and the little streams sing not, We are together, it seems. . . I have loved you so. . . What did the last night hold, with the summer over, Drawing us back to the home in the changing glade? _What leered out of the dark in the ghostly clover?_ God!. . . Till you stirred in your sleep. . . And were wild afraid. . . 

 Well. . . We have passed. . . We are chronicle now to the eerie. Curious metal from meteors that failed in the sky; Earth-born the tireless is stretched by the water, quite weary, Close to this ununderstandable changeling that's I. . . Fear is an echo we traced to Security's daughter; Now we are faces and voices. . . And less, too soon, Whispering half-love over the lilt of the water. . . Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon. "

 *****

A POEM AMORY SENT TO ELEANOR AND WHICH HE CALLED "SUMMER STORM"

 "Faint winds, and a song fading and leaves falling, Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter. . . And the rain and over the fields a voice calling. . . 

 Our gray blown cloud scurries and lifts above, Slides on the sun and flutters there to waft her Sisters on. The shadow of a dove Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings; And down the valley through the crying trees The body of the darker storm flies; brings With its new air the breath of sunken seas And slender tenuous thunder. . . But I wait. . . Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain-- Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate, Happier winds that pile her hair; Again They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air Upon me, winds that I know, and storm. 

 There was a summer every rain was rare; There was a season every wind was warm. . . . And now you pass me in the mist. . . Your hair Rain-blown about you, damp lips curved once more In that wild irony, that gay despair That made you old when we have met before; Wraith-like you drift on out before the rain, Across the fields, blown with the stemless flowers, With your old hopes, dead leaves and loves again-- Dim as a dream and wan with all old hours (Whispers will creep into the growing dark. . . Tumult will die over the trees) Now night Tears from her wetted breast the splattered blouse Of day, glides down the dreaming hills, tear-bright, To cover with her hair the eerie green. . . Love for the dusk. . . Love for the glistening after; Quiet the trees to their last tops. . . Serene. . . 

 Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter. . . "

CHAPTER 4. The Supercilious Sacrifice

Atlantic City. Amory paced the board walk at day's end, lulled by theeverlasting surge of changing waves, smelling the half-mournful odor ofthe salt breeze. The sea, he thought, had treasured its memories deeperthan the faithless land. It seemed still to whisper of Norse galleysploughing the water world under raven-figured flags, of the Britishdreadnoughts, gray bulwarks of civilization steaming up through the fogof one dark July into the North Sea. 

"Well--Amory Blaine!"

Amory looked down into the street below. A low racing car had drawn to astop and a familiar cheerful face protruded from the driver's seat. 

"Come on down, goopher!" cried Alec. 

Amory called a greeting and descending a flight of wooden stepsapproached the car. He and Alec had been meeting intermittently, but thebarrier of Rosalind lay always between them. He was sorry for this; hehated to lose Alec. 

"Mr. Blaine, this is Miss Waterson, Miss Wayne, and Mr. Tully. "

"How d'y do?"

"Amory, " said Alec exuberantly, "if you'll jump in we'll take you tosome secluded nook and give you a wee jolt of Bourbon. "

Amory considered. 

"That's an idea. "

"Step in--move over, Jill, and Amory will smile very handsomely at you. "

Amory squeezed into the back seat beside a gaudy, vermilion-lippedblonde. 

"Hello, Doug Fairbanks, " she said flippantly. "Walking for exercise orhunting for company?"

"I was counting the waves, " replied Amory gravely. "I'm going in forstatistics. "

"Don't kid me, Doug. "

When they reached an unfrequented side street Alec stopped the car amongdeep shadows. 

"What you doing down here these cold days, Amory?" he demanded, as heproduced a quart of Bourbon from under the fur rug. 

Amory avoided the question. Indeed, he had had no definite reason forcoming to the coast. 

"Do you remember that party of ours, sophomore year?" he asked instead. 

"Do I? When we slept in the pavilions up in Asbury Park--"

"Lord, Alec! It's hard to think that Jesse and Dick and Kerry are allthree dead. "

Alec shivered. 

"Don't talk about it. These dreary fall days depress me enough. "

Jill seemed to agree. 

"Doug here is sorta gloomy anyways, " she commented. "Tell him to drinkdeep--it's good and scarce these days. "

"What I really want to ask you, Amory, is where you are--"

"Why, New York, I suppose--"

"I mean to-night, because if you haven't got a room yet you'd betterhelp me out. "

"Glad to. "

"You see, Tully and I have two rooms with bath between at the Ranier, and he's got to go back to New York. I don't want to have to move. Question is, will you occupy one of the rooms?"

Amory was willing, if he could get in right away. 

"You'll find the key in the office; the rooms are in my name. "

Declining further locomotion or further stimulation, Amory left the carand sauntered back along the board walk to the hotel. 

He was in an eddy again, a deep, lethargic gulf, without desire to workor write, love or dissipate. For the first time in his life he ratherlonged for death to roll over his generation, obliterating their pettyfevers and struggles and exultations. His youth seemed never so vanishedas now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit andthat riotous, joyful party of four years before. Things that had beenthe merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense ofbeauty around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they leftwere filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion. 

"To hold a man a woman has to appeal to the worst in him. " This sentencewas the thesis of most of his bad nights, of which he felt this was tobe one. His mind had already started to play variations on the subject. Tireless passion, fierce jealousy, longing to possess and crush--thesealone were left of all his love for Rosalind; these remained to him aspayment for the loss of his youth--bitter calomel under the thin sugarof love's exaltation. 

In his room he undressed and wrapping himself in blankets to keep outthe chill October air drowsed in an armchair by the open window. 

He remembered a poem he had read months before:

 "Oh staunch old heart who toiled so long for me, I waste my years sailing along the sea--"

Yet he had no sense of waste, no sense of the present hope that wasteimplied. He felt that life had rejected him. 

"Rosalind! Rosalind!" He poured the words softly into the half-darknessuntil she seemed to permeate the room; the wet salt breeze filledhis hair with moisture, the rim of a moon seared the sky and made thecurtains dim and ghostly. He fell asleep. 

When he awoke it was very late and quiet. The blanket had slipped partlyoff his shoulders and he touched his skin to find it damp and cold. 

Then he became aware of a tense whispering not ten feet away. 

He became rigid. 

"Don't make a sound!" It was Alec's voice. "Jill--do you hear me?"

"Yes--" breathed very low, very frightened. They were in the bathroom. 

Then his ears caught a louder sound from somewhere along the corridoroutside. It was a mumbling of men's voices and a repeated muffledrapping. Amory threw off the blankets and moved close to the bathroomdoor. 

"My God!" came the girl's voice again. "You'll have to let them in. "

"Sh!"

Suddenly a steady, insistent knocking began at Amory's hall doorand simultaneously out of the bathroom came Alec, followed by thevermilion-lipped girl. They were both clad in pajamas. 

"Amory!" an anxious whisper. 

"What's the trouble?"

"It's house detectives. My God, Amory--they're just looking for atest-case--"

"Well, better let them in. "

"You don't understand. They can get me under the Mann Act. "

The girl followed him slowly, a rather miserable, pathetic figure in thedarkness. 

Amory tried to plan quickly. 

"You make a racket and let them in your room, " he suggested anxiously, "and I'll get her out by this door. "

"They're here too, though. They'll watch this door. "

"Can't you give a wrong name?"

"No chance. I registered under my own name; besides, they'd trail theauto license number. "

"Say you're married. "

"Jill says one of the house detectives knows her. "

The girl had stolen to the bed and tumbled upon it; lay there listeningwretchedly to the knocking which had grown gradually to a pounding. Thencame a man's voice, angry and imperative:

"Open up or we'll break the door in!"

In the silence when this voice ceased Amory realized that there wereother things in the room besides people. . . Over and around the figurecrouched on the bed there hung an aura, gossamer as a moonbeam, taintedas stale, weak wine, yet a horror, diffusively brooding already overthe three of them. . . And over by the window among the stirring curtainsstood something else, featureless and indistinguishable, yet strangelyfamiliar. . . . Simultaneously two great cases presented themselves side byside to Amory; all that took place in his mind, then, occupied in actualtime less than ten seconds. 

The first fact that flashed radiantly on his comprehension was the greatimpersonality of sacrifice--he perceived that what we call love andhate, reward and punishment, had no more to do with it than the dateof the month. He quickly recapitulated the story of a sacrifice he hadheard of in college: a man had cheated in an examination; his roommatein a gust of sentiment had taken the entire blame--due to the shameof it the innocent one's entire future seemed shrouded in regret andfailure, capped by the ingratitude of the real culprit. He had finallytaken his own life--years afterward the facts had come out. At the timethe story had both puzzled and worried Amory. Now he realized the truth;that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great electiveoffice, it was like an inheritance of power--to certain people atcertain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee buta responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentummight drag him down to ruin--the passing of the emotional wave that madeit possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on anisland of despair. 

. . . Amory knew that afterward Alec would secretly hate him for havingdone so much for him. . . . 

. . . All this was flung before Amory like an opened scroll, whileulterior to him and speculating upon him were those two breathless, listening forces: the gossamer aura that hung over and about the girland that familiar thing by the window. 

Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrificeshould be eternally supercilious. 

_Weep not for me but for thy children. _

That--thought Amory--would be somehow the way God would talk to me. 

Amory felt a sudden surge of joy and then like a face in amotion-picture the aura over the bed faded out; the dynamic shadowby the window, that was as near as he could name it, remained for thefraction of a moment and then the breeze seemed to lift it swiftly outof the room. He clinched his hands in quick ecstatic excitement. . . Theten seconds were up. . . . 

"Do what I say, Alec--do what I say. Do you understand?"

Alec looked at him dumbly--his face a tableau of anguish. 

"You have a family, " continued Amory slowly. "You have a family and it'simportant that you should get out of this. Do you hear me?" He repeatedclearly what he had said. "Do you hear me?"

"I hear you. " The voice was curiously strained, the eyes never for asecond left Amory's. 

"Alec, you're going to lie down here. If any one comes in you act drunk. You do what I say--if you don't I'll probably kill you. "

There was another moment while they stared at each other. Then Amorywent briskly to the bureau and, taking his pocket-book, beckonedperemptorily to the girl. He heard one word from Alec that sounded like"penitentiary, " then he and Jill were in the bathroom with the doorbolted behind them. 

"You're here with me, " he said sternly. "You've been with me allevening. "

She nodded, gave a little half cry. 

In a second he had the door of the other room open and three menentered. There was an immediate flood of electric light and he stoodthere blinking. 

"You've been playing a little too dangerous a game, young man!"

Amory laughed. 

"Well?"

The leader of the trio nodded authoritatively at a burly man in a checksuit. 

"All right, Olson. "

"I got you, Mr. O'May, " said Olson, nodding. The other two took acurious glance at their quarry and then withdrew, closing the doorangrily behind them. 

The burly man regarded Amory contemptuously. 

"Didn't you ever hear of the Mann Act? Coming down here with her, " heindicated the girl with his thumb, "with a New York license on yourcar--to a hotel like _this_. " He shook his head implying that he hadstruggled over Amory but now gave him up. 

"Well, " said Amory rather impatiently, "what do you want us to do?"

"Get dressed, quick--and tell your friend not to make such a racket. "Jill was sobbing noisily on the bed, but at these words she subsidedsulkily and, gathering up her clothes, retired to the bathroom. As Amoryslipped into Alec's B. V. D. 's he found that his attitude toward thesituation was agreeably humorous. The aggrieved virtue of the burly manmade him want to laugh. 

"Anybody else here?" demanded Olson, trying to look keen andferret-like. 

"Fellow who had the rooms, " said Amory carelessly. "He's drunk as anowl, though. Been in there asleep since six o'clock. "

"I'll take a look at him presently. "

"How did you find out?" asked Amory curiously. 

"Night clerk saw you go up-stairs with this woman. "

Amory nodded; Jill reappeared from the bathroom, completely if ratheruntidily arrayed. 

"Now then, " began Olson, producing a note-book, "I want your realnames--no damn John Smith or Mary Brown. "

"Wait a minute, " said Amory quietly. "Just drop that big-bully stuff. Wemerely got caught, that's all. "

Olson glared at him. 

"Name?" he snapped. 

Amory gave his name and New York address. 

"And the lady?"

"Miss Jill--"

"Say, " cried Olson indignantly, "just ease up on the nursery rhymes. What's your name? Sarah Murphy? Minnie Jackson?"

"Oh, my God!" cried the girl cupping her tear-stained face in her hands. "I don't want my mother to know. I don't want my mother to know. "

"Come on now!"

"Shut up!" cried Amory at Olson. 

An instant's pause. 

"Stella Robbins, " she faltered finally. "General Delivery, Rugway, NewHampshire. "

Olson snapped his note-book shut and looked at them very ponderously. 

"By rights the hotel could turn the evidence over to the police andyou'd go to penitentiary, you would, for bringin' a girl from one Stateto 'nother f'r immoral purp'ses--" He paused to let the majesty of hiswords sink in. "But--the hotel is going to let you off. "

"It doesn't want to get in the papers, " cried Jill fiercely. "Let usoff! Huh!"

A great lightness surrounded Amory. He realized that he was safe andonly then did he appreciate the full enormity of what he might haveincurred. 

"However, " continued Olson, "there's a protective association among thehotels. There's been too much of this stuff, and we got a 'rangementwith the newspapers so that you get a little free publicity. Not thename of the hotel, but just a line sayin' that you had a little troublein 'lantic City. See?"

"I see. "

"You're gettin' off light--damn light--but--"

"Come on, " said Amory briskly. "Let's get out of here. We don't need avaledictory. "

Olson walked through the bathroom and took a cursory glance at Alec'sstill form. Then he extinguished the lights and motioned them to followhim. As they walked into the elevator Amory considered a piece ofbravado--yielded finally. He reached out and tapped Olson on the arm. 

"Would you mind taking off your hat? There's a lady in the elevator. "

Olson's hat came off slowly. There was a rather embarrassing two minutesunder the lights of the lobby while the night clerk and a few belatedguests stared at them curiously; the loudly dressed girl with bent head, the handsome young man with his chin several points aloft; the inferencewas quite obvious. Then the chill outdoors--where the salt air wasfresher and keener still with the first hints of morning. 

"You can get one of those taxis and beat it, " said Olson, pointing tothe blurred outline of two machines whose drivers were presumably asleepinside. 

"Good-by, " said Olson. He reached in his pocket suggestively, but Amorysnorted, and, taking the girl's arm, turned away. 

"Where did you tell the driver to go?" she asked as they whirled alongthe dim street. 

"The station. "

"If that guy writes my mother--"

"He won't. Nobody'll ever know about this--except our friends andenemies. "

Dawn was breaking over the sea. 

"It's getting blue, " she said. 

"It does very well, " agreed Amory critically, and then as anafter-thought: "It's almost breakfast-time--do you want something toeat?"

"Food--" she said with a cheerful laugh. "Food is what queered theparty. We ordered a big supper to be sent up to the room about twoo'clock. Alec didn't give the waiter a tip, so I guess the littlebastard snitched. "

Jill's low spirits seemed to have gone faster than the scattering night. "Let me tell you, " she said emphatically, "when you want to stage thatsorta party stay away from liquor, and when you want to get tight stayaway from bedrooms. "

"I'll remember. "

He tapped suddenly at the glass and they drew up at the door of anall-night restaurant. 

"Is Alec a great friend of yours?" asked Jill as they perched themselveson high stools inside, and set their elbows on the dingy counter. 

"He used to be. He probably won't want to be any more--and neverunderstand why. "

"It was sorta crazy you takin' all that blame. Is he pretty important?Kinda more important than you are?"

Amory laughed. 

"That remains to be seen, " he answered. "That's the question. "

 *****

THE COLLAPSE OF SEVERAL PILLARS

Two days later back in New York Amory found in a newspaper what hehad been searching for--a dozen lines which announced to whom it mightconcern that Mr. Amory Blaine, who "gave his address" as, etc. , had beenrequested to leave his hotel in Atlantic City because of entertaining inhis room a lady _not_ his wife. 

Then he started, and his fingers trembled, for directly above was alonger paragraph of which the first words were:

"Mr. And Mrs. Leland R. Connage are announcing the engagement of theirdaughter, Rosalind, to Mr. J. Dawson Ryder, of Hartford, Connecticut--"

He dropped the paper and lay down on his bed with a frightened, sinkingsensation in the pit of his stomach. She was gone, definitely, finallygone. Until now he had half unconsciously cherished the hope deep in hisheart that some day she would need him and send for him, cry that it hadbeen a mistake, that her heart ached only for the pain she had causedhim. Never again could he find even the sombre luxury of wantingher--not this Rosalind, harder, older--nor any beaten, broken woman thathis imagination brought to the door of his forties--Amory had wanted heryouth, the fresh radiance of her mind and body, the stuff that she wasselling now once and for all. So far as he was concerned, young Rosalindwas dead. 

A day later came a crisp, terse letter from Mr. Barton in Chicago, whichinformed him that as three more street-car companies had gone intothe hands of receivers he could expect for the present no furtherremittances. Last of all, on a dazed Sunday night, a telegram told himof Monsignor Darcy's sudden death in Philadelphia five days before. 

He knew then what it was that he had perceived among the curtains of theroom in Atlantic City. 

CHAPTER 5. The Egotist Becomes a Personage

 "A fathom deep in sleep I lie With old desires, restrained before, To clamor lifeward with a cry, As dark flies out the greying door; And so in quest of creeds to share I seek assertive day again. . . But old monotony is there: Endless avenues of rain. 

 Oh, might I rise again! Might I Throw off the heat of that old wine, See the new morning mass the sky With fairy towers, line on line; Find each mirage in the high air A symbol, not a dream again. . . But old monotony is there: Endless avenues of rain. "

Under the glass portcullis of a theatre Amory stood, watching the firstgreat drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on thesidewalk. The air became gray and opalescent; a solitary light suddenlyoutlined a window over the way; then another light; then a hundred moredanced and glimmered into vision. Under his feet a thick, iron-studdedskylight turned yellow; in the street the lamps of the taxi-cabs sentout glistening sheens along the already black pavement. The unwelcomeNovember rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned itwith that ancient fence, the night. 

The silence of the theatre behind him ended with a curious snappingsound, followed by the heavy roaring of a rising crowd and theinterlaced clatter of many voices. The matinee was over. 

He stood aside, edged a little into the rain to let the throng pass. Asmall boy rushed out, sniffed in the damp, fresh air and turned up thecollar of his coat; came three or four couples in a great hurry; camea further scattering of people whose eyes as they emerged glancedinvariably, first at the wet street, then at the rain-filled air, finally at the dismal sky; last a dense, strolling mass that depressedhim with its heavy odor compounded of the tobacco smell of the men andthe fetid sensuousness of stale powder on women. After the thick crowdcame another scattering; a stray half-dozen; a man on crutches; finallythe rattling bang of folding seats inside announced that the ushers wereat work. 

New York seemed not so much awakening as turning over in its bed. Pallidmen rushed by, pinching together their coat-collars; a great swarm oftired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieksof strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marchingpolicemen passed, already miraculously protected by oilskin capes. 

The rain gave Amory a feeling of detachment, and the numerous unpleasantaspects of city life without money occurred to him in threateningprocession. There was the ghastly, stinking crush of the subway--the carcards thrusting themselves at one, leering out like dull bores who grabyour arm with another story; the querulous worry as to whether some oneisn't leaning on you; a man deciding not to give his seat to a woman, hating her for it; the woman hating him for not doing it; at worst asqualid phantasmagoria of breath, and old cloth on human bodies and thesmells of the food men ate--at best just people--too hot or too cold, tired, worried. 

He pictured the rooms where these people lived--where the patterns ofthe blistered wall-papers were heavy reiterated sunflowers on green andyellow backgrounds, where there were tin bathtubs and gloomy hallwaysand verdureless, unnamable spaces in back of the buildings; where evenlove dressed as seduction--a sordid murder around the corner, illicitmotherhood in the flat above. And always there was the economicalstuffiness of indoor winter, and the long summers, nightmares ofperspiration between sticky enveloping walls. . . Dirty restaurants wherecareless, tired people helped themselves to sugar with their own usedcoffee-spoons, leaving hard brown deposits in the bowl. 

It was not so bad where there were only men or else only women; it waswhen they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten. It was someshame that women gave off at having men see them tired and poor--itwas some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor. It wasdirtier than any battle-field he had seen, harder to contemplate thanany actual hardship moulded of mire and sweat and danger, it was anatmosphere wherein birth and marriage and death were loathsome, secretthings. 

He remembered one day in the subway when a delivery boy had brought in agreat funeral wreath of fresh flowers, how the smell of it had suddenlycleared the air and given every one in the car a momentary glow. 

"I detest poor people, " thought Amory suddenly. "I hate them for beingpoor. Poverty may have been beautiful once, but it's rotten now. It'sthe ugliest thing in the world. It's essentially cleaner to be corruptand rich than it is to be innocent and poor. " He seemed to see again afigure whose significance had once impressed him--a well-dressed youngman gazing from a club window on Fifth Avenue and saying something tohis companion with a look of utter disgust. Probably, thought Amory, what he said was: "My God! Aren't people horrible!"

Never before in his life had Amory considered poor people. He thoughtcynically how completely he was lacking in all human sympathy. O. Henryhad found in these people romance, pathos, love, hate--Amory saw onlycoarseness, physical filth, and stupidity. He made no self-accusations:never any more did he reproach himself for feelings that werenatural and sincere. He accepted all his reactions as a part of him, unchangeable, unmoral. This problem of poverty transformed, magnified, attached to some grander, more dignified attitude might some day even behis problem; at present it roused only his profound distaste. 

He walked over to Fifth Avenue, dodging the blind, black menace ofumbrellas, and standing in front of Delmonico's hailed an auto-bus. Buttoning his coat closely around him he climbed to the roof, where herode in solitary state through the thin, persistent rain, stunginto alertness by the cool moisture perpetually reborn on his cheek. Somewhere in his mind a conversation began, rather resumed its placein his attention. It was composed not of two voices, but of one, whichacted alike as questioner and answerer:

Question. --Well--what's the situation?

Answer. --That I have about twenty-four dollars to my name. 

Q. --You have the Lake Geneva estate. 

A. --But I intend to keep it. 

Q. --Can you live?

A. --I can't imagine not being able to. People make money in books andI've found that I can always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I can do. 

Q. --Be definite. 

A. --I don't know what I'll do--nor have I much curiosity. To-morrow I'mgoing to leave New York for good. It's a bad town unless you're on topof it. 

Q. --Do you want a lot of money?

A. --No. I am merely afraid of being poor. 

Q. --Very afraid?

A. --Just passively afraid. 

Q. --Where are you drifting?

A. --Don't ask _me!_

Q. --Don't you care?

A. --Rather. I don't want to commit moral suicide. 

Q. --Have you no interests left?

A. --None. I've no more virtue to lose. Just as a cooling pot givesoff heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories ofvirtue. That's what's called ingenuousness. 

Q. --An interesting idea. 

A. --That's why a "good man going wrong" attracts people. They standaround and literally _warm themselves_ at the calories of virtue hegives off. Sarah makes an unsophisticated remark and the faces simper indelight--"How _innocent_ the poor child is!" They're warming themselvesat her virtue. But Sarah sees the simper and never makes that remarkagain. Only she feels a little colder after that. 

Q. --All your calories gone?

A. --All of them. I'm beginning to warm myself at other people's virtue. 

Q. --Are you corrupt?

A. --I think so. I'm not sure. I'm not sure about good and evil at allany more. 

Q. --Is that a bad sign in itself?

A. --Not necessarily. 

Q. --What would be the test of corruption?

A. --Becoming really insincere--calling myself "not such a bad fellow, "thinking I regretted my lost youth when I only envy the delights oflosing it. Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentaliststhink they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before theyate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all overagain. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood--she wants torepeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want thepleasure of losing it again. 

Q. --Where are you drifting?

This dialogue merged grotesquely into his mind's most familiar state--agrotesque blending of desires, worries, exterior impressions andphysical reactions. 

One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street--or One Hundred and Thirty-seventhStreet. . . . Two and three look alike--no, not much. Seat damp. . . Areclothes absorbing wetness from seat, or seat absorbing dryness fromclothes?. . . Sitting on wet substance gave appendicitis, so FroggyParker's mother said. Well, he'd had it--I'll sue the steamboat company, Beatrice said, and my uncle has a quarter interest--did Beatrice go toheaven?. . . Probably not--He represented Beatrice's immortality, alsolove-affairs of numerous dead men who surely had never thought ofhim. . . If it wasn't appendicitis, influenza maybe. What? One Hundredand Twentieth Street? That must have been One Hundred and Twelfth backthere. One O Two instead of One Two Seven. Rosalind not like Beatrice, Eleanor like Beatrice, only wilder and brainier. Apartments along hereexpensive--probably hundred and fifty a month--maybe two hundred. Unclehad only paid hundred a month for whole great big house in Minneapolis. Question--were the stairs on the left or right as you came in? Anyway, in 12 Univee they were straight back and to the left. What a dirtyriver--want to go down there and see if it's dirty--French rivers allbrown or black, so were Southern rivers. Twenty-four dollars meant fourhundred and eighty doughnuts. He could live on it three months and sleepin the park. Wonder where Jill was--Jill Bayne, Fayne, Sayne--what thedevil--neck hurts, darned uncomfortable seat. No desire to sleep withJill, what could Alec see in her? Alec had a coarse taste in women. Owntaste the best; Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were all-American. Eleanor would pitch, probably southpaw. Rosalind was outfield, wonderfulhitter, Clara first base, maybe. Wonder what Humbird's body looked likenow. If he himself hadn't been bayonet instructor he'd have gone upto line three months sooner, probably been killed. Where's the darnedbell--

The street numbers of Riverside Drive were obscured by the mist anddripping trees from anything but the swiftest scrutiny, but Amory hadfinally caught sight of one--One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street. Hegot off and with no distinct destination followed a winding, descendingsidewalk and came out facing the river, in particular a long pier anda partitioned litter of shipyards for miniature craft: small launches, canoes, rowboats, and catboats. He turned northward and followed theshore, jumped a small wire fence and found himself in a great disorderlyyard adjoining a dock. The hulls of many boats in various stages ofrepair were around him; he smelled sawdust and paint and the scarcelydistinguishable fiat odor of the Hudson. A man approached through theheavy gloom. 

"Hello, " said Amory. 

"Got a pass?"

"No. Is this private?"

"This is the Hudson River Sporting and Yacht Club. "

"Oh! I didn't know. I'm just resting. "

"Well--" began the man dubiously. 

"I'll go if you want me to. "

The man made non-committal noises in his throat and passed on. Amoryseated himself on an overturned boat and leaned forward thoughtfullyuntil his chin rested in his hand. 

"Misfortune is liable to make me a damn bad man, " he said slowly. 

 *****

IN THE DROOPING HOURS

While the rain drizzled on Amory looked futilely back at the stream ofhis life, all its glitterings and dirty shallows. To begin with, he wasstill afraid--not physically afraid any more, but afraid of people andprejudice and misery and monotony. Yet, deep in his bitter heart, hewondered if he was after all worse than this man or the next. He knewthat he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his ownweakness was just the result of circumstances and environment; thatoften when he raged at himself as an egotist something would whisperingratiatingly: "No. Genius!" That was one manifestation of fear, thatvoice which whispered that he could not be both great and good, thatgenius was the exact combination of those inexplicable grooves andtwists in his mind, that any discipline would curb it to mediocrity. Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his ownpersonality--he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand daysafter he would swell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill wordlike a third-rate musician or a first-class actor. He was ashamed of thefact that very simple and honest people usually distrusted him; thathe had been cruel, often, to those who had sunk their personalities inhim--several girls, and a man here and there through college, that hehad been an evil influence on; people who had followed him here andthere into mental adventures from which he alone rebounded unscathed. 

Usually, on nights like this, for there had been many lately, he couldescape from this consuming introspection by thinking of children and theinfinite possibilities of children--he leaned and listened and he hearda startled baby awake in a house across the street and lend a tinywhimper to the still night. Quick as a flash he turned away, wonderingwith a touch of panic whether something in the brooding despair of hismood had made a darkness in its tiny soul. He shivered. What if someday the balance was overturned, and he became a thing that frightenedchildren and crept into rooms in the dark, approached dim communion withthose phantoms who whispered shadowy secrets to the mad of that darkcontinent upon the moon. . . . 

 *****

Amory smiled a bit. 

"You're too much wrapped up in yourself, " he heard some one say. Andagain--

"Get out and do some real work--"

"Stop worrying--"

He fancied a possible future comment of his own. 

"Yes--I was perhaps an egotist in youth, but I soon found it made memorbid to think too much about myself. "

 *****

Suddenly he felt an overwhelming desire to let himself go to thedevil--not to go violently as a gentleman should, but to sink safelyand sensuously out of sight. He pictured himself in an adobe house inMexico, half-reclining on a rug-covered couch, his slender, artisticfingers closed on a cigarette while he listened to guitars strummingmelancholy undertones to an age-old dirge of Castile and anolive-skinned, carmine-lipped girl caressed his hair. Here he might livea strange litany, delivered from right and wrong and from the hound ofheaven and from every God (except the exotic Mexican one who was prettyslack himself and rather addicted to Oriental scents)--delivered fromsuccess and hope and poverty into that long chute of indulgence whichled, after all, only to the artificial lake of death. 

There were so many places where one might deteriorate pleasantly: PortSaid, Shanghai, parts of Turkestan, Constantinople, the South Seas--alllands of sad, haunting music and many odors, where lust could be a modeand expression of life, where the shades of night skies and sunsetswould seem to reflect only moods of passion: the colors of lips andpoppies. 

 *****

STILL WEEDING

Once he had been miraculously able to scent evil as a horse detects abroken bridge at night, but the man with the queer feet in Phoebe'sroom had diminished to the aura over Jill. His instinct perceived thefetidness of poverty, but no longer ferreted out the deeper evils inpride and sensuality. 

There were no more wise men; there were no more heroes; Burne Holidaywas sunk from sight as though he had never lived; Monsignor was dead. Amory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listenedeagerly to people who pretended to know, who knew nothing. The mysticalreveries of saints that had once filled him with awe in the still hoursof night, now vaguely repelled him. The Byrons and Brookes who haddefied life from mountain tops were in the end but flaneurs and poseurs, at best mistaking the shadow of courage for the substance of wisdom. The pageantry of his disillusion took shape in a world-old processionof Prophets, Athenians, Martyrs, Saints, Scientists, Don Juans, Jesuits, Puritans, Fausts, Poets, Pacifists; like costumed alumni at a collegereunion they streamed before him as their dreams, personalities, andcreeds had in turn thrown colored lights on his soul; each had tried toexpress the glory of life and the tremendous significance of man; eachhad boasted of synchronizing what had gone before into his own ricketygeneralities; each had depended after all on the set stage and theconvention of the theatre, which is that man in his hunger for faithwill feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food. 

Women--of whom he had expected so much; whose beauty he had hoped totransmute into modes of art; whose unfathomable instincts, marvellouslyincoherent and inarticulate, he had thought to perpetuate in terms ofexperience--had become merely consecrations to their own posterity. Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were all removed by theirvery beauty, around which men had swarmed, from the possibility ofcontributing anything but a sick heart and a page of puzzled words towrite. 

Amory based his loss of faith in help from others on several sweepingsyllogisms. Granted that his generation, however bruised and decimatedfrom this Victorian war, were the heirs of progress. Waving aside pettydifferences of conclusions which, although they might occasionallycause the deaths of several millions of young men, might be explainedaway--supposing that after all Bernard Shaw and Bernhardi, Bonar Lawand Bethmann-Hollweg were mutual heirs of progress if only in agreeingagainst the ducking of witches--waiving the antitheses and approachingindividually these men who seemed to be the leaders, he was repelled bythe discrepancies and contradictions in the men themselves. 

There was, for example, Thornton Hancock, respected by half theintellectual world as an authority on life, a man who had verified andbelieved the code he lived by, an educator of educators, an adviser toPresidents--yet Amory knew that this man had, in his heart, leaned onthe priest of another religion. 

And Monsignor, upon whom a cardinal rested, had moments of strange andhorrible insecurity--inexplicable in a religion that explained evendisbelief in terms of its own faith: if you doubted the devil it was thedevil that made you doubt him. Amory had seen Monsignor go to the housesof stolid philistines, read popular novels furiously, saturate himselfin routine, to escape from that horror. 

And this priest, a little wiser, somewhat purer, had been, Amory knew, not essentially older than he. 

Amory was alone--he had escaped from a small enclosure into a greatlabyrinth. He was where Goethe was when he began "Faust"; he was whereConrad was when he wrote "Almayer's Folly. "

Amory said to himself that there were essentially two sorts of peoplewho through natural clarity or disillusion left the enclosure andsought the labyrinth. There were men like Wells and Plato, who had, half unconsciously, a strange, hidden orthodoxy, who would acceptfor themselves only what could be accepted for all men--incurableromanticists who never, for all their efforts, could enter the labyrinthas stark souls; there were on the other hand sword-like pioneeringpersonalities, Samuel Butler, Renan, Voltaire, who progressed muchslower, yet eventually much further, not in the direct pessimistic lineof speculative philosophy but concerned in the eternal attempt to attacha positive value to life. . . . 

Amory stopped. He began for the first time in his life to have a strongdistrust of all generalities and epigrams. They were too easy, toodangerous to the public mind. Yet all thought usually reached thepublic after thirty years in some such form: Benson and Chesterton hadpopularized Huysmans and Newman; Shaw had sugar-coated Nietzsche andIbsen and Schopenhauer. The man in the street heard the conclusionsof dead genius through some one else's clever paradoxes and didacticepigrams. 

Life was a damned muddle. . . A football game with every one off-side andthe referee gotten rid of--every one claiming the referee would havebeen on his side. . . . 

Progress was a labyrinth. . . People plunging blindly in and then rushingwildly back, shouting that they had found it. . . The invisible king--theelan vital--the principle of evolution. . . Writing a book, starting awar, founding a school. . . . 

Amory, even had he not been a selfish man, would have started allinquiries with himself. He was his own best example--sitting in therain, a human creature of sex and pride, foiled by chance and his owntemperament of the balm of love and children, preserved to help inbuilding up the living consciousness of the race. 

In self-reproach and loneliness and disillusion he came to the entranceof the labyrinth. 

 *****

Another dawn flung itself across the river, a belated taxi hurried alongthe street, its lamps still shining like burning eyes in a face whitefrom a night's carouse. A melancholy siren sounded far down the river. 

 *****

MONSIGNOR

Amory kept thinking how Monsignor would have enjoyed his own funeral. It was magnificently Catholic and liturgical. Bishop O'Neill sang solemnhigh mass and the cardinal gave the final absolutions. Thornton Hancock, Mrs. Lawrence, the British and Italian ambassadors, the papal delegate, and a host of friends and priests were there--yet the inexorable shearshad cut through all these threads that Monsignor had gathered into hishands. To Amory it was a haunting grief to see him lying in his coffin, with closed hands upon his purple vestments. His face had not changed, and, as he never knew he was dying, it showed no pain or fear. It wasAmory's dear old friend, his and the others'--for the church was fullof people with daft, staring faces, the most exalted seeming the moststricken. 

The cardinal, like an archangel in cope and mitre, sprinkled the holywater; the organ broke into sound; the choir began to sing the RequiemEternam. 

All these people grieved because they had to some extent depended uponMonsignor. Their grief was more than sentiment for the "crack in hisvoice or a certain break in his walk, " as Wells put it. These peoplehad leaned on Monsignor's faith, his way of finding cheer, of makingreligion a thing of lights and shadows, making all light and shadowmerely aspects of God. People felt safe when he was near. 

Of Amory's attempted sacrifice had been born merely the full realizationof his disillusion, but of Monsignor's funeral was born the romanticelf who was to enter the labyrinth with him. He found something that hewanted, had always wanted and always would want--not to be admired, ashe had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but tobe necessary to people, to be indispensable; he remembered the sense ofsecurity he had found in Burne. 

Life opened up in one of its amazing bursts of radiance and Amorysuddenly and permanently rejected an old epigram that had been playinglistlessly in his mind: "Very few things matter and nothing matters verymuch. "

On the contrary, Amory felt an immense desire to give people a sense ofsecurity. 

 *****

THE BIG MAN WITH GOGGLES

On the day that Amory started on his walk to Princeton the sky was acolorless vault, cool, high and barren of the threat of rain. It was agray day, that least fleshly of all weathers; a day of dreams and farhopes and clear visions. It was a day easily associated with thoseabstract truths and purities that dissolve in the sunshine or fade outin mocking laughter by the light of the moon. The trees and cloudswere carved in classical severity; the sounds of the countryside hadharmonized to a monotone, metallic as a trumpet, breathless as theGrecian urn. 

The day had put Amory in such a contemplative mood that he caused muchannoyance to several motorists who were forced to slow up considerablyor else run him down. So engrossed in his thoughts was he that he wasscarcely surprised at that strange phenomenon--cordiality manifestedwithin fifty miles of Manhattan--when a passing car slowed downbeside him and a voice hailed him. He looked up and saw a magnificentLocomobile in which sat two middle-aged men, one of them small andanxious looking, apparently an artificial growth on the other who waslarge and begoggled and imposing. 

"Do you want a lift?" asked the apparently artificial growth, glancingfrom the corner of his eye at the imposing man as if for some habitual, silent corroboration. 

"You bet I do. Thanks. "

The chauffeur swung open the door, and, climbing in, Amory settledhimself in the middle of the back seat. He took in his companionscuriously. The chief characteristic of the big man seemed to be agreat confidence in himself set off against a tremendous boredom witheverything around him. That part of his face which protruded under thegoggles was what is generally termed "strong"; rolls of not undignifiedfat had collected near his chin; somewhere above was a wide thinmouth and the rough model for a Roman nose, and, below, his shoulderscollapsed without a struggle into the powerful bulk of his chest andbelly. He was excellently and quietly dressed. Amory noticed that hewas inclined to stare straight at the back of the chauffeur's head as ifspeculating steadily but hopelessly some baffling hirsute problem. 

The smaller man was remarkable only for his complete submersion in thepersonality of the other. He was of that lower secretarial type whoat forty have engraved upon their business cards: "Assistant to thePresident, " and without a sigh consecrate the rest of their lives tosecond-hand mannerisms. 

"Going far?" asked the smaller man in a pleasant disinterested way. 

"Quite a stretch. "

"Hiking for exercise?"

"No, " responded Amory succinctly, "I'm walking because I can't afford toride. "

"Oh. "

Then again:

"Are you looking for work? Because there's lots of work, " he continuedrather testily. "All this talk of lack of work. The West is especiallyshort of labor. " He expressed the West with a sweeping, lateral gesture. Amory nodded politely. 

"Have you a trade?"

No--Amory had no trade. 

"Clerk, eh?"

No--Amory was not a clerk. 

"Whatever your line is, " said the little man, seeming to agree wiselywith something Amory had said, "now is the time of opportunity andbusiness openings. " He glanced again toward the big man, as a lawyergrilling a witness glances involuntarily at the jury. 

Amory decided that he must say something and for the life of him couldthink of only one thing to say. 

"Of course I want a great lot of money--"

The little man laughed mirthlessly but conscientiously. 

"That's what every one wants nowadays, but they don't want to work forit. "

"A very natural, healthy desire. Almost all normal people want to berich without great effort--except the financiers in problem plays, whowant to 'crash their way through. ' Don't you want easy money?"

"Of course not, " said the secretary indignantly. 

"But, " continued Amory disregarding him, "being very poor at present Iam contemplating socialism as possibly my forte. "

Both men glanced at him curiously. 

"These bomb throwers--" The little man ceased as words lurchedponderously from the big man's chest. 

"If I thought you were a bomb thrower I'd run you over to the Newarkjail. That's what I think of Socialists. "

Amory laughed. 

"What are you, " asked the big man, "one of these parlor Bolsheviks, one of these idealists? I must say I fail to see the difference. The idealists loaf around and write the stuff that stirs up the poorimmigrants. "

"Well, " said Amory, "if being an idealist is both safe and lucrative, Imight try it. "

"What's your difficulty? Lost your job?"

"Not exactly, but--well, call it that. "

"What was it?"

"Writing copy for an advertising agency. "

"Lots of money in advertising. "

Amory smiled discreetly. 

"Oh, I'll admit there's money in it eventually. Talent doesn't starveany more. Even art gets enough to eat these days. Artists draw yourmagazine covers, write your advertisements, hash out rag-time foryour theatres. By the great commercializing of printing you've found aharmless, polite occupation for every genius who might have carved hisown niche. But beware the artist who's an intellectual also. The artistwho doesn't fit--the Rousseau, the Tolstoi, the Samuel Butler, the AmoryBlaine--"

"Who's he?" demanded the little man suspiciously. 

"Well, " said Amory, "he's a--he's an intellectual personage not verywell known at present. "

The little man laughed his conscientious laugh, and stopped rathersuddenly as Amory's burning eyes turned on him. 

"What are you laughing at?"

"These _intellectual_ people--"

"Do you know what it means?"

The little man's eyes twitched nervously. 

"Why, it _usually_ means--"

"It _always_ means brainy and well-educated, " interrupted Amory. "Itmeans having an active knowledge of the race's experience. " Amorydecided to be very rude. He turned to the big man. "The young man, " heindicated the secretary with his thumb, and said young man as onesays bell-boy, with no implication of youth, "has the usual muddledconnotation of all popular words. "

"You object to the fact that capital controls printing?" said the bigman, fixing him with his goggles. 

"Yes--and I object to doing their mental work for them. It seemed tome that the root of all the business I saw around me consisted inoverworking and underpaying a bunch of dubs who submitted to it. "

"Here now, " said the big man, "you'll have to admit that the laboringman is certainly highly paid--five and six hour days--it's ridiculous. You can't buy an honest day's work from a man in the trades-unions. "

"You've brought it on yourselves, " insisted Amory. "You people nevermake concessions until they're wrung out of you. "

"What people?"

"Your class; the class I belonged to until recently; those who byinheritance or industry or brains or dishonesty have become the moneyedclass. "

"Do you imagine that if that road-mender over there had the money he'dbe any more willing to give it up?"

"No, but what's that got to do with it?"

The older man considered. 

"No, I'll admit it hasn't. It rather sounds as if it had though. "

"In fact, " continued Amory, "he'd be worse. The lower classes arenarrower, less pleasant and personally more selfish--certainly morestupid. But all that has nothing to do with the question. "

"Just exactly what is the question?"

Here Amory had to pause to consider exactly what the question was. 

 *****

AMORY COINS A PHRASE

"When life gets hold of a brainy man of fair education, " began Amoryslowly, "that is, when he marries he becomes, nine times out of ten, aconservative as far as existing social conditions are concerned. He maybe unselfish, kind-hearted, even just in his own way, but his first jobis to provide and to hold fast. His wife shoos him on, from ten thousanda year to twenty thousand a year, on and on, in an enclosed treadmillthat hasn't any windows. He's done! Life's got him! He's no help! He's aspiritually married man. "

Amory paused and decided that it wasn't such a bad phrase. 

"Some men, " he continued, "escape the grip. Maybe their wives have nosocial ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerousbook' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I didand were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can'tbribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers, scientists, statesmen who aren't just popular grab-bags for a half-dozenwomen and children. "

"He's the natural radical?"

"Yes, " said Amory. "He may vary from the disillusioned critic like oldThornton Hancock, all the way to Trotsky. Now this spiritually unmarriedman hasn't direct power, for unfortunately the spiritually married man, as a by-product of his money chase, has garnered in the great newspaper, the popular magazine, the influential weekly--so that Mrs. Newspaper, Mrs. Magazine, Mrs. Weekly can have a better limousine than those oilpeople across the street or those cement people 'round the corner. "

"Why not?"

"It makes wealthy men the keepers of the world's intellectual conscienceand, of course, a man who has money under one set of social institutionsquite naturally can't risk his family's happiness by letting the clamorfor another appear in his newspaper. "

"But it appears, " said the big man. 

"Where?--in the discredited mediums. Rotten cheap-papered weeklies. "

"All right--go on. "

"Well, my first point is that through a mixture of conditions of whichthe family is the first, there are these two sorts of brains. One sorttakes human nature as it finds it, uses its timidity, its weakness, andits strength for its own ends. Opposed is the man who, being spirituallyunmarried, continually seeks for new systems that will control orcounteract human nature. His problem is harder. It is not life that'scomplicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life. That is hisstruggle. He is a part of progress--the spiritually married man is not. "

The big man produced three big cigars, and proffered them on his hugepalm. The little man took one, Amory shook his head and reached for acigarette. 

"Go on talking, " said the big man. "I've been wanting to hear one of youfellows. "

 *****

GOING FASTER

"Modern life, " began Amory again, "changes no longer century by century, but year by year, ten times faster than it ever has before--populationsdoubling, civilizations unified more closely with other civilizations, economic interdependence, racial questions, and--we're _dawdling_along. My idea is that we've got to go very much faster. " He slightlyemphasized the last words and the chauffeur unconsciously increased thespeed of the car. Amory and the big man laughed; the little man laughed, too, after a pause. 

"Every child, " said Amory, "should have an equal start. If his fathercan endow him with a good physique and his mother with some common sensein his early education, that should be his heritage. If the father can'tgive him a good physique, if the mother has spent in chasing men theyears in which she should have been preparing herself to educate herchildren, so much the worse for the child. He shouldn't be artificiallybolstered up with money, sent to these horrible tutoring schools, dragged through college. . . Every boy ought to have an equal start. "

"All right, " said the big man, his goggles indicating neither approvalnor objection. 

"Next I'd have a fair trial of government ownership of all industries. "

"That's been proven a failure. "

"No--it merely failed. If we had government ownership we'd have thebest analytical business minds in the government working for somethingbesides themselves. We'd have Mackays instead of Burlesons; we'd haveMorgans in the Treasury Department; we'd have Hills running interstatecommerce. We'd have the best lawyers in the Senate. "

"They wouldn't give their best efforts for nothing. McAdoo--"

"No, " said Amory, shaking his head. "Money isn't the only stimulus thatbrings out the best that's in a man, even in America. "

"You said a while ago that it was. "

"It is, right now. But if it were made illegal to have more than acertain amount the best men would all flock for the one other rewardwhich attracts humanity--honor. "

The big man made a sound that was very like _boo_. 

"That's the silliest thing you've said yet. "

"No, it isn't silly. It's quite plausible. If you'd gone to collegeyou'd have been struck by the fact that the men there would work twiceas hard for any one of a hundred petty honors as those other men did whowere earning their way through. "

"Kids--child's play!" scoffed his antagonist. 

"Not by a darned sight--unless we're all children. Did you ever seea grown man when he's trying for a secret society--or a rising familywhose name is up at some club? They'll jump when they hear the sound ofthe word. The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold infront of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so longthat we've forgotten there's any other way. We've made a world wherethat's necessary. Let me tell you"--Amory became emphatic--"if therewere ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered agreen ribbon for five hours' work a day and a blue ribbon for ten hours'work a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon. That competitive instinct only wants a badge. If the size of their houseis the badge they'll sweat their heads off for that. If it's only ablue ribbon, I damn near believe they'll work just as hard. They have inother ages. "

"I don't agree with you. "

"I know it, " said Amory nodding sadly. "It doesn't matter any morethough. I think these people are going to come and take what they wantpretty soon. "

A fierce hiss came from the little man. 

"_Machine-guns!_"

"Ah, but you've taught them their use. "

The big man shook his head. 

"In this country there are enough property owners not to permit thatsort of thing. "

Amory wished he knew the statistics of property owners and non-propertyowners; he decided to change the subject. 

But the big man was aroused. 

"When you talk of 'taking things away, ' you're on dangerous ground. "

"How can they get it without taking it? For years people have beenstalled off with promises. Socialism may not be progress, but the threatof the red flag is certainly the inspiring force of all reform. You'vegot to be sensational to get attention. "

"Russia is your example of a beneficent violence, I suppose?"

"Quite possibly, " admitted Amory. "Of course, it's overflowing just asthe French Revolution did, but I've no doubt that it's really a greatexperiment and well worth while. "

"Don't you believe in moderation?"

"You won't listen to the moderates, and it's almost too late. The truthis that the public has done one of those startling and amazing thingsthat they do about once in a hundred years. They've seized an idea. "

"What is it?"

"That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachsare essentially the same. "

 *****

THE LITTLE MAN GETS HIS

"If you took all the money in the world, " said the little man with muchprofundity, "and divided it up in equ--"

"Oh, shut up!" said Amory briskly and, paying no attention to the littleman's enraged stare, he went on with his argument. 

"The human stomach--" he began; but the big man interrupted ratherimpatiently. 

"I'm letting you talk, you know, " he said, "but please avoid stomachs. I've been feeling mine all day. Anyway, I don't agree with one-halfyou've said. Government ownership is the basis of your whole argument, and it's invariably a beehive of corruption. Men won't work for blueribbons, that's all rot. "

When he ceased the little man spoke up with a determined nod, as ifresolved this time to have his say out. 

"There are certain things which are human nature, " he asserted with anowl-like look, "which always have been and always will be, which can'tbe changed. "

Amory looked from the small man to the big man helplessly. 

"Listen to that! _That's_ what makes me discouraged with progress. _Listen_ to that! I can name offhand over one hundred natural phenomenathat have been changed by the will of man--a hundred instincts in manthat have been wiped out or are now held in check by civilization. Whatthis man here just said has been for thousands of years the last refugeof the associated mutton-heads of the world. It negates the efforts ofevery scientist, statesman, moralist, reformer, doctor, and philosopherthat ever gave his life to humanity's service. It's a flat impeachmentof all that's worth while in human nature. Every person over twenty-fiveyears old who makes that statement in cold blood ought to be deprived ofthe franchise. "

The little man leaned back against the seat, his face purple with rage. Amory continued, addressing his remarks to the big man. 

"These quarter-educated, stale-minded men such as your friend here, who_think_ they think, every question that comes up, you'll find histype in the usual ghastly muddle. One minute it's 'the brutality andinhumanity of these Prussians'--the next it's 'we ought to exterminatethe whole German people. ' They always believe that 'things are in a badway now, ' but they 'haven't any faith in these idealists. ' One minutethey call Wilson 'just a dreamer, not practical'--a year later they railat him for making his dreams realities. They haven't clear logical ideason one single subject except a sturdy, stolid opposition to all change. They don't think uneducated people should be highly paid, but they won'tsee that if they don't pay the uneducated people their children aregoing to be uneducated too, and we're going round and round in a circle. That--is the great middle class!"

The big man with a broad grin on his face leaned over and smiled at thelittle man. 

"You're catching it pretty heavy, Garvin; how do you feel?"

The little man made an attempt to smile and act as if the whole matterwere so ridiculous as to be beneath notice. But Amory was not through. 

"The theory that people are fit to govern themselves rests on this man. If he can be educated to think clearly, concisely, and logically, freed of his habit of taking refuge in platitudes and prejudices andsentimentalisms, then I'm a militant Socialist. If he can't, then Idon't think it matters much what happens to man or his systems, now orhereafter. "

"I am both interested and amused, " said the big man. "You are veryyoung. "

"Which may only mean that I have neither been corrupted nor made timidby contemporary experience. I possess the most valuable experience, theexperience of the race, for in spite of going to college I've managed topick up a good education. "

"You talk glibly. "

"It's not all rubbish, " cried Amory passionately. "This is the firsttime in my life I've argued Socialism. It's the only panacea I know. I'mrestless. My whole generation is restless. I'm sick of a system wherethe richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, wherethe artist without an income has to sell his talents to a buttonmanufacturer. Even if I had no talents I'd not be content to work tenyears, condemned either to celibacy or a furtive indulgence, to givesome man's son an automobile. "

"But, if you're not sure--"

"That doesn't matter, " exclaimed Amory. "My position couldn't be worse. A social revolution might land me on top. Of course I'm selfish. Itseems to me I've been a fish out of water in too many outworn systems. I was probably one of the two dozen men in my class at college who gota decent education; still they'd let any well-tutored flathead playfootball and _I_ was ineligible, because some silly old men thought weshould _all_ profit by conic sections. I loathed the army. I loathedbusiness. I'm in love with change and I've killed my conscience--"

"So you'll go along crying that we must go faster. "

"That, at least, is true, " Amory insisted. "Reform won't catch up tothe needs of civilization unless it's made to. A laissez-faire policy islike spoiling a child by saying he'll turn out all right in the end. Hewill--if he's made to. "

"But you don't believe all this Socialist patter you talk. "

"I don't know. Until I talked to you I hadn't thought seriously aboutit. I wasn't sure of half of what I said. "

"You puzzle me, " said the big man, "but you're all alike. They sayBernard Shaw, in spite of his doctrines, is the most exacting of alldramatists about his royalties. To the last farthing. "

"Well, " said Amory, "I simply state that I'm a product of a versatilemind in a restless generation--with every reason to throw my mind andpen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we wereall blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I andmy sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displaceold cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at varioustimes, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't aseeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game. "

For a minute neither spoke and then the big man asked:

"What was your university?"

"Princeton. "

The big man became suddenly interested; the expression of his gogglesaltered slightly. 

"I sent my son to Princeton. "

"Did you?"

"Perhaps you knew him. His name was Jesse Ferrenby. He was killed lastyear in France. "

"I knew him very well. In fact, he was one of my particular friends. "

"He was--a--quite a fine boy. We were very close. "

Amory began to perceive a resemblance between the father and thedead son and he told himself that there had been all along a sense offamiliarity. Jesse Ferrenby, the man who in college had borne off thecrown that he had aspired to. It was all so far away. What little boysthey had been, working for blue ribbons--

The car slowed up at the entrance to a great estate, ringed around by ahuge hedge and a tall iron fence. 

"Won't you come in for lunch?"

Amory shook his head. 

"Thank you, Mr. Ferrenby, but I've got to get on. "

The big man held out his hand. Amory saw that the fact that he had knownJesse more than outweighed any disfavor he had created by his opinions. What ghosts were people with which to work! Even the little man insistedon shaking hands. 

"Good-by!" shouted Mr. Ferrenby, as the car turned the corner andstarted up the drive. "Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories. "

"Same to you, sir, " cried Amory, smiling and waving his hand. 

 *****

"OUT OF THE FIRE, OUT OF THE LITTLE ROOM"

Eight hours from Princeton Amory sat down by the Jersey roadside andlooked at the frost-bitten country. Nature as a rather coarse phenomenoncomposed largely of flowers that, when closely inspected, appearedmoth-eaten, and of ants that endlessly traversed blades of grass, wasalways disillusioning; nature represented by skies and waters and farhorizons was more likable. Frost and the promise of winter thrilled himnow, made him think of a wild battle between St. Regis and Groton, ages ago, seven years ago--and of an autumn day in France twelve monthsbefore when he had lain in tall grass, his platoon flattened down closearound him, waiting to tap the shoulders of a Lewis gunner. He saw thetwo pictures together with somewhat the same primitive exaltation--twogames he had played, differing in quality of acerbity, linked in a waythat differed them from Rosalind or the subject of labyrinths whichwere, after all, the business of life. 

"I am selfish, " he thought. 

"This is not a quality that will change when I 'see human suffering' or'lose my parents' or 'help others. '

"This selfishness is not only part of me. It is the most living part. 

"It is by somehow transcending rather than by avoiding that selfishnessthat I can bring poise and balance into my life. 

"There is no virtue of unselfishness that I cannot use. I can makesacrifices, be charitable, give to a friend, endure for a friend, laydown my life for a friend--all because these things may be the bestpossible expression of myself; yet I have not one drop of the milk ofhuman kindness. "

The problem of evil had solidified for Amory into the problem of sex. Hewas beginning to identify evil with the strong phallic worship in Brookeand the early Wells. Inseparably linked with evil was beauty--beauty, still a constant rising tumult; soft in Eleanor's voice, in an old songat night, rioting deliriously through life like superimposed waterfalls, half rhythm, half darkness. Amory knew that every time he had reachedtoward it longingly it had leered out at him with the grotesque face ofevil. Beauty of great art, beauty of all joy, most of all the beauty ofwomen. 

After all, it had too many associations with license and indulgence. Weak things were often beautiful, weak things were never good. And inthis new loneness of his that had been selected for what greatness hemight achieve, beauty must be relative or, itself a harmony, it wouldmake only a discord. 

In a sense this gradual renunciation of beauty was the second step afterhis disillusion had been made complete. He felt that he was leavingbehind him his chance of being a certain type of artist. It seemed somuch more important to be a certain sort of man. 

His mind turned a corner suddenly and he found himself thinking of theCatholic Church. The idea was strong in him that there was a certainintrinsic lack in those to whom orthodox religion was necessary, andreligion to Amory meant the Church of Rome. Quite conceivably it was anempty ritual but it was seemingly the only assimilative, traditionarybulwark against the decay of morals. Until the great mobs could beeducated into a moral sense some one must cry: "Thou shalt not!" Yetany acceptance was, for the present, impossible. He wanted time andthe absence of ulterior pressure. He wanted to keep the tree withoutornaments, realize fully the direction and momentum of this new start. 

 *****

The afternoon waned from the purging good of three o'clock to the goldenbeauty of four. Afterward he walked through the dull ache of a settingsun when even the clouds seemed bleeding and at twilight he came to agraveyard. There was a dusky, dreamy smell of flowers and the ghost of anew moon in the sky and shadows everywhere. On an impulse he consideredtrying to open the door of a rusty iron vault built into the side ofa hill; a vault washed clean and covered with late-blooming, weepywatery-blue flowers that might have grown from dead eyes, sticky to thetouch with a sickening odor. 

Amory wanted to feel "William Dayfield, 1864. "

He wondered that graves ever made people consider life in vain. Somehowhe could find nothing hopeless in having lived. All the broken columnsand clasped hands and doves and angels meant romances. He fancied thatin a hundred years he would like having young people speculate as towhether his eyes were brown or blue, and he hoped quite passionatelythat his grave would have about it an air of many, many years ago. Itseemed strange that out of a row of Union soldiers two or three madehim think of dead loves and dead lovers, when they were exactly like therest, even to the yellowish moss. 

 *****

Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light--and suddenly out of the cleardarkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spiritof the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from themuddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakesand half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a newgeneration, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, througha revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into thatdirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicatedmore than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success;grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in manshaken. . . . 

Amory, sorry for them, was still not sorry for himself--art, politics, religion, whatever his medium should be, he knew he was safe now, freefrom all hysteria--he could accept what was acceptable, roam, grow, rebel, sleep deep through many nights. . . . 

There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot;there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth--yetthe waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibilityand a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealizeddreams. But--oh, Rosalind! Rosalind!. . . 

"It's all a poor substitute at best, " he said sadly. 

And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he haddetermined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from thepersonalities he had passed. . . . 

He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. 

"I know myself, " he cried, "but that is all. "

Appendix: Production notes for eBook edition 11

The primary feature of edition 11 is restoration of em-dashes whichare missing from edition 10. (My favorite instance is "I won't belong"rather than "I won't be--long". )

Characters which are 8-bit in the printed text were misrepresented inedition 10. Edition 10 had some end-of-paragraph problems. A handful ofother minor errors are corrected. 

Two volumes served as reference for edition 11: a 1960 reprint, andan undated reprint produced sometime after 1948. There are a number ofdifferences between the volumes. Evidence suggests that the 1960 reprinthas been somewhat "modernized", and that the undated reprint is abetter match for the original 1920 printing. Therefore, when the volumesdiffer, edition 11 more closely follows the undated reprint. 

In edition 11, underscores are used to denote words and phrasesitalicized for emphasis. 

There is a section of text in book 2, chapter 3, beginning with "WhenVanity kissed Vanity, " which is referred to as "poetry" but is formattedas prose. 

I considered, but decided against introducing an 8-bit version ofedition 11, in large part because the bulk of the 8-bit usage (as foundin the 1960 reprint) consists of words commonly used in their 7-bitform:

 Aeschylus blase cafe debut debutante elan elite Encyclopaedia matinee minutiae paean regime soupcon unaesthetic

Less-commonly-used 8-bit word forms in this book include:

 anaemic bleme coeur manoeuvered mediaevalist tete-a-tete and the name "Borge".