"THIS SIDE OF PARADISE\n\nBy F. Scott Fitzgerald\n\n\n ... Well this side of Paradise!...\n There's little comfort in the wise.\n --Rupert Brooke.\n\n\n Experience is the name so many people\n give to their mistakes.\n --Oscar Wilde.\n\n\n\n To SIGOURNEY FAY\n\nBOOK ONE--The Romantic Egotist\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice\n\n\nAmory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the\nstray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an\nineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of\ndrowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty\nthrough the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and\nin the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor\nand met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to\nposterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at\ncrucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory.\nFor many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an\nunassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair,\ncontinually occupied in \"taking care\" of his wife, continually harassed\nby the idea that he didn't and couldn't understand her.\n\nBut Beatrice Blaine! There was a woman! Early pictures taken on her\nfather's estate at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or in Rome at the Sacred\nHeart Convent--an educational extravagance that in her youth was only\nfor the daughters of the exceptionally wealthy--showed the exquisite\ndelicacy of her features, the consummate art and simplicity of her\nclothes. A brilliant education she had--her youth passed in renaissance\nglory, she was versed in the latest gossip of the Older Roman Families;\nknown by name as a fabulously wealthy American girl to Cardinal Vitori\nand Queen Margherita and more subtle celebrities that one must have had\nsome culture even to have heard of. She learned in England to prefer\nwhiskey and soda to wine, and her small talk was broadened in two senses\nduring a winter in Vienna. All in all Beatrice O'Hara absorbed the\nsort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage\nmeasured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of\nand charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of\nall ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the\ninferior roses to produce one perfect bud.\n\nIn her less important moments she returned to America, met Stephen\nBlaine and married him--this almost entirely because she was a little\nbit weary, a little bit sad. Her only child was carried through\na tiresome season and brought into the world on a spring day in\nninety-six.\n\nWhen Amory was five he was already a delightful companion for her. He\nwas an auburn-haired boy, with great, handsome eyes which he would grow\nup to in time, a facile imaginative mind and a taste for fancy dress.\nFrom his fourth to his tenth year he did the country with his mother\nin her father's private car, from Coronado, where his mother became so\nbored that she had a nervous breakdown in a fashionable hotel, down to\nMexico City, where she took a mild, almost epidemic consumption. This\ntrouble pleased her, and later she made use of it as an intrinsic part\nof her atmosphere--especially after several astounding bracers.\n\nSo, while more or less fortunate little rich boys were defying\ngovernesses on the beach at Newport, or being spanked or tutored or read\nto from \"Do and Dare,\" or \"Frank on the Mississippi,\" Amory was biting\nacquiescent bell-boys in the Waldorf, outgrowing a natural repugnance\nto chamber music and symphonies, and deriving a highly specialized\neducation from his mother.\n\n\"Amory.\"\n\n\"Yes, Beatrice.\" (Such a quaint name for his mother; she encouraged it.)\n\n\"Dear, don't _think_ of getting out of bed yet. I've always suspected\nthat early rising in early life makes one nervous. Clothilde is having\nyour breakfast brought up.\"\n\n\"All right.\"\n\n\"I am feeling very old to-day, Amory,\" she would sigh, her face a rare\ncameo of pathos, her voice exquisitely modulated, her hands as facile\nas Bernhardt's. \"My nerves are on edge--on edge. We must leave this\nterrifying place to-morrow and go searching for sunshine.\"\n\nAmory's penetrating green eyes would look out through tangled hair at\nhis mother. Even at this age he had no illusions about her.\n\n\"Amory.\"\n\n\"Oh, _yes_.\"\n\n\"I want you to take a red-hot bath as hot as you can bear it, and just\nrelax your nerves. You can read in the tub if you wish.\"\n\nShe fed him sections of the \"Fetes Galantes\" before he was ten; at\neleven he could talk glibly, if rather reminiscently, of Brahms and\nMozart and Beethoven. One afternoon, when left alone in the hotel at\nHot Springs, he sampled his mother's apricot cordial, and as the taste\npleased him, he became quite tipsy. This was fun for a while, but\nhe essayed a cigarette in his exaltation, and succumbed to a vulgar,\nplebeian reaction. Though this incident horrified Beatrice, it also\nsecretly amused her and became part of what in a later generation would\nhave been termed her \"line.\"\n\n\"This son of mine,\" he heard her tell a room full of awestruck, admiring\nwomen one day, \"is entirely sophisticated and quite charming--but\ndelicate--we're all delicate; _here_, you know.\" Her hand was radiantly\noutlined against her beautiful bosom; then sinking her voice to a\nwhisper, she told them of the apricot cordial. They rejoiced, for she\nwas a brave raconteuse, but many were the keys turned in sideboard locks\nthat night against the possible defection of little Bobby or Barbara....\n\nThese domestic pilgrimages were invariably in state; two maids, the\nprivate car, or Mr. Blaine when available, and very often a physician.\nWhen Amory had the whooping-cough four disgusted specialists glared at\neach other hunched around his bed; when he took scarlet fever the number\nof attendants, including physicians and nurses, totalled fourteen.\nHowever, blood being thicker than broth, he was pulled through.\n\nThe Blaines were attached to no city. They were the Blaines of Lake\nGeneva; they had quite enough relatives to serve in place of friends,\nand an enviable standing from Pasadena to Cape Cod. But Beatrice grew\nmore and more prone to like only new acquaintances, as there were\ncertain stories, such as the history of her constitution and its many\namendments, memories of her years abroad, that it was necessary for\nher to repeat at regular intervals. Like Freudian dreams, they must be\nthrown off, else they would sweep in and lay siege to her nerves. But\nBeatrice was critical about American women, especially the floating\npopulation of ex-Westerners.\n\n\"They have accents, my dear,\" she told Amory, \"not Southern accents\nor Boston accents, not an accent attached to any locality, just an\naccent\"--she became dreamy. \"They pick up old, moth-eaten London accents\nthat are down on their luck and have to be used by some one. They talk\nas an English butler might after several years in a Chicago grand-opera\ncompany.\" She became almost incoherent--\"Suppose--time in every Western\nwoman's life--she feels her husband is prosperous enough for her to\nhave--accent--they try to impress _me_, my dear--\"\n\nThough she thought of her body as a mass of frailties, she considered\nher soul quite as ill, and therefore important in her life. She had\nonce been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely more\nattentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in Mother\nChurch, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude. Often she\ndeplored the bourgeois quality of the American Catholic clergy, and was\nquite sure that had she lived in the shadow of the great Continental\ncathedrals her soul would still be a thin flame on the mighty altar of\nRome. Still, next to doctors, priests were her favorite sport.\n\n\"Ah, Bishop Wiston,\" she would declare, \"I do not want to talk of\nmyself. I can imagine the stream of hysterical women fluttering at your\ndoors, beseeching you to be simpatico\"--then after an interlude filled\nby the clergyman--\"but my mood--is--oddly dissimilar.\"\n\nOnly to bishops and above did she divulge her clerical romance. When she\nhad first returned to her country there had been a pagan, Swinburnian\nyoung man in Asheville, for whose passionate kisses and unsentimental\nconversations she had taken a decided penchant--they had discussed\nthe matter pro and con with an intellectual romancing quite devoid of\nsappiness. Eventually she had decided to marry for background, and the\nyoung pagan from Asheville had gone through a spiritual crisis, joined\nthe Catholic Church, and was now--Monsignor Darcy.\n\n\"Indeed, Mrs. Blaine, he is still delightful company--quite the\ncardinal's right-hand man.\"\n\n\"Amory will go to him one day, I know,\" breathed the beautiful lady,\n\"and Monsignor Darcy will understand him as he understood me.\"\n\nAmory became thirteen, rather tall and slender, and more than ever on to\nhis Celtic mother. He had tutored occasionally--the idea being that he\nwas to \"keep up,\" at each place \"taking up the work where he left off,\"\nyet as no tutor ever found the place he left off, his mind was still in\nvery good shape. What a few more years of this life would have made of\nhim is problematical. However, four hours out from land, Italy bound,\nwith Beatrice, his appendix burst, probably from too many meals in bed,\nand after a series of frantic telegrams to Europe and America, to the\namazement of the passengers the great ship slowly wheeled around and\nreturned to New York to deposit Amory at the pier. You will admit that\nif it was not life it was magnificent.\n\nAfter the operation Beatrice had a nervous breakdown that bore a\nsuspicious resemblance to delirium tremens, and Amory was left in\nMinneapolis, destined to spend the ensuing two years with his aunt and\nuncle. There the crude, vulgar air of Western civilization first catches\nhim--in his underwear, so to speak.\n\n *****\n\nA KISS FOR AMORY\n\nHis lip curled when he read it.\n\n \"I am going to have a bobbing party,\" it said, \"on Thursday,\n December the seventeenth, at five o'clock, and I would like it\n very much if you could come.\n\n Yours truly,\n\n R.S.V.P. Myra St. Claire.\n\nHe had been two months in Minneapolis, and his chief struggle had been\nthe concealing from \"the other guys at school\" how particularly superior\nhe felt himself to be, yet this conviction was built upon shifting\nsands. He had shown off one day in French class (he was in senior French\nclass) to the utter confusion of Mr. Reardon, whose accent Amory damned\ncontemptuously, and to the delight of the class. Mr. Reardon, who had\nspent several weeks in Paris ten years before, took his revenge on the\nverbs, whenever he had his book open. But another time Amory showed off\nin history class, with quite disastrous results, for the boys there\nwere his own age, and they shrilled innuendoes at each other all the\nfollowing week:\n\n\"Aw--I b'lieve, doncherknow, the Umuricun revolution was _lawgely_ an\naffair of the middul _clawses_,\" or\n\n\"Washington came of very good blood--aw, quite good--I b'lieve.\"\n\nAmory ingeniously tried to retrieve himself by blundering on purpose.\nTwo years before he had commenced a history of the United States which,\nthough it only got as far as the Colonial Wars, had been pronounced by\nhis mother completely enchanting.\n\nHis chief disadvantage lay in athletics, but as soon as he discovered\nthat it was the touchstone of power and popularity at school, he began\nto make furious, persistent efforts to excel in the winter sports, and\nwith his ankles aching and bending in spite of his efforts, he skated\nvaliantly around the Lorelie rink every afternoon, wondering how soon\nhe would be able to carry a hockey-stick without getting it inexplicably\ntangled in his skates.\n\nThe invitation to Miss Myra St. Claire's bobbing party spent the morning\nin his coat pocket, where it had an intense physical affair with a dusty\npiece of peanut brittle. During the afternoon he brought it to light\nwith a sigh, and after some consideration and a preliminary draft in the\nback of Collar and Daniel's \"First-Year Latin,\" composed an answer:\n\n My dear Miss St. Claire:\n Your truly charming envitation for the evening of next Thursday\n evening was truly delightful to receive this morning. I will be\n charm and inchanted indeed to present my compliments on next\n Thursday evening.\n Faithfully,\n\n Amory Blaine.\n\n *****\n\nOn Thursday, therefore, he walked pensively along the slippery,\nshovel-scraped sidewalks, and came in sight of Myra's house, on the\nhalf-hour after five, a lateness which he fancied his mother would\nhave favored. He waited on the door-step with his eyes nonchalantly\nhalf-closed, and planned his entrance with precision. He would cross\nthe floor, not too hastily, to Mrs. St. Claire, and say with exactly the\ncorrect modulation:\n\n\"My _dear_ Mrs. St. Claire, I'm _frightfully_ sorry to be late, but my\nmaid\"--he paused there and realized he would be quoting--\"but my uncle\nand I had to see a fella--Yes, I've met your enchanting daughter at\ndancing-school.\"\n\nThen he would shake hands, using that slight, half-foreign bow, with all\nthe starchy little females, and nod to the fellas who would be standing\n'round, paralyzed into rigid groups for mutual protection.\n\nA butler (one of the three in Minneapolis) swung open the door. Amory\nstepped inside and divested himself of cap and coat. He was mildly\nsurprised not to hear the shrill squawk of conversation from the next\nroom, and he decided it must be quite formal. He approved of that--as he\napproved of the butler.\n\n\"Miss Myra,\" he said.\n\nTo his surprise the butler grinned horribly.\n\n\"Oh, yeah,\" he declared, \"she's here.\" He was unaware that his failure\nto be cockney was ruining his standing. Amory considered him coldly.\n\n\"But,\" continued the butler, his voice rising unnecessarily, \"she's the\nonly one what _is_ here. The party's gone.\"\n\nAmory gasped in sudden horror.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"She's been waitin' for Amory Blaine. That's you, ain't it? Her mother\nsays that if you showed up by five-thirty you two was to go after 'em in\nthe Packard.\"\n\nAmory's despair was crystallized by the appearance of Myra herself,\nbundled to the ears in a polo coat, her face plainly sulky, her voice\npleasant only with difficulty.\n\n\"'Lo, Amory.\"\n\n\"'Lo, Myra.\" He had described the state of his vitality.\n\n\"Well--you _got_ here, _any_ways.\"\n\n\"Well--I'll tell you. I guess you don't know about the auto accident,\"\nhe romanced.\n\nMyra's eyes opened wide.\n\n\"Who was it to?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he continued desperately, \"uncle 'n aunt 'n I.\"\n\n\"Was any one _killed?_\"\n\nAmory paused and then nodded.\n\n\"Your uncle?\"--alarm.\n\n\"Oh, no just a horse--a sorta gray horse.\"\n\nAt this point the Erse butler snickered.\n\n\"Probably killed the engine,\" he suggested. Amory would have put him on\nthe rack without a scruple.\n\n\"We'll go now,\" said Myra coolly. \"You see, Amory, the bobs were ordered\nfor five and everybody was here, so we couldn't wait--\"\n\n\"Well, I couldn't help it, could I?\"\n\n\"So mama said for me to wait till ha'past five. We'll catch the bobs\nbefore it gets to the Minnehaha Club, Amory.\"\n\nAmory's shredded poise dropped from him. He pictured the happy party\njingling along snowy streets, the appearance of the limousine, the\nhorrible public descent of him and Myra before sixty reproachful eyes,\nhis apology--a real one this time. He sighed aloud.\n\n\"What?\" inquired Myra.\n\n\"Nothing. I was just yawning. Are we going to _surely_ catch up with 'em\nbefore they get there?\" He was encouraging a faint hope that they might\nslip into the Minnehaha Club and meet the others there, be found in\nblasé seclusion before the fire and quite regain his lost attitude.\n\n\"Oh, sure Mike, we'll catch 'em all right--let's hurry.\"\n\nHe became conscious of his stomach. As they stepped into the machine he\nhurriedly slapped the paint of diplomacy over a rather box-like plan\nhe had conceived. It was based upon some \"trade-lasts\" gleaned at\ndancing-school, to the effect that he was \"awful good-looking and\n_English_, sort of.\"\n\n\"Myra,\" he said, lowering his voice and choosing his words carefully,\n\"I beg a thousand pardons. Can you ever forgive me?\" She regarded\nhim gravely, his intent green eyes, his mouth, that to her\nthirteen-year-old, arrow-collar taste was the quintessence of romance.\nYes, Myra could forgive him very easily.\n\n\"Why--yes--sure.\"\n\nHe looked at her again, and then dropped his eyes. He had lashes.\n\n\"I'm awful,\" he said sadly. \"I'm diff'runt. I don't know why I make faux\npas. 'Cause I don't care, I s'pose.\" Then, recklessly: \"I been smoking\ntoo much. I've got t'bacca heart.\"\n\nMyra pictured an all-night tobacco debauch, with Amory pale and reeling\nfrom the effect of nicotined lungs. She gave a little gasp.\n\n\"Oh, _Amory_, don't smoke. You'll stunt your _growth!_\"\n\n\"I don't care,\" he persisted gloomily. \"I gotta. I got the habit. I've\ndone a lot of things that if my fambly knew\"--he hesitated, giving her\nimagination time to picture dark horrors--\"I went to the burlesque show\nlast week.\"\n\nMyra was quite overcome. He turned the green eyes on her again. \"You're\nthe only girl in town I like much,\" he exclaimed in a rush of sentiment.\n\"You're simpatico.\"\n\nMyra was not sure that she was, but it sounded stylish though vaguely\nimproper.\n\nThick dusk had descended outside, and as the limousine made a sudden\nturn she was jolted against him; their hands touched.\n\n\"You shouldn't smoke, Amory,\" she whispered. \"Don't you know that?\"\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"Nobody cares.\"\n\nMyra hesitated.\n\n\"_I_ care.\"\n\nSomething stirred within Amory.\n\n\"Oh, yes, you do! You got a crush on Froggy Parker. I guess everybody\nknows that.\"\n\n\"No, I haven't,\" very slowly.\n\nA silence, while Amory thrilled. There was something fascinating about\nMyra, shut away here cosily from the dim, chill air. Myra, a little\nbundle of clothes, with strands of yellow hair curling out from under\nher skating cap.\n\n\"Because I've got a crush, too--\" He paused, for he heard in the\ndistance the sound of young laughter, and, peering through the frosted\nglass along the lamp-lit street, he made out the dark outline of the\nbobbing party. He must act quickly. He reached over with a violent,\njerky effort, and clutched Myra's hand--her thumb, to be exact.\n\n\"Tell him to go to the Minnehaha straight,\" he whispered. \"I wanta talk\nto you--I _got_ to talk to you.\"\n\nMyra made out the party ahead, had an instant vision of her mother, and\nthen--alas for convention--glanced into the eyes beside. \"Turn down this\nside street, Richard, and drive straight to the Minnehaha Club!\" she\ncried through the speaking tube. Amory sank back against the cushions\nwith a sigh of relief.\n\n\"I can kiss her,\" he thought. \"I'll bet I can. I'll _bet_ I can!\"\n\nOverhead the sky was half crystalline, half misty, and the night around\nwas chill and vibrant with rich tension. From the Country Club steps the\nroads stretched away, dark creases on the white blanket; huge heaps of\nsnow lining the sides like the tracks of giant moles. They lingered for\na moment on the steps, and watched the white holiday moon.\n\n\"Pale moons like that one\"--Amory made a vague gesture--\"make people\nmysterieuse. You look like a young witch with her cap off and her hair\nsorta mussed\"--her hands clutched at her hair--\"Oh, leave it, it looks\n_good_.\"\n\nThey drifted up the stairs and Myra led the way into the little den of\nhis dreams, where a cosy fire was burning before a big sink-down couch.\nA few years later this was to be a great stage for Amory, a cradle for\nmany an emotional crisis. Now they talked for a moment about bobbing\nparties.\n\n\"There's always a bunch of shy fellas,\" he commented, \"sitting at the\ntail of the bob, sorta lurkin' an' whisperin' an' pushin' each other\noff. Then there's always some crazy cross-eyed girl\"--he gave a\nterrifying imitation--\"she's always talkin' _hard_, sorta, to the\nchaperon.\"\n\n\"You're such a funny boy,\" puzzled Myra.\n\n\"How d'y' mean?\" Amory gave immediate attention, on his own ground at\nlast.\n\n\"Oh--always talking about crazy things. Why don't you come ski-ing with\nMarylyn and I to-morrow?\"\n\n\"I don't like girls in the daytime,\" he said shortly, and then, thinking\nthis a bit abrupt, he added: \"But I like you.\" He cleared his throat. \"I\nlike you first and second and third.\"\n\nMyra's eyes became dreamy. What a story this would make to tell\nMarylyn! Here on the couch with this _wonderful_-looking boy--the little\nfire--the sense that they were alone in the great building--\n\nMyra capitulated. The atmosphere was too appropriate.\n\n\"I like you the first twenty-five,\" she confessed, her voice trembling,\n\"and Froggy Parker twenty-sixth.\"\n\nFroggy had fallen twenty-five places in one hour. As yet he had not even\nnoticed it.\n\nBut Amory, being on the spot, leaned over quickly and kissed Myra's\ncheek. He had never kissed a girl before, and he tasted his lips\ncuriously, as if he had munched some new fruit. Then their lips brushed\nlike young wild flowers in the wind.\n\n\"We're awful,\" rejoiced Myra gently. She slipped her hand into his,\nher head drooped against his shoulder. Sudden revulsion seized Amory,\ndisgust, loathing for the whole incident. He desired frantically to\nbe away, never to see Myra again, never to kiss any one; he became\nconscious of his face and hers, of their clinging hands, and he wanted\nto creep out of his body and hide somewhere safe out of sight, up in the\ncorner of his mind.\n\n\"Kiss me again.\" Her voice came out of a great void.\n\n\"I don't want to,\" he heard himself saying. There was another pause.\n\n\"I don't want to!\" he repeated passionately.\n\nMyra sprang up, her cheeks pink with bruised vanity, the great bow on\nthe back of her head trembling sympathetically.\n\n\"I hate you!\" she cried. \"Don't you ever dare to speak to me again!\"\n\n\"What?\" stammered Amory.\n\n\"I'll tell mama you kissed me! I will too! I will too! I'll tell mama,\nand she won't let me play with you!\"\n\nAmory rose and stared at her helplessly, as though she were a new animal\nof whose presence on the earth he had not heretofore been aware.\n\nThe door opened suddenly, and Myra's mother appeared on the threshold,\nfumbling with her lorgnette.\n\n\"Well,\" she began, adjusting it benignantly, \"the man at the desk told\nme you two children were up here--How do you do, Amory.\"\n\nAmory watched Myra and waited for the crash--but none came. The pout\nfaded, the high pink subsided, and Myra's voice was placid as a summer\nlake when she answered her mother.\n\n\"Oh, we started so late, mama, that I thought we might as well--\"\n\nHe heard from below the shrieks of laughter, and smelled the vapid\nodor of hot chocolate and tea-cakes as he silently followed mother and\ndaughter down-stairs. The sound of the graphophone mingled with the\nvoices of many girls humming the air, and a faint glow was born and\nspread over him:\n\n \"Casey-Jones--mounted to the cab-un\n Casey-Jones--'th his orders in his hand.\n Casey-Jones--mounted to the cab-un\n Took his farewell journey to the prom-ised land.\"\n\n *****\n\nSNAPSHOTS OF THE YOUNG EGOTIST\n\nAmory spent nearly two years in Minneapolis. The first winter he wore\nmoccasins that were born yellow, but after many applications of oil and\ndirt assumed their mature color, a dirty, greenish brown; he wore a gray\nplaid mackinaw coat, and a red toboggan cap. His dog, Count Del Monte,\nate the red cap, so his uncle gave him a gray one that pulled down over\nhis face. The trouble with this one was that you breathed into it and\nyour breath froze; one day the darn thing froze his cheek. He rubbed\nsnow on his cheek, but it turned bluish-black just the same.\n\n *****\n\nThe Count Del Monte ate a box of bluing once, but it didn't hurt him.\nLater, however, he lost his mind and ran madly up the street, bumping\ninto fences, rolling in gutters, and pursuing his eccentric course out\nof Amory's life. Amory cried on his bed.\n\n\"Poor little Count,\" he cried. \"Oh, _poor_ little _Count!_\"\n\nAfter several months he suspected Count of a fine piece of emotional\nacting.\n\n *****\n\nAmory and Frog Parker considered that the greatest line in literature\noccurred in Act III of \"Arsene Lupin.\"\n\nThey sat in the first row at the Wednesday and Saturday matinees. The\nline was:\n\n\"If one can't be a great artist or a great soldier, the next best thing\nis to be a great criminal.\"\n\n *****\n\nAmory fell in love again, and wrote a poem. This was it:\n\n \"Marylyn and Sallee,\n Those are the girls for me.\n Marylyn stands above\n Sallee in that sweet, deep love.\"\n\nHe was interested in whether McGovern of Minnesota would make the\nfirst or second All-American, how to do the card-pass, how to do\nthe coin-pass, chameleon ties, how babies were born, and whether\nThree-fingered Brown was really a better pitcher than Christie\nMathewson.\n\nAmong other things he read: \"For the Honor of the School,\" \"Little\nWomen\" (twice), \"The Common Law,\" \"Sapho,\" \"Dangerous Dan McGrew,\" \"The\nBroad Highway\" (three times), \"The Fall of the House of Usher,\" \"Three\nWeeks,\" \"Mary Ware, the Little Colonel's Chum,\" \"Gunga Din,\" The Police\nGazette, and Jim-Jam Jems.\n\nHe had all the Henty biasses in history, and was particularly fond of\nthe cheerful murder stories of Mary Roberts Rinehart.\n\n *****\n\nSchool ruined his French and gave him a distaste for standard authors.\nHis masters considered him idle, unreliable and superficially clever.\n\n *****\n\nHe collected locks of hair from many girls. He wore the rings of\nseveral. Finally he could borrow no more rings, owing to his nervous\nhabit of chewing them out of shape. This, it seemed, usually aroused the\njealous suspicions of the next borrower.\n\n *****\n\nAll through the summer months Amory and Frog Parker went each week to\nthe Stock Company. Afterward they would stroll home in the balmy air of\nAugust night, dreaming along Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues, through the\ngay crowd. Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a\nboy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him\nand ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of\nexpressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts of\nfourteen.\n\nAlways, after he was in bed, there were voices--indefinite, fading,\nenchanting--just outside his window, and before he fell asleep he would\ndream one of his favorite waking dreams, the one about becoming a great\nhalf-back, or the one about the Japanese invasion, when he was rewarded\nby being made the youngest general in the world. It was always\nthe becoming he dreamed of, never the being. This, too, was quite\ncharacteristic of Amory.\n\n *****\n\nCODE OF THE YOUNG EGOTIST\n\nBefore he was summoned back to Lake Geneva, he had appeared, shy but\ninwardly glowing, in his first long trousers, set off by a purple\naccordion tie and a \"Belmont\" collar with the edges unassailably\nmeeting, purple socks, and handkerchief with a purple border peeping\nfrom his breast pocket. But more than that, he had formulated his first\nphilosophy, a code to live by, which, as near as it can be named, was a\nsort of aristocratic egotism.\n\nHe had realized that his best interests were bound up with those of a\ncertain variant, changing person, whose label, in order that his past\nmight always be identified with him, was Amory Blaine. Amory marked\nhimself a fortunate youth, capable of infinite expansion for good or\nevil. He did not consider himself a \"strong char'c'ter,\" but relied on\nhis facility (learn things sorta quick) and his superior mentality (read\na lotta deep books). He was proud of the fact that he could never\nbecome a mechanical or scientific genius. From no other heights was he\ndebarred.\n\nPhysically.--Amory thought that he was exceedingly handsome. He was. He\nfancied himself an athlete of possibilities and a supple dancer.\n\nSocially.--Here his condition was, perhaps, most dangerous. He granted\nhimself personality, charm, magnetism, poise, the power of dominating\nall contemporary males, the gift of fascinating all women.\n\nMentally.--Complete, unquestioned superiority.\n\nNow a confession will have to be made. Amory had rather a Puritan\nconscience. Not that he yielded to it--later in life he almost\ncompletely slew it--but at fifteen it made him consider himself a\ngreat deal worse than other boys... unscrupulousness... the desire\nto influence people in almost every way, even for evil... a certain\ncoldness and lack of affection, amounting sometimes to cruelty... a\nshifting sense of honor... an unholy selfishness... a puzzled, furtive\ninterest in everything concerning sex.\n\nThere was, also, a curious strain of weakness running crosswise through\nhis make-up... a harsh phrase from the lips of an older boy (older boys\nusually detested him) was liable to sweep him off his poise into surly\nsensitiveness, or timid stupidity... he was a slave to his own moods\nand he felt that though he was capable of recklessness and audacity, he\npossessed neither courage, perseverance, nor self-respect.\n\nVanity, tempered with self-suspicion if not self-knowledge, a sense of\npeople as automatons to his will, a desire to \"pass\" as many boys as\npossible and get to a vague top of the world... with this background did\nAmory drift into adolescence.\n\n *****\n\nPREPARATORY TO THE GREAT ADVENTURE\n\nThe train slowed up with midsummer languor at Lake Geneva, and Amory\ncaught sight of his mother waiting in her electric on the gravelled\nstation drive. It was an ancient electric, one of the early types, and\npainted gray. The sight of her sitting there, slenderly erect, and\nof her face, where beauty and dignity combined, melting to a dreamy\nrecollected smile, filled him with a sudden great pride of her. As they\nkissed coolly and he stepped into the electric, he felt a quick fear\nlest he had lost the requisite charm to measure up to her.\n\n\"Dear boy--you're _so_ tall... look behind and see if there's anything\ncoming...\"\n\nShe looked left and right, she slipped cautiously into a speed of two\nmiles an hour, beseeching Amory to act as sentinel; and at one busy\ncrossing she made him get out and run ahead to signal her forward like a\ntraffic policeman. Beatrice was what might be termed a careful driver.\n\n\"You _are_ tall--but you're still very handsome--you've skipped the\nawkward age, or is that sixteen; perhaps it's fourteen or fifteen; I can\nnever remember; but you've skipped it.\"\n\n\"Don't embarrass me,\" murmured Amory.\n\n\"But, my dear boy, what odd clothes! They look as if they were a\n_set_--don't they? Is your underwear purple, too?\"\n\nAmory grunted impolitely.\n\n\"You must go to Brooks' and get some really nice suits. Oh, we'll have a\ntalk to-night or perhaps to-morrow night. I want to tell you about\nyour heart--you've probably been neglecting your heart--and you don't\n_know_.\"\n\nAmory thought how superficial was the recent overlay of his own\ngeneration. Aside from a minute shyness, he felt that the old cynical\nkinship with his mother had not been one bit broken. Yet for the first\nfew days he wandered about the gardens and along the shore in a state\nof superloneliness, finding a lethargic content in smoking \"Bull\" at the\ngarage with one of the chauffeurs.\n\nThe sixty acres of the estate were dotted with old and new summer houses\nand many fountains and white benches that came suddenly into sight from\nfoliage-hung hiding-places; there was a great and constantly increasing\nfamily of white cats that prowled the many flower-beds and were\nsilhouetted suddenly at night against the darkening trees. It was on\none of the shadowy paths that Beatrice at last captured Amory, after Mr.\nBlaine had, as usual, retired for the evening to his private library.\nAfter reproving him for avoiding her, she took him for a long\ntete-a-tete in the moonlight. He could not reconcile himself to her\nbeauty, that was mother to his own, the exquisite neck and shoulders,\nthe grace of a fortunate woman of thirty.\n\n\"Amory, dear,\" she crooned softly, \"I had such a strange, weird time\nafter I left you.\"\n\n\"Did you, Beatrice?\"\n\n\"When I had my last breakdown\"--she spoke of it as a sturdy, gallant\nfeat.\n\n\"The doctors told me\"--her voice sang on a confidential note--\"that if\nany man alive had done the consistent drinking that I have, he would\nhave been physically _shattered_, my dear, and in his _grave_--long in\nhis grave.\"\n\nAmory winced, and wondered how this would have sounded to Froggy Parker.\n\n\"Yes,\" continued Beatrice tragically, \"I had dreams--wonderful visions.\"\nShe pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes. \"I saw bronze rivers\nlapping marble shores, and great birds that soared through the air,\nparti-colored birds with iridescent plumage. I heard strange music and\nthe flare of barbaric trumpets--what?\"\n\nAmory had snickered.\n\n\"What, Amory?\"\n\n\"I said go on, Beatrice.\"\n\n\"That was all--it merely recurred and recurred--gardens that flaunted\ncoloring against which this would be quite dull, moons that whirled and\nswayed, paler than winter moons, more golden than harvest moons--\"\n\n\"Are you quite well now, Beatrice?\"\n\n\"Quite well--as well as I will ever be. I am not understood, Amory. I\nknow that can't express it to you, Amory, but--I am not understood.\"\n\nAmory was quite moved. He put his arm around his mother, rubbing his\nhead gently against her shoulder.\n\n\"Poor Beatrice--poor Beatrice.\"\n\n\"Tell me about _you_, Amory. Did you have two _horrible_ years?\"\n\nAmory considered lying, and then decided against it.\n\n\"No, Beatrice. I enjoyed them. I adapted myself to the bourgeoisie.\nI became conventional.\" He surprised himself by saying that, and he\npictured how Froggy would have gaped.\n\n\"Beatrice,\" he said suddenly, \"I want to go away to school. Everybody in\nMinneapolis is going to go away to school.\"\n\nBeatrice showed some alarm.\n\n\"But you're only fifteen.\"\n\n\"Yes, but everybody goes away to school at fifteen, and I _want_ to,\nBeatrice.\"\n\nOn Beatrice's suggestion the subject was dropped for the rest of the\nwalk, but a week later she delighted him by saying:\n\n\"Amory, I have decided to let you have your way. If you still want to,\nyou can go to school.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"To St. Regis's in Connecticut.\"\n\nAmory felt a quick excitement.\n\n\"It's being arranged,\" continued Beatrice. \"It's better that you should\ngo away. I'd have preferred you to have gone to Eton, and then to Christ\nChurch, Oxford, but it seems impracticable now--and for the present\nwe'll let the university question take care of itself.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do, Beatrice?\"\n\n\"Heaven knows. It seems my fate to fret away my years in this country.\nNot for a second do I regret being American--indeed, I think that a\nregret typical of very vulgar people, and I feel sure we are the great\ncoming nation--yet\"--and she sighed--\"I feel my life should have drowsed\naway close to an older, mellower civilization, a land of greens and\nautumnal browns--\"\n\nAmory did not answer, so his mother continued:\n\n\"My regret is that you haven't been abroad, but still, as you are a man,\nit's better that you should grow up here under the snarling eagle--is\nthat the right term?\"\n\nAmory agreed that it was. She would not have appreciated the Japanese\ninvasion.\n\n\"When do I go to school?\"\n\n\"Next month. You'll have to start East a little early to take your\nexaminations. After that you'll have a free week, so I want you to go up\nthe Hudson and pay a visit.\"\n\n\"To who?\"\n\n\"To Monsignor Darcy, Amory. He wants to see you. He went to Harrow and\nthen to Yale--became a Catholic. I want him to talk to you--I feel he\ncan be such a help--\" She stroked his auburn hair gently. \"Dear Amory,\ndear Amory--\"\n\n\"Dear Beatrice--\"\n\n *****\n\nSo early in September Amory, provided with \"six suits summer underwear,\nsix suits winter underwear, one sweater or T shirt, one jersey, one\novercoat, winter, etc.,\" set out for New England, the land of schools.\n\nThere were Andover and Exeter with their memories of New England\ndead--large, college-like democracies; St. Mark's, Groton, St.\nRegis'--recruited from Boston and the Knickerbocker families of New\nYork; St. Paul's, with its great rinks; Pomfret and St. George's,\nprosperous and well-dressed; Taft and Hotchkiss, which prepared\nthe wealth of the Middle West for social success at Yale; Pawling,\nWestminster, Choate, Kent, and a hundred others; all milling out their\nwell-set-up, conventional, impressive type, year after year; their\nmental stimulus the college entrance exams; their vague purpose set\nforth in a hundred circulars as \"To impart a Thorough Mental, Moral, and\nPhysical Training as a Christian Gentleman, to fit the boy for meeting\nthe problems of his day and generation, and to give a solid foundation\nin the Arts and Sciences.\"\n\nAt St. Regis' Amory stayed three days and took his exams with a scoffing\nconfidence, then doubling back to New York to pay his tutelary visit.\nThe metropolis, barely glimpsed, made little impression on him, except\nfor the sense of cleanliness he drew from the tall white buildings seen\nfrom a Hudson River steamboat in the early morning. Indeed, his mind was\nso crowded with dreams of athletic prowess at school that he considered\nthis visit only as a rather tiresome prelude to the great adventure.\nThis, however, it did not prove to be.\n\nMonsignor Darcy's house was an ancient, rambling structure set on a hill\noverlooking the river, and there lived its owner, between his trips to\nall parts of the Roman-Catholic world, rather like an exiled Stuart king\nwaiting to be called to the rule of his land. Monsignor was forty-four\nthen, and bustling--a trifle too stout for symmetry, with hair the color\nof spun gold, and a brilliant, enveloping personality. When he came into\na room clad in his full purple regalia from thatch to toe, he resembled\na Turner sunset, and attracted both admiration and attention. He had\nwritten two novels: one of them violently anti-Catholic, just before his\nconversion, and five years later another, in which he had attempted\nto turn all his clever jibes against Catholics into even cleverer\ninnuendoes against Episcopalians. He was intensely ritualistic,\nstartlingly dramatic, loved the idea of God enough to be a celibate, and\nrather liked his neighbor.\n\nChildren adored him because he was like a child; youth revelled in his\ncompany because he was still a youth, and couldn't be shocked. In the\nproper land and century he might have been a Richelieu--at present he\nwas a very moral, very religious (if not particularly pious) clergyman,\nmaking a great mystery about pulling rusty wires, and appreciating life\nto the fullest, if not entirely enjoying it.\n\nHe and Amory took to each other at first sight--the jovial, impressive\nprelate who could dazzle an embassy ball, and the green-eyed, intent\nyouth, in his first long trousers, accepted in their own minds a\nrelation of father and son within a half-hour's conversation.\n\n\"My dear boy, I've been waiting to see you for years. Take a big chair\nand we'll have a chat.\"\n\n\"I've just come from school--St. Regis's, you know.\"\n\n\"So your mother says--a remarkable woman; have a cigarette--I'm sure\nyou smoke. Well, if you're like me, you loathe all science and\nmathematics--\"\n\nAmory nodded vehemently.\n\n\"Hate 'em all. Like English and history.\"\n\n\"Of course. You'll hate school for a while, too, but I'm glad you're\ngoing to St. Regis's.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because it's a gentleman's school, and democracy won't hit you so\nearly. You'll find plenty of that in college.\"\n\n\"I want to go to Princeton,\" said Amory. \"I don't know why, but I think\nof all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as\nwearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes.\"\n\nMonsignor chuckled.\n\n\"I'm one, you know.\"\n\n\"Oh, you're different--I think of Princeton as being lazy and\ngood-looking and aristocratic--you know, like a spring day. Harvard\nseems sort of indoors--\"\n\n\"And Yale is November, crisp and energetic,\" finished Monsignor.\n\n\"That's it.\"\n\nThey slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.\n\n\"I was for Bonnie Prince Charlie,\" announced Amory.\n\n\"Of course you were--and for Hannibal--\"\n\n\"Yes, and for the Southern Confederacy.\" He was rather sceptical about\nbeing an Irish patriot--he suspected that being Irish was being somewhat\ncommon--but Monsignor assured him that Ireland was a romantic lost cause\nand Irish people quite charming, and that it should, by all means, be\none of his principal biasses.\n\nAfter a crowded hour which included several more cigarettes, and during\nwhich Monsignor learned, to his surprise but not to his horror, that\nAmory had not been brought up a Catholic, he announced that he had\nanother guest. This turned out to be the Honorable Thornton Hancock, of\nBoston, ex-minister to The Hague, author of an erudite history of the\nMiddle Ages and the last of a distinguished, patriotic, and brilliant\nfamily.\n\n\"He comes here for a rest,\" said Monsignor confidentially, treating\nAmory as a contemporary. \"I act as an escape from the weariness of\nagnosticism, and I think I'm the only man who knows how his staid old\nmind is really at sea and longs for a sturdy spar like the Church to\ncling to.\"\n\nTheir first luncheon was one of the memorable events of Amory's early\nlife. He was quite radiant and gave off a peculiar brightness and\ncharm. Monsignor called out the best that he had thought by question and\nsuggestion, and Amory talked with an ingenious brilliance of a thousand\nimpulses and desires and repulsions and faiths and fears. He and\nMonsignor held the floor, and the older man, with his less receptive,\nless accepting, yet certainly not colder mentality, seemed content to\nlisten and bask in the mellow sunshine that played between these two.\nMonsignor gave the effect of sunlight to many people; Amory gave it in\nhis youth and, to some extent, when he was very much older, but never\nagain was it quite so mutually spontaneous.\n\n\"He's a radiant boy,\" thought Thornton Hancock, who had seen the\nsplendor of two continents and talked with Parnell and Gladstone and\nBismarck--and afterward he added to Monsignor: \"But his education ought\nnot to be intrusted to a school or college.\"\n\nBut for the next four years the best of Amory's intellect was\nconcentrated on matters of popularity, the intricacies of a university\nsocial system and American Society as represented by Biltmore Teas and\nHot Springs golf-links.\n\n... In all, a wonderful week, that saw Amory's mind turned inside out, a\nhundred of his theories confirmed, and his joy of life crystallized to\na thousand ambitions. Not that the conversation was scholastic--heaven\nforbid! Amory had only the vaguest idea as to what Bernard Shaw was--but\nMonsignor made quite as much out of \"The Beloved Vagabond\" and \"Sir\nNigel,\" taking good care that Amory never once felt out of his depth.\n\nBut the trumpets were sounding for Amory's preliminary skirmish with his\nown generation.\n\n\"You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is\nwhere we are not,\" said Monsignor.\n\n\"I _am_ sorry--\"\n\n\"No, you're not. No one person in the world is necessary to you or to\nme.\"\n\n\"Well--\"\n\n\"Good-by.\"\n\n *****\n\nTHE EGOTIST DOWN\n\nAmory's two years at St. Regis', though in turn painful and triumphant,\nhad as little real significance in his own life as the American \"prep\"\nschool, crushed as it is under the heel of the universities, has\nto American life in general. We have no Eton to create the\nself-consciousness of a governing class; we have, instead, clean,\nflaccid and innocuous preparatory schools.\n\nHe went all wrong at the start, was generally considered both conceited\nand arrogant, and universally detested. He played football intensely,\nalternating a reckless brilliancy with a tendency to keep himself as\nsafe from hazard as decency would permit. In a wild panic he backed out\nof a fight with a boy his own size, to a chorus of scorn, and a week\nlater, in desperation, picked a battle with another boy very much\nbigger, from which he emerged badly beaten, but rather proud of himself.\n\nHe was resentful against all those in authority over him, and this,\ncombined with a lazy indifference toward his work, exasperated every\nmaster in school. He grew discouraged and imagined himself a pariah;\ntook to sulking in corners and reading after lights. With a dread of\nbeing alone he attached a few friends, but since they were not among\nthe elite of the school, he used them simply as mirrors of himself,\naudiences before which he might do that posing absolutely essential to\nhim. He was unbearably lonely, desperately unhappy.\n\nThere were some few grains of comfort. Whenever Amory was submerged,\nhis vanity was the last part to go below the surface, so he could still\nenjoy a comfortable glow when \"Wookey-wookey,\" the deaf old housekeeper,\ntold him that he was the best-looking boy she had ever seen. It had\npleased him to be the lightest and youngest man on the first football\nsquad; it pleased him when Doctor Dougall told him at the end of a\nheated conference that he could, if he wished, get the best marks in\nschool. But Doctor Dougall was wrong. It was temperamentally impossible\nfor Amory to get the best marks in school.\n\nMiserable, confined to bounds, unpopular with both faculty and\nstudents--that was Amory's first term. But at Christmas he had returned\nto Minneapolis, tight-lipped and strangely jubilant.\n\n\"Oh, I was sort of fresh at first,\" he told Frog Parker patronizingly,\n\"but I got along fine--lightest man on the squad. You ought to go away\nto school, Froggy. It's great stuff.\"\n\n *****\n\nINCIDENT OF THE WELL-MEANING PROFESSOR\n\nOn the last night of his first term, Mr. Margotson, the senior master,\nsent word to study hall that Amory was to come to his room at nine.\nAmory suspected that advice was forthcoming, but he determined to be\ncourteous, because this Mr. Margotson had been kindly disposed toward\nhim.\n\nHis summoner received him gravely, and motioned him to a chair. He\nhemmed several times and looked consciously kind, as a man will when he\nknows he's on delicate ground.\n\n\"Amory,\" he began. \"I've sent for you on a personal matter.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"I've noticed you this year and I--I like you. I think you have in you\nthe makings of a--a very good man.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Amory managed to articulate. He hated having people talk as\nif he were an admitted failure.\n\n\"But I've noticed,\" continued the older man blindly, \"that you're not\nvery popular with the boys.\"\n\n\"No, sir.\" Amory licked his lips.\n\n\"Ah--I thought you might not understand exactly what it\nwas they--ah--objected to. I'm going to tell you, because I\nbelieve--ah--that when a boy knows his difficulties he's better able to\ncope with them--to conform to what others expect of him.\" He a-hemmed\nagain with delicate reticence, and continued: \"They seem to think that\nyou're--ah--rather too fresh--\"\n\nAmory could stand no more. He rose from his chair, scarcely controlling\nhis voice when he spoke.\n\n\"I know--oh, _don't_ you s'pose I know.\" His voice rose. \"I know what\nthey think; do you s'pose you have to _tell_ me!\" He paused. \"I'm--I've\ngot to go back now--hope I'm not rude--\"\n\nHe left the room hurriedly. In the cool air outside, as he walked to his\nhouse, he exulted in his refusal to be helped.\n\n\"That _damn_ old fool!\" he cried wildly. \"As if I didn't _know!_\"\n\nHe decided, however, that this was a good excuse not to go back to study\nhall that night, so, comfortably couched up in his room, he munched\nNabiscos and finished \"The White Company.\"\n\n *****\n\nINCIDENT OF THE WONDERFUL GIRL\n\nThere was a bright star in February. New York burst upon him on\nWashington's Birthday with the brilliance of a long-anticipated event.\nHis glimpse of it as a vivid whiteness against a deep-blue sky had left\na picture of splendor that rivalled the dream cities in the Arabian\nNights; but this time he saw it by electric light, and romance gleamed\nfrom the chariot-race sign on Broadway and from the women's eyes at the\nAstor, where he and young Paskert from St. Regis' had dinner. When they\nwalked down the aisle of the theatre, greeted by the nervous twanging\nand discord of untuned violins and the sensuous, heavy fragrance of\npaint and powder, he moved in a sphere of epicurean delight. Everything\nenchanted him. The play was \"The Little Millionaire,\" with George M.\nCohan, and there was one stunning young brunette who made him sit with\nbrimming eyes in the ecstasy of watching her dance.\n\n \"Oh--you--wonderful girl,\n What a wonderful girl you are--\"\n\nsang the tenor, and Amory agreed silently, but passionately.\n\n \"All--your--wonderful words\n Thrill me through--\"\n\nThe violins swelled and quavered on the last notes, the girl sank to a\ncrumpled butterfly on the stage, a great burst of clapping filled the\nhouse. Oh, to fall in love like that, to the languorous magic melody of\nsuch a tune!\n\nThe last scene was laid on a roof-garden, and the 'cellos sighed to the\nmusical moon, while light adventure and facile froth-like comedy flitted\nback and forth in the calcium. Amory was on fire to be an habitui of\nroof-gardens, to meet a girl who should look like that--better, that\nvery girl; whose hair would be drenched with golden moonlight, while at\nhis elbow sparkling wine was poured by an unintelligible waiter. When\nthe curtain fell for the last time he gave such a long sigh that the\npeople in front of him twisted around and stared and said loud enough\nfor him to hear:\n\n\"What a _remarkable_-looking boy!\"\n\nThis took his mind off the play, and he wondered if he really did seem\nhandsome to the population of New York.\n\nPaskert and he walked in silence toward their hotel. The former was\nthe first to speak. His uncertain fifteen-year-old voice broke in in a\nmelancholy strain on Amory's musings:\n\n\"I'd marry that girl to-night.\"\n\nThere was no need to ask what girl he referred to.\n\n\"I'd be proud to take her home and introduce her to my people,\"\ncontinued Paskert.\n\nAmory was distinctly impressed. He wished he had said it instead of\nPaskert. It sounded so mature.\n\n\"I wonder about actresses; are they all pretty bad?\"\n\n\"No, _sir_, not by a darn sight,\" said the worldly youth with emphasis,\n\"and I know that girl's as good as gold. I can tell.\"\n\nThey wandered on, mixing in the Broadway crowd, dreaming on the music\nthat eddied out of the cafes. New faces flashed on and off like\nmyriad lights, pale or rouged faces, tired, yet sustained by a weary\nexcitement. Amory watched them in fascination. He was planning his life.\nHe was going to live in New York, and be known at every restaurant and\ncafe, wearing a dress-suit from early evening to early morning, sleeping\naway the dull hours of the forenoon.\n\n\"Yes, _sir_, I'd marry that girl to-night!\"\n\n *****\n\nHEROIC IN GENERAL TONE\n\nOctober of his second and last year at St. Regis' was a high point in\nAmory's memory. The game with Groton was played from three of a snappy,\nexhilarating afternoon far into the crisp autumnal twilight, and Amory\nat quarter-back, exhorting in wild despair, making impossible tackles,\ncalling signals in a voice that had diminished to a hoarse, furious\nwhisper, yet found time to revel in the blood-stained bandage around his\nhead, and the straining, glorious heroism of plunging, crashing bodies\nand aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the\nNovember dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on\nthe prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and\nTed Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will\ninto the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of\ncheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end,\ntwisting, changing pace, straight-arming... falling behind the Groton\ngoal with two men on his legs, in the only touchdown of the game.\n\n *****\n\nTHE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SLICKER\n\nFrom the scoffing superiority of sixth-form year and success Amory\nlooked back with cynical wonder on his status of the year before. He was\nchanged as completely as Amory Blaine could ever be changed. Amory plus\nBeatrice plus two years in Minneapolis--these had been his ingredients\nwhen he entered St. Regis'. But the Minneapolis years were not a thick\nenough overlay to conceal the \"Amory plus Beatrice\" from the ferreting\neyes of a boarding-school, so St. Regis' had very painfully drilled\nBeatrice out of him, and begun to lay down new and more conventional\nplanking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory were\nunconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himself\nchanged. Those qualities for which he had suffered, his moodiness, his\ntendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool, were\nnow taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star\nquarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the St. Regis Tattler:\nit puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating the very\nvanities that had not long ago been contemptible weaknesses.\n\nAfter the football season he slumped into dreamy content. The night\nof the pre-holiday dance he slipped away and went early to bed for the\npleasure of hearing the violin music cross the grass and come surging in\nat his window. Many nights he lay there dreaming awake of secret cafes\nin Mont Martre, where ivory women delved in romantic mysteries with\ndiplomats and soldiers of fortune, while orchestras played Hungarian\nwaltzes and the air was thick and exotic with intrigue and moonlight\nand adventure. In the spring he read \"L'Allegro,\" by request, and was\ninspired to lyrical outpourings on the subject of Arcady and the pipes\nof Pan. He moved his bed so that the sun would wake him at dawn that he\nmight dress and go out to the archaic swing that hung from an apple-tree\nnear the sixth-form house. Seating himself in this he would pump higher\nand higher until he got the effect of swinging into the wide air, into\na fairyland of piping satyrs and nymphs with the faces of fair-haired\ngirls he passed in the streets of Eastchester. As the swing reached its\nhighest point, Arcady really lay just over the brow of a certain hill,\nwhere the brown road dwindled out of sight in a golden dot.\n\nHe read voluminously all spring, the beginning of his eighteenth year:\n\"The Gentleman from Indiana,\" \"The New Arabian Nights,\" \"The Morals\nof Marcus Ordeyne,\" \"The Man Who Was Thursday,\" which he liked without\nunderstanding; \"Stover at Yale,\" that became somewhat of a text-book;\n\"Dombey and Son,\" because he thought he really should read better\nstuff; Robert Chambers, David Graham Phillips, and E. Phillips Oppenheim\ncomplete, and a scattering of Tennyson and Kipling. Of all his class\nwork only \"L'Allegro\" and some quality of rigid clarity in solid\ngeometry stirred his languid interest.\n\nAs June drew near, he felt the need of conversation to formulate his\nown ideas, and, to his surprise, found a co-philosopher in Rahill, the\npresident of the sixth form. In many a talk, on the highroad or lying\nbelly-down along the edge of the baseball diamond, or late at night with\ntheir cigarettes glowing in the dark, they threshed out the questions of\nschool, and there was developed the term \"slicker.\"\n\n\"Got tobacco?\" whispered Rahill one night, putting his head inside the\ndoor five minutes after lights.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"I'm coming in.\"\n\n\"Take a couple of pillows and lie in the window-seat, why don't you.\"\n\nAmory sat up in bed and lit a cigarette while Rahill settled for a\nconversation. Rahill's favorite subject was the respective futures of\nthe sixth form, and Amory never tired of outlining them for his benefit.\n\n\"Ted Converse? 'At's easy. He'll fail his exams, tutor all summer at\nHarstrum's, get into Sheff with about four conditions, and flunk out in\nthe middle of the freshman year. Then he'll go back West and raise hell\nfor a year or so; finally his father will make him go into the paint\nbusiness. He'll marry and have four sons, all bone heads. He'll always\nthink St. Regis's spoiled him, so he'll send his sons to day school in\nPortland. He'll die of locomotor ataxia when he's forty-one, and\nhis wife will give a baptizing stand or whatever you call it to the\nPresbyterian Church, with his name on it--\"\n\n\"Hold up, Amory. That's too darned gloomy. How about yourself?\"\n\n\"I'm in a superior class. You are, too. We're philosophers.\"\n\n\"I'm not.\"\n\n\"Sure you are. You've got a darn good head on you.\" But Amory knew that\nnothing in the abstract, no theory or generality, ever moved Rahill\nuntil he stubbed his toe upon the concrete minutiae of it.\n\n\"Haven't,\" insisted Rahill. \"I let people impose on me here and don't\nget anything out of it. I'm the prey of my friends, damn it--do their\nlessons, get 'em out of trouble, pay 'em stupid summer visits, and\nalways entertain their kid sisters; keep my temper when they get selfish\nand then they think they pay me back by voting for me and telling me I'm\nthe 'big man' of St. Regis's. I want to get where everybody does their\nown work and I can tell people where to go. I'm tired of being nice to\nevery poor fish in school.\"\n\n\"You're not a slicker,\" said Amory suddenly.\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"A slicker.\"\n\n\"What the devil's that?\"\n\n\"Well, it's something that--that--there's a lot of them. You're not one,\nand neither am I, though I am more than you are.\"\n\n\"Who is one? What makes you one?\"\n\nAmory considered.\n\n\"Why--why, I suppose that the _sign_ of it is when a fellow slicks his\nhair back with water.\"\n\n\"Like Carstairs?\"\n\n\"Yes--sure. He's a slicker.\"\n\nThey spent two evenings getting an exact definition. The slicker was\ngood-looking or clean-looking; he had brains, social brains, that is,\nand he used all means on the broad path of honesty to get ahead,\nbe popular, admired, and never in trouble. He dressed well, was\nparticularly neat in appearance, and derived his name from the fact that\nhis hair was inevitably worn short, soaked in water or tonic, parted\nin the middle, and slicked back as the current of fashion dictated. The\nslickers of that year had adopted tortoise-shell spectacles as badges\nof their slickerhood, and this made them so easy to recognize that Amory\nand Rahill never missed one. The slicker seemed distributed through\nschool, always a little wiser and shrewder than his contemporaries,\nmanaging some team or other, and keeping his cleverness carefully\nconcealed.\n\nAmory found the slicker a most valuable classification until his junior\nyear in college, when the outline became so blurred and indeterminate\nthat it had to be subdivided many times, and became only a quality.\nAmory's secret ideal had all the slicker qualifications, but, in\naddition, courage and tremendous brains and talents--also Amory conceded\nhim a bizarre streak that was quite irreconcilable to the slicker\nproper.\n\nThis was a first real break from the hypocrisy of school tradition. The\nslicker was a definite element of success, differing intrinsically from\nthe prep school \"big man.\"\n\n\n \"THE SLICKER\"\n\n 1. Clever sense of social values.\n\n 2. Dresses well. Pretends that dress is superficial--but knows that it isn't.\n\n 3. Goes into such activities as he can shine in.\n\n 4. Gets to college and is, in a worldly way, successful.\n\n 5. Hair slicked.\n\n\n \"THE BIG MAN\"\n\n 1. Inclined to stupidity and unconscious of social values.\n\n 2. Thinks dress is superficial, and is inclined to be\n careless about it.\n\n 3. Goes out for everything from a sense of duty.\n\n 4. Gets to college and has a problematical future. Feels lost\n without his circle, and always says that school days were\n happiest, after all. Goes back to school and makes speeches\n about what St. Regis's boys are doing.\n\n 5. Hair not slicked.\n\nAmory had decided definitely on Princeton, even though he would be the\nonly boy entering that year from St. Regis'. Yale had a romance and\nglamour from the tales of Minneapolis, and St. Regis' men who had been\n\"tapped for Skull and Bones,\" but Princeton drew him most, with\nits atmosphere of bright colors and its alluring reputation as the\npleasantest country club in America. Dwarfed by the menacing college\nexams, Amory's school days drifted into the past. Years afterward, when\nhe went back to St. Regis', he seemed to have forgotten the successes\nof sixth-form year, and to be able to picture himself only as the\nunadjustable boy who had hurried down corridors, jeered at by his rabid\ncontemporaries mad with common sense.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 2. Spires and Gargoyles\n\n\nAt first Amory noticed only the wealth of sunshine creeping across the\nlong, green swards, dancing on the leaded window-panes, and swimming\naround the tops of spires and towers and battlemented walls.\nGradually he realized that he was really walking up University Place,\nself-conscious about his suitcase, developing a new tendency to glare\nstraight ahead when he passed any one. Several times he could have sworn\nthat men turned to look at him critically. He wondered vaguely if there\nwas something the matter with his clothes, and wished he had shaved\nthat morning on the train. He felt unnecessarily stiff and awkward\namong these white-flannelled, bareheaded youths, who must be juniors and\nseniors, judging from the savoir faire with which they strolled.\n\nHe found that 12 University Place was a large, dilapidated mansion, at\npresent apparently uninhabited, though he knew it housed usually a dozen\nfreshmen. After a hurried skirmish with his landlady he sallied out on\na tour of exploration, but he had gone scarcely a block when he became\nhorribly conscious that he must be the only man in town who was wearing\na hat. He returned hurriedly to 12 University, left his derby,\nand, emerging bareheaded, loitered down Nassau Street, stopping to\ninvestigate a display of athletic photographs in a store window,\nincluding a large one of Allenby, the football captain, and next\nattracted by the sign \"Jigger Shop\" over a confectionary window. This\nsounded familiar, so he sauntered in and took a seat on a high stool.\n\n\"Chocolate sundae,\" he told a colored person.\n\n\"Double chocolate jiggah? Anything else?\"\n\n\"Why--yes.\"\n\n\"Bacon bun?\"\n\n\"Why--yes.\"\n\nHe munched four of these, finding them of pleasing savor, and then\nconsumed another double-chocolate jigger before ease descended upon him.\nAfter a cursory inspection of the pillow-cases, leather pennants, and\nGibson Girls that lined the walls, he left, and continued along Nassau\nStreet with his hands in his pockets. Gradually he was learning to\ndistinguish between upper classmen and entering men, even though the\nfreshman cap would not appear until the following Monday. Those who were\ntoo obviously, too nervously at home were freshmen, for as each train\nbrought a new contingent it was immediately absorbed into the hatless,\nwhite-shod, book-laden throng, whose function seemed to be to drift\nendlessly up and down the street, emitting great clouds of smoke\nfrom brand-new pipes. By afternoon Amory realized that now the\nnewest arrivals were taking him for an upper classman, and he tried\nconscientiously to look both pleasantly blasé and casually critical,\nwhich was as near as he could analyze the prevalent facial expression.\n\nAt five o'clock he felt the need of hearing his own voice, so he\nretreated to his house to see if any one else had arrived. Having\nclimbed the rickety stairs he scrutinized his room resignedly,\nconcluding that it was hopeless to attempt any more inspired decoration\nthan class banners and tiger pictures. There was a tap at the door.\n\n\"Come in!\"\n\nA slim face with gray eyes and a humorous smile appeared in the doorway.\n\n\"Got a hammer?\"\n\n\"No--sorry. Maybe Mrs. Twelve, or whatever she goes by, has one.\"\n\nThe stranger advanced into the room.\n\n\"You an inmate of this asylum?\"\n\nAmory nodded.\n\n\"Awful barn for the rent we pay.\"\n\nAmory had to agree that it was.\n\n\"I thought of the campus,\" he said, \"but they say there's so few\nfreshmen that they're lost. Have to sit around and study for something\nto do.\"\n\nThe gray-eyed man decided to introduce himself.\n\n\"My name's Holiday.\"\n\n\"Blaine's my name.\"\n\nThey shook hands with the fashionable low swoop. Amory grinned.\n\n\"Where'd you prep?\"\n\n\"Andover--where did you?\"\n\n\"St. Regis's.\"\n\n\"Oh, did you? I had a cousin there.\"\n\nThey discussed the cousin thoroughly, and then Holiday announced that he\nwas to meet his brother for dinner at six.\n\n\"Come along and have a bite with us.\"\n\n\"All right.\"\n\nAt the Kenilworth Amory met Burne Holiday--he of the gray eyes was\nKerry--and during a limpid meal of thin soup and anaemic vegetables they\nstared at the other freshmen, who sat either in small groups looking\nvery ill at ease, or in large groups seeming very much at home.\n\n\"I hear Commons is pretty bad,\" said Amory.\n\n\"That's the rumor. But you've got to eat there--or pay anyways.\"\n\n\"Crime!\"\n\n\"Imposition!\"\n\n\"Oh, at Princeton you've got to swallow everything the first year. It's\nlike a damned prep school.\"\n\nAmory agreed.\n\n\"Lot of pep, though,\" he insisted. \"I wouldn't have gone to Yale for a\nmillion.\"\n\n\"Me either.\"\n\n\"You going out for anything?\" inquired Amory of the elder brother.\n\n\"Not me--Burne here is going out for the Prince--the Daily Princetonian,\nyou know.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know.\"\n\n\"You going out for anything?\"\n\n\"Why--yes. I'm going to take a whack at freshman football.\"\n\n\"Play at St. Regis's?\"\n\n\"Some,\" admitted Amory depreciatingly, \"but I'm getting so damned thin.\"\n\n\"You're not thin.\"\n\n\"Well, I used to be stocky last fall.\"\n\n\"Oh!\"\n\nAfter supper they attended the movies, where Amory was fascinated by the\nglib comments of a man in front of him, as well as by the wild yelling\nand shouting.\n\n\"Yoho!\"\n\n\"Oh, honey-baby--you're so big and strong, but oh, so gentle!\"\n\n\"Clinch!\"\n\n\"Oh, Clinch!\"\n\n\"Kiss her, kiss 'at lady, quick!\"\n\n\"Oh-h-h--!\"\n\nA group began whistling \"By the Sea,\" and the audience took it up\nnoisily. This was followed by an indistinguishable song that included\nmuch stamping and then by an endless, incoherent dirge.\n\n\n \"Oh-h-h-h-h\n She works in a Jam Factoree\n And--that-may-be-all-right\n But you can't-fool-me\n For I know--DAMN--WELL\n That she DON'T-make-jam-all-night!\n Oh-h-h-h!\"\n\nAs they pushed out, giving and receiving curious impersonal glances,\nAmory decided that he liked the movies, wanted to enjoy them as the row\nof upper classmen in front had enjoyed them, with their arms along the\nbacks of the seats, their comments Gaelic and caustic, their attitude a\nmixture of critical wit and tolerant amusement.\n\n\"Want a sundae--I mean a jigger?\" asked Kerry.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nThey suppered heavily and then, still sauntering, eased back to 12.\n\n\"Wonderful night.\"\n\n\"It's a whiz.\"\n\n\"You men going to unpack?\"\n\n\"Guess so. Come on, Burne.\"\n\nAmory decided to sit for a while on the front steps, so he bade them\ngood night.\n\nThe great tapestries of trees had darkened to ghosts back at the last\nedge of twilight. The early moon had drenched the arches with pale blue,\nand, weaving over the night, in and out of the gossamer rifts of moon,\nswept a song, a song with more than a hint of sadness, infinitely\ntransient, infinitely regretful.\n\nHe remembered that an alumnus of the nineties had told him of one of\nBooth Tarkington's amusements: standing in mid-campus in the small hours\nand singing tenor songs to the stars, arousing mingled emotions in the\ncouched undergraduates according to the sentiment of their moods.\n\nNow, far down the shadowy line of University Place a white-clad phalanx\nbroke the gloom, and marching figures, white-shirted, white-trousered,\nswung rhythmically up the street, with linked arms and heads thrown\nback:\n\n \"Going back--going back,\n Going--back--to--Nas-sau--Hall,\n Going back--going back--\n To the--Best--Old--Place--of--All.\n Going back--going back,\n From all--this--earth-ly--ball,\n We'll--clear--the--track--as--we--go--back--\n Going--back--to--Nas-sau--Hall!\"\n\nAmory closed his eyes as the ghostly procession drew near. The song\nsoared so high that all dropped out except the tenors, who bore the\nmelody triumphantly past the danger-point and relinquished it to the\nfantastic chorus. Then Amory opened his eyes, half afraid that sight\nwould spoil the rich illusion of harmony.\n\nHe sighed eagerly. There at the head of the white platoon marched\nAllenby, the football captain, slim and defiant, as if aware that this\nyear the hopes of the college rested on him, that his hundred-and-sixty\npounds were expected to dodge to victory through the heavy blue and\ncrimson lines.\n\nFascinated, Amory watched each rank of linked arms as it came abreast,\nthe faces indistinct above the polo shirts, the voices blent in a paean\nof triumph--and then the procession passed through shadowy Campbell\nArch, and the voices grew fainter as it wound eastward over the campus.\n\nThe minutes passed and Amory sat there very quietly. He regretted the\nrule that would forbid freshmen to be outdoors after curfew, for he\nwanted to ramble through the shadowy scented lanes, where Witherspoon\nbrooded like a dark mother over Whig and Clio, her Attic children, where\nthe black Gothic snake of Little curled down to Cuyler and Patton, these\nin turn flinging the mystery out over the placid slope rolling to the\nlake.\n\n *****\n\nPrinceton of the daytime filtered slowly into his consciousness--West\nand Reunion, redolent of the sixties, Seventy-nine Hall, brick-red and\narrogant, Upper and Lower Pyne, aristocratic Elizabethan ladies not\nquite content to live among shopkeepers, and, topping all, climbing with\nclear blue aspiration, the great dreaming spires of Holder and Cleveland\ntowers.\n\nFrom the first he loved Princeton--its lazy beauty, its half-grasped\nsignificance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome,\nprosperous big-game crowds, and under it all the air of struggle that\npervaded his class. From the day when, wild-eyed and exhausted, the\njerseyed freshmen sat in the gymnasium and elected some one from Hill\nSchool class president, a Lawrenceville celebrity vice-president, a\nhockey star from St. Paul's secretary, up until the end of sophomore\nyear it never ceased, that breathless social system, that worship,\nseldom named, never really admitted, of the bogey \"Big Man.\"\n\nFirst it was schools, and Amory, alone from St. Regis', watched the\ncrowds form and widen and form again; St. Paul's, Hill, Pomfret, eating\nat certain tacitly reserved tables in Commons, dressing in their own\ncorners of the gymnasium, and drawing unconsciously about them a barrier\nof the slightly less important but socially ambitious to protect them\nfrom the friendly, rather puzzled high-school element. From the\nmoment he realized this Amory resented social barriers as artificial\ndistinctions made by the strong to bolster up their weak retainers and\nkeep out the almost strong.\n\nHaving decided to be one of the gods of the class, he reported\nfor freshman football practice, but in the second week, playing\nquarter-back, already paragraphed in corners of the Princetonian, he\nwrenched his knee seriously enough to put him out for the rest of the\nseason. This forced him to retire and consider the situation.\n\n\"12 Univee\" housed a dozen miscellaneous question-marks. There were\nthree or four inconspicuous and quite startled boys from Lawrenceville,\ntwo amateur wild men from a New York private school (Kerry Holiday\nchristened them the \"plebeian drunks\"), a Jewish youth, also from New\nYork, and, as compensation for Amory, the two Holidays, to whom he took\nan instant fancy.\n\nThe Holidays were rumored twins, but really the dark-haired one, Kerry,\nwas a year older than his blond brother, Burne. Kerry was tall, with\nhumorous gray eyes, and a sudden, attractive smile; he became at once\nthe mentor of the house, reaper of ears that grew too high, censor of\nconceit, vendor of rare, satirical humor. Amory spread the table of\ntheir future friendship with all his ideas of what college should and\ndid mean. Kerry, not inclined as yet to take things seriously, chided\nhim gently for being curious at this inopportune time about the\nintricacies of the social system, but liked him and was both interested\nand amused.\n\nBurne, fair-haired, silent, and intent, appeared in the house only as a\nbusy apparition, gliding in quietly at night and off again in the\nearly morning to get up his work in the library--he was out for the\nPrincetonian, competing furiously against forty others for the coveted\nfirst place. In December he came down with diphtheria, and some one\nelse won the competition, but, returning to college in February,\nhe dauntlessly went after the prize again. Necessarily, Amory's\nacquaintance with him was in the way of three-minute chats, walking\nto and from lectures, so he failed to penetrate Burne's one absorbing\ninterest and find what lay beneath it.\n\nAmory was far from contented. He missed the place he had won at St.\nRegis', the being known and admired, yet Princeton stimulated him, and\nthere were many things ahead calculated to arouse the Machiavelli latent\nin him, could he but insert a wedge. The upper-class clubs, concerning\nwhich he had pumped a reluctant graduate during the previous summer,\nexcited his curiosity: Ivy, detached and breathlessly aristocratic;\nCottage, an impressive mélange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressed\nphilanderers; Tiger Inn, broad-shouldered and athletic, vitalized by\nan honest elaboration of prep-school standards; Cap and Gown,\nanti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful; flamboyant\nColonial; literary Quadrangle; and the dozen others, varying in age and\nposition.\n\nAnything which brought an under classman into too glaring a light was\nlabelled with the damning brand of \"running it out.\" The movies thrived\non caustic comments, but the men who made them were generally running\nit out; talking of clubs was running it out; standing for anything\nvery strongly, as, for instance, drinking parties or teetotalling,\nwas running it out; in short, being personally conspicuous was not\ntolerated, and the influential man was the non-committal man, until at\nclub elections in sophomore year every one should be sewed up in some\nbag for the rest of his college career.\n\nAmory found that writing for the Nassau Literary Magazine would get him\nnothing, but that being on the board of the Daily Princetonian would\nget any one a good deal. His vague desire to do immortal acting with\nthe English Dramatic Association faded out when he found that the most\ningenious brains and talents were concentrated upon the Triangle Club, a\nmusical comedy organization that every year took a great Christmas trip.\nIn the meanwhile, feeling strangely alone and restless in Commons, with\nnew desires and ambitions stirring in his mind, he let the first term go\nby between an envy of the embryo successes and a puzzled fretting with\nKerry as to why they were not accepted immediately among the elite of\nthe class.\n\nMany afternoons they lounged in the windows of 12 Univee and watched\nthe class pass to and from Commons, noting satellites already attaching\nthemselves to the more prominent, watching the lonely grind with his\nhurried step and downcast eye, envying the happy security of the big\nschool groups.\n\n\"We're the damned middle class, that's what!\" he complained to Kerry one\nday as he lay stretched out on the sofa, consuming a family of Fatimas\nwith contemplative precision.\n\n\"Well, why not? We came to Princeton so we could feel that way toward\nthe small colleges--have it on 'em, more self-confidence, dress better,\ncut a swathe--\"\n\n\"Oh, it isn't that I mind the glittering caste system,\" admitted Amory.\n\"I like having a bunch of hot cats on top, but gosh, Kerry, I've got to\nbe one of them.\"\n\n\"But just now, Amory, you're only a sweaty bourgeois.\"\n\nAmory lay for a moment without speaking.\n\n\"I won't be--long,\" he said finally. \"But I hate to get anywhere by\nworking for it. I'll show the marks, don't you know.\"\n\n\"Honorable scars.\" Kerry craned his neck suddenly at the street.\n\"There's Langueduc, if you want to see what he looks like--and Humbird\njust behind.\"\n\nAmory rose dynamically and sought the windows.\n\n\"Oh,\" he said, scrutinizing these worthies, \"Humbird looks like a\nknock-out, but this Langueduc--he's the rugged type, isn't he? I\ndistrust that sort. All diamonds look big in the rough.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Kerry, as the excitement subsided, \"you're a literary\ngenius. It's up to you.\"\n\n\"I wonder\"--Amory paused--\"if I could be. I honestly think so sometimes.\nThat sounds like the devil, and I wouldn't say it to anybody except\nyou.\"\n\n\"Well--go ahead. Let your hair grow and write poems like this guy\nD'Invilliers in the Lit.\"\n\nAmory reached lazily at a pile of magazines on the table.\n\n\"Read his latest effort?\"\n\n\"Never miss 'em. They're rare.\"\n\nAmory glanced through the issue.\n\n\"Hello!\" he said in surprise, \"he's a freshman, isn't he?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Listen to this! My God!\n\n\n \"'A serving lady speaks:\n Black velvet trails its folds over the day,\n White tapers, prisoned in their silver frames,\n Wave their thin flames like shadows in the wind,\n Pia, Pompia, come--come away--'\n\n\n\"Now, what the devil does that mean?\"\n\n\"It's a pantry scene.\"\n\n\n \"'Her toes are stiffened like a stork's in flight;\n She's laid upon her bed, on the white sheets,\n Her hands pressed on her smooth bust like a saint,\n Bella Cunizza, come into the light!'\n\n\n\"My gosh, Kerry, what in hell is it all about? I swear I don't get him\nat all, and I'm a literary bird myself.\"\n\n\"It's pretty tricky,\" said Kerry, \"only you've got to think of hearses\nand stale milk when you read it. That isn't as pash as some of them.\"\n\nAmory tossed the magazine on the table.\n\n\"Well,\" he sighed, \"I sure am up in the air. I know I'm not a regular\nfellow, yet I loathe anybody else that isn't. I can't decide whether to\ncultivate my mind and be a great dramatist, or to thumb my nose at the\nGolden Treasury and be a Princeton slicker.\"\n\n\"Why decide?\" suggested Kerry. \"Better drift, like me. I'm going to sail\ninto prominence on Burne's coat-tails.\"\n\n\"I can't drift--I want to be interested. I want to pull strings, even\nfor somebody else, or be Princetonian chairman or Triangle president. I\nwant to be admired, Kerry.\"\n\n\"You're thinking too much about yourself.\"\n\nAmory sat up at this.\n\n\"No. I'm thinking about you, too. We've got to get out and mix around\nthe class right now, when it's fun to be a snob. I'd like to bring a\nsardine to the prom in June, for instance, but I wouldn't do it unless\nI could be damn debonaire about it--introduce her to all the prize\nparlor-snakes, and the football captain, and all that simple stuff.\"\n\n\"Amory,\" said Kerry impatiently, \"you're just going around in a circle.\nIf you want to be prominent, get out and try for something; if you\ndon't, just take it easy.\" He yawned. \"Come on, let's let the smoke\ndrift off. We'll go down and watch football practice.\"\n\n *****\n\nAmory gradually accepted this point of view, decided that next fall\nwould inaugurate his career, and relinquished himself to watching Kerry\nextract joy from 12 Univee.\n\nThey filled the Jewish youth's bed with lemon pie; they put out the gas\nall over the house every night by blowing into the jet in Amory's room,\nto the bewilderment of Mrs. Twelve and the local plumber; they set up\nthe effects of the plebeian drunks--pictures, books, and furniture--in\nthe bathroom, to the confusion of the pair, who hazily discovered\nthe transposition on their return from a Trenton spree; they were\ndisappointed beyond measure when the plebeian drunks decided to take it\nas a joke; they played red-dog and twenty-one and jackpot from dinner\nto dawn, and on the occasion of one man's birthday persuaded him to buy\nsufficient champagne for a hilarious celebration. The donor of the party\nhaving remained sober, Kerry and Amory accidentally dropped him down two\nflights of stairs and called, shame-faced and penitent, at the infirmary\nall the following week.\n\n\"Say, who are all these women?\" demanded Kerry one day, protesting\nat the size of Amory's mail. \"I've been looking at the postmarks\nlately--Farmington and Dobbs and Westover and Dana Hall--what's the\nidea?\"\n\nAmory grinned.\n\n\"All from the Twin Cities.\" He named them off. \"There's Marylyn De\nWitt--she's pretty, got a car of her own and that's damn convenient;\nthere's Sally Weatherby--she's getting too fat; there's Myra St. Claire,\nshe's an old flame, easy to kiss if you like it--\"\n\n\"What line do you throw 'em?\" demanded Kerry. \"I've tried everything,\nand the mad wags aren't even afraid of me.\"\n\n\"You're the 'nice boy' type,\" suggested Amory.\n\n\"That's just it. Mother always feels the girl is safe if she's with me.\nHonestly, it's annoying. If I start to hold somebody's hand, they laugh\nat me, and let me, just as if it wasn't part of them. As soon as I get\nhold of a hand they sort of disconnect it from the rest of them.\"\n\n\"Sulk,\" suggested Amory. \"Tell 'em you're wild and have 'em reform\nyou--go home furious--come back in half an hour--startle 'em.\"\n\nKerry shook his head.\n\n\"No chance. I wrote a St. Timothy girl a really loving letter last year.\nIn one place I got rattled and said: 'My God, how I love you!' She took\na nail scissors, clipped out the 'My God' and showed the rest of the\nletter all over school. Doesn't work at all. I'm just 'good old Kerry'\nand all that rot.\"\n\nAmory smiled and tried to picture himself as \"good old Amory.\" He failed\ncompletely.\n\nFebruary dripped snow and rain, the cyclonic freshman mid-years passed,\nand life in 12 Univee continued interesting if not purposeful. Once a\nday Amory indulged in a club sandwich, cornflakes, and Julienne potatoes\nat \"Joe's,\" accompanied usually by Kerry or Alec Connage. The latter was\na quiet, rather aloof slicker from Hotchkiss, who lived next door and\nshared the same enforced singleness as Amory, due to the fact that\nhis entire class had gone to Yale. \"Joe's\" was unaesthetic and faintly\nunsanitary, but a limitless charge account could be opened there, a\nconvenience that Amory appreciated. His father had been experimenting\nwith mining stocks and, in consequence, his allowance, while liberal,\nwas not at all what he had expected.\n\n\"Joe's\" had the additional advantage of seclusion from curious\nupper-class eyes, so at four each afternoon Amory, accompanied by friend\nor book, went up to experiment with his digestion. One day in March,\nfinding that all the tables were occupied, he slipped into a chair\nopposite a freshman who bent intently over a book at the last table.\nThey nodded briefly. For twenty minutes Amory sat consuming bacon buns\nand reading \"Mrs. Warren's Profession\" (he had discovered Shaw quite\nby accident while browsing in the library during mid-years); the other\nfreshman, also intent on his volume, meanwhile did away with a trio of\nchocolate malted milks.\n\nBy and by Amory's eyes wandered curiously to his fellow-luncher's book.\nHe spelled out the name and title upside down--\"Marpessa,\" by Stephen\nPhillips. This meant nothing to him, his metrical education having been\nconfined to such Sunday classics as \"Come into the Garden, Maude,\" and\nwhat morsels of Shakespeare and Milton had been recently forced upon\nhim.\n\nMoved to address his vis-a-vis, he simulated interest in his book for a\nmoment, and then exclaimed aloud as if involuntarily:\n\n\"Ha! Great stuff!\"\n\nThe other freshman looked up and Amory registered artificial\nembarrassment.\n\n\"Are you referring to your bacon buns?\" His cracked, kindly voice\nwent well with the large spectacles and the impression of a voluminous\nkeenness that he gave.\n\n\"No,\" Amory answered. \"I was referring to Bernard Shaw.\" He turned the\nbook around in explanation.\n\n\"I've never read any Shaw. I've always meant to.\" The boy paused and\nthen continued: \"Did you ever read Stephen Phillips, or do you like\npoetry?\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" Amory affirmed eagerly. \"I've never read much of\nPhillips, though.\" (He had never heard of any Phillips except the late\nDavid Graham.)\n\n\"It's pretty fair, I think. Of course he's a Victorian.\" They sallied\ninto a discussion of poetry, in the course of which they introduced\nthemselves, and Amory's companion proved to be none other than \"that\nawful highbrow, Thomas Parke D'Invilliers,\" who signed the passionate\nlove-poems in the Lit. He was, perhaps, nineteen, with stooped\nshoulders, pale blue eyes, and, as Amory could tell from his general\nappearance, without much conception of social competition and such\nphenomena of absorbing interest. Still, he liked books, and it seemed\nforever since Amory had met any one who did; if only that St. Paul's\ncrowd at the next table would not mistake _him_ for a bird, too, he\nwould enjoy the encounter tremendously. They didn't seem to be noticing,\nso he let himself go, discussed books by the dozens--books he had read,\nread about, books he had never heard of, rattling off lists of titles\nwith the facility of a Brentano's clerk. D'Invilliers was partially\ntaken in and wholly delighted. In a good-natured way he had almost\ndecided that Princeton was one part deadly Philistines and one part\ndeadly grinds, and to find a person who could mention Keats without\nstammering, yet evidently washed his hands, was rather a treat.\n\n\"Ever read any Oscar Wilde?\" he asked.\n\n\"No. Who wrote it?\"\n\n\"It's a man--don't you know?\"\n\n\"Oh, surely.\" A faint chord was struck in Amory's memory. \"Wasn't the\ncomic opera, 'Patience,' written about him?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's the fella. I've just finished a book of his, 'The Picture\nof Dorian Gray,' and I certainly wish you'd read it. You'd like it. You\ncan borrow it if you want to.\"\n\n\"Why, I'd like it a lot--thanks.\"\n\n\"Don't you want to come up to the room? I've got a few other books.\"\n\nAmory hesitated, glanced at the St. Paul's group--one of them was the\nmagnificent, exquisite Humbird--and he considered how determinate the\naddition of this friend would be. He never got to the stage of making\nthem and getting rid of them--he was not hard enough for that--so he\nmeasured Thomas Parke D'Invilliers' undoubted attractions and value\nagainst the menace of cold eyes behind tortoise-rimmed spectacles that\nhe fancied glared from the next table.\n\n\"Yes, I'll go.\"\n\nSo he found \"Dorian Gray\" and the \"Mystic and Somber Dolores\" and the\n\"Belle Dame sans Merci\"; for a month was keen on naught else. The world\nbecame pale and interesting, and he tried hard to look at Princeton\nthrough the satiated eyes of Oscar Wilde and Swinburne--or \"Fingal\nO'Flaherty\" and \"Algernon Charles,\" as he called them in precieuse jest.\nHe read enormously every night--Shaw, Chesterton, Barrie, Pinero, Yeats,\nSynge, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, Keats, Sudermann, Robert Hugh\nBenson, the Savoy Operas--just a heterogeneous mixture, for he suddenly\ndiscovered that he had read nothing for years.\n\nTom D'Invilliers became at first an occasion rather than a friend. Amory\nsaw him about once a week, and together they gilded the ceiling of\nTom's room and decorated the walls with imitation tapestry, bought at\nan auction, tall candlesticks and figured curtains. Amory liked him for\nbeing clever and literary without effeminacy or affectation. In fact,\nAmory did most of the strutting and tried painfully to make every remark\nan epigram, than which, if one is content with ostensible epigrams,\nthere are many feats harder. 12 Univee was amused. Kerry read \"Dorian\nGray\" and simulated Lord Henry, following Amory about, addressing him\nas \"Dorian\" and pretending to encourage in him wicked fancies and\nattenuated tendencies to ennui. When he carried it into Commons, to the\namazement of the others at table, Amory became furiously embarrassed,\nand after that made epigrams only before D'Invilliers or a convenient\nmirror.\n\nOne day Tom and Amory tried reciting their own and Lord Dunsany's poems\nto the music of Kerry's graphophone.\n\n\"Chant!\" cried Tom. \"Don't recite! Chant!\"\n\nAmory, who was performing, looked annoyed, and claimed that he needed\na record with less piano in it. Kerry thereupon rolled on the floor in\nstifled laughter.\n\n\"Put on 'Hearts and Flowers'!\" he howled. \"Oh, my Lord, I'm going to\ncast a kitten.\"\n\n\"Shut off the damn graphophone,\" Amory cried, rather red in the face.\n\"I'm not giving an exhibition.\"\n\nIn the meanwhile Amory delicately kept trying to awaken a sense of the\nsocial system in D'Invilliers, for he knew that this poet was really\nmore conventional than he, and needed merely watered hair, a smaller\nrange of conversation, and a darker brown hat to become quite regular.\nBut the liturgy of Livingstone collars and dark ties fell on heedless\nears; in fact D'Invilliers faintly resented his efforts; so Amory\nconfined himself to calls once a week, and brought him occasionally to\n12 Univee. This caused mild titters among the other freshmen, who called\nthem \"Doctor Johnson and Boswell.\"\n\nAlec Connage, another frequent visitor, liked him in a vague way, but\nwas afraid of him as a highbrow. Kerry, who saw through his poetic\npatter to the solid, almost respectable depths within, was immensely\namused and would have him recite poetry by the hour, while he lay with\nclosed eyes on Amory's sofa and listened:\n\n \"Asleep or waking is it? for her neck\n Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck\n Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;\n Soft and stung softly--fairer for a fleck...\"\n\n\"That's good,\" Kerry would say softly. \"It pleases the elder Holiday.\nThat's a great poet, I guess.\" Tom, delighted at an audience, would\nramble through the \"Poems and Ballades\" until Kerry and Amory knew them\nalmost as well as he.\n\nAmory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the\nbig estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the\nartificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willows.\nMay came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered the\ncampus at all hours through starlight and rain.\n\n *****\n\nA DAMP SYMBOLIC INTERLUDE\n\nThe night mist fell. From the moon it rolled, clustered about the spires\nand towers, and then settled below them, so that the dreaming peaks were\nstill in lofty aspiration toward the sky. Figures that dotted the\nday like ants now brushed along as shadowy ghosts, in and out of\nthe foreground. The Gothic halls and cloisters were infinitely more\nmysterious as they loomed suddenly out of the darkness, outlined each by\nmyriad faint squares of yellow light. Indefinitely from somewhere a bell\nboomed the quarter-hour, and Amory, pausing by the sun-dial, stretched\nhimself out full length on the damp grass. The cool bathed his eyes and\nslowed the flight of time--time that had crept so insidiously through\nthe lazy April afternoons, seemed so intangible in the long spring\ntwilights. Evening after evening the senior singing had drifted over the\ncampus in melancholy beauty, and through the shell of his undergraduate\nconsciousness had broken a deep and reverent devotion to the gray walls\nand Gothic peaks and all they symbolized as warehouses of dead ages.\n\nThe tower that in view of his window sprang upward, grew into a spire,\nyearning higher until its uppermost tip was half invisible against\nthe morning skies, gave him the first sense of the transiency and\nunimportance of the campus figures except as holders of the apostolic\nsuccession. He liked knowing that Gothic architecture, with its upward\ntrend, was peculiarly appropriate to universities, and the idea became\npersonal to him. The silent stretches of green, the quiet halls with\nan occasional late-burning scholastic light held his imagination in\na strong grasp, and the chastity of the spire became a symbol of this\nperception.\n\n\"Damn it all,\" he whispered aloud, wetting his hands in the damp and\nrunning them through his hair. \"Next year I work!\" Yet he knew that\nwhere now the spirit of spires and towers made him dreamily acquiescent,\nit would then overawe him. Where now he realized only his own\ninconsequence, effort would make him aware of his own impotency and\ninsufficiency.\n\nThe college dreamed on--awake. He felt a nervous excitement that might\nhave been the very throb of its slow heart. It was a stream where he was\nto throw a stone whose faint ripple would be vanishing almost as it left\nhis hand. As yet he had given nothing, he had taken nothing.\n\nA belated freshman, his oilskin slicker rasping loudly, slushed along\nthe soft path. A voice from somewhere called the inevitable formula,\n\"Stick out your head!\" below an unseen window. A hundred little sounds\nof the current drifting on under the fog pressed in finally on his\nconsciousness.\n\n\"Oh, God!\" he cried suddenly, and started at the sound of his voice\nin the stillness. The rain dripped on. A minute longer he lay without\nmoving, his hands clinched. Then he sprang to his feet and gave his\nclothes a tentative pat.\n\n\"I'm very damn wet!\" he said aloud to the sun-dial.\n\n *****\n\nHISTORICAL\n\nThe war began in the summer following his freshman year. Beyond a\nsporting interest in the German dash for Paris the whole affair failed\neither to thrill or interest him. With the attitude he might have held\ntoward an amusing melodrama he hoped it would be long and bloody. If it\nhad not continued he would have felt like an irate ticket-holder at a\nprize-fight where the principals refused to mix it up.\n\nThat was his total reaction.\n\n *****\n\n\"HA-HA HORTENSE!\"\n\n\"All right, ponies!\"\n\n\"Shake it up!\"\n\n\"Hey, ponies--how about easing up on that crap game and shaking a mean\nhip?\"\n\n\"Hey, _ponies!_\"\n\nThe coach fumed helplessly, the Triangle Club president, glowering\nwith anxiety, varied between furious bursts of authority and fits of\ntemperamental lassitude, when he sat spiritless and wondered how the\ndevil the show was ever going on tour by Christmas.\n\n\"All right. We'll take the pirate song.\"\n\nThe ponies took last drags at their cigarettes and slumped into place;\nthe leading lady rushed into the foreground, setting his hands and feet\nin an atmospheric mince; and as the coach clapped and stamped and tumped\nand da-da'd, they hashed out a dance.\n\nA great, seething ant-hill was the Triangle Club. It gave a musical\ncomedy every year, travelling with cast, chorus, orchestra, and scenery\nall through Christmas vacation. The play and music were the work\nof undergraduates, and the club itself was the most influential of\ninstitutions, over three hundred men competing for it every year.\n\nAmory, after an easy victory in the first sophomore Princetonian\ncompetition, stepped into a vacancy of the cast as Boiling Oil, a Pirate\nLieutenant. Every night for the last week they had rehearsed \"Ha-Ha\nHortense!\" in the Casino, from two in the afternoon until eight in the\nmorning, sustained by dark and powerful coffee, and sleeping in\nlectures through the interim. A rare scene, the Casino. A big, barnlike\nauditorium, dotted with boys as girls, boys as pirates, boys as babies;\nthe scenery in course of being violently set up; the spotlight man\nrehearsing by throwing weird shafts into angry eyes; over all the\nconstant tuning of the orchestra or the cheerful tumpty-tump of a\nTriangle tune. The boy who writes the lyrics stands in the corner,\nbiting a pencil, with twenty minutes to think of an encore; the business\nmanager argues with the secretary as to how much money can be spent\non \"those damn milkmaid costumes\"; the old graduate, president in\nninety-eight, perches on a box and thinks how much simpler it was in his\nday.\n\nHow a Triangle show ever got off was a mystery, but it was a riotous\nmystery, anyway, whether or not one did enough service to wear a little\ngold Triangle on his watch-chain. \"Ha-Ha Hortense!\" was written over\nsix times and had the names of nine collaborators on the programme. All\nTriangle shows started by being \"something different--not just a regular\nmusical comedy,\" but when the several authors, the president, the coach\nand the faculty committee finished with it, there remained just the old\nreliable Triangle show with the old reliable jokes and the star comedian\nwho got expelled or sick or something just before the trip, and the\ndark-whiskered man in the pony-ballet, who \"absolutely won't shave twice\na day, doggone it!\"\n\nThere was one brilliant place in \"Ha-Ha Hortense!\" It is a Princeton\ntradition that whenever a Yale man who is a member of the widely\nadvertised \"Skull and Bones\" hears the sacred name mentioned, he must\nleave the room. It is also a tradition that the members are invariably\nsuccessful in later life, amassing fortunes or votes or coupons or\nwhatever they choose to amass. Therefore, at each performance of \"Ha-Ha\nHortense!\" half-a-dozen seats were kept from sale and occupied by six\nof the worst-looking vagabonds that could be hired from the streets,\nfurther touched up by the Triangle make-up man. At the moment in the\nshow where Firebrand, the Pirate Chief, pointed at his black flag and\nsaid, \"I am a Yale graduate--note my Skull and Bones!\"--at this very\nmoment the six vagabonds were instructed to rise _conspicuously_ and\nleave the theatre with looks of deep melancholy and an injured dignity.\nIt was claimed though never proved that on one occasion the hired Elis\nwere swelled by one of the real thing.\n\nThey played through vacation to the fashionable of eight cities. Amory\nliked Louisville and Memphis best: these knew how to meet strangers,\nfurnished extraordinary punch, and flaunted an astonishing array\nof feminine beauty. Chicago he approved for a certain verve that\ntranscended its loud accent--however, it was a Yale town, and as the\nYale Glee Club was expected in a week the Triangle received only divided\nhomage. In Baltimore, Princeton was at home, and every one fell in love.\nThere was a proper consumption of strong waters all along the line; one\nman invariably went on the stage highly stimulated, claiming that his\nparticular interpretation of the part required it. There were three\nprivate cars; however, no one slept except in the third car, which\nwas called the \"animal car,\" and where were herded the spectacled\nwind-jammers of the orchestra. Everything was so hurried that there\nwas no time to be bored, but when they arrived in Philadelphia, with\nvacation nearly over, there was rest in getting out of the heavy\natmosphere of flowers and grease-paint, and the ponies took off their\ncorsets with abdominal pains and sighs of relief.\n\nWhen the disbanding came, Amory set out post haste for Minneapolis, for\nSally Weatherby's cousin, Isabelle Borge, was coming to spend the winter\nin Minneapolis while her parents went abroad. He remembered Isabelle\nonly as a little girl with whom he had played sometimes when he first\nwent to Minneapolis. She had gone to Baltimore to live--but since then\nshe had developed a past.\n\nAmory was in full stride, confident, nervous, and jubilant. Scurrying\nback to Minneapolis to see a girl he had known as a child seemed the\ninteresting and romantic thing to do, so without compunction he wired\nhis mother not to expect him... sat in the train, and thought about\nhimself for thirty-six hours.\n\n *****\n\n\"PETTING\"\n\nOn the Triangle trip Amory had come into constant contact with that\ngreat current American phenomenon, the \"petting party.\"\n\nNone of the Victorian mothers--and most of the mothers were\nVictorian--had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to\nbe kissed. \"Servant-girls are that way,\" says Mrs. Huston-Carmelite to\nher popular daughter. \"They are kissed first and proposed to afterward.\"\n\nBut the Popular Daughter becomes engaged every six months between\nsixteen and twenty-two, when she arranges a match with young Hambell, of\nCambell & Hambell, who fatuously considers himself her first love, and\nbetween engagements the P. D. (she is selected by the cut-in system at\ndances, which favors the survival of the fittest) has other sentimental\nlast kisses in the moonlight, or the firelight, or the outer darkness.\n\nAmory saw girls doing things that even in his memory would have been\nimpossible: eating three-o'clock, after-dance suppers in impossible\ncafes, talking of every side of life with an air half of earnestness,\nhalf of mockery, yet with a furtive excitement that Amory considered\nstood for a real moral let-down. But he never realized how wide-spread\nit was until he saw the cities between New York and Chicago as one vast\njuvenile intrigue.\n\nAfternoon at the Plaza, with winter twilight hovering outside and faint\ndrums down-stairs... they strut and fret in the lobby, taking another\ncocktail, scrupulously attired and waiting. Then the swinging doors\nrevolve and three bundles of fur mince in. The theatre comes afterward;\nthen a table at the Midnight Frolic--of course, mother will be along\nthere, but she will serve only to make things more secretive and\nbrilliant as she sits in solitary state at the deserted table and thinks\nsuch entertainments as this are not half so bad as they are painted,\nonly rather wearying. But the P. D. is in love again... it was odd,\nwasn't it?--that though there was so much room left in the taxi the P.\nD. and the boy from Williams were somehow crowded out and had to go in a\nseparate car. Odd! Didn't you notice how flushed the P. D. was when she\narrived just seven minutes late? But the P. D. \"gets away with it.\"\n\nThe \"belle\" had become the \"flirt,\" the \"flirt\" had become the \"baby\nvamp.\" The \"belle\" had five or six callers every afternoon. If the P.\nD., by some strange accident, has two, it is made pretty uncomfortable\nfor the one who hasn't a date with her. The \"belle\" was surrounded by\na dozen men in the intermissions between dances. Try to find the P. D.\nbetween dances, just _try_ to find her.\n\nThe same girl... deep in an atmosphere of jungle music and the\nquestioning of moral codes. Amory found it rather fascinating to feel\nthat any popular girl he met before eight he might quite possibly kiss\nbefore twelve.\n\n\"Why on earth are we here?\" he asked the girl with the green combs one\nnight as they sat in some one's limousine, outside the Country Club in\nLouisville.\n\n\"I don't know. I'm just full of the devil.\"\n\n\"Let's be frank--we'll never see each other again. I wanted to come out\nhere with you because I thought you were the best-looking girl in sight.\nYou really don't care whether you ever see me again, do you?\"\n\n\"No--but is this your line for every girl? What have I done to deserve\nit?\"\n\n\"And you didn't feel tired dancing or want a cigarette or any of the\nthings you said? You just wanted to be--\"\n\n\"Oh, let's go in,\" she interrupted, \"if you want to _analyze_. Let's not\n_talk_ about it.\"\n\nWhen the hand-knit, sleeveless jerseys were stylish, Amory, in a burst\nof inspiration, named them \"petting shirts.\" The name travelled from\ncoast to coast on the lips of parlor-snakes and P. D.'s.\n\n *****\n\nDESCRIPTIVE\n\nAmory was now eighteen years old, just under six feet tall and\nexceptionally, but not conventionally, handsome. He had rather a young\nface, the ingenuousness of which was marred by the penetrating green\neyes, fringed with long dark eyelashes. He lacked somehow that intense\nanimal magnetism that so often accompanies beauty in men or women; his\npersonality seemed rather a mental thing, and it was not in his power\nto turn it on and off like a water-faucet. But people never forgot his\nface.\n\n *****\n\nISABELLE\n\nShe paused at the top of the staircase. The sensations attributed to\ndivers on spring-boards, leading ladies on opening nights, and lumpy,\nhusky young men on the day of the Big Game, crowded through her. She\nshould have descended to a burst of drums or a discordant blend of\nthemes from \"Thais\" and \"Carmen.\" She had never been so curious about\nher appearance, she had never been so satisfied with it. She had been\nsixteen years old for six months.\n\n\"Isabelle!\" called her cousin Sally from the doorway of the\ndressing-room.\n\n\"I'm ready.\" She caught a slight lump of nervousness in her throat.\n\n\"I had to send back to the house for another pair of slippers. It'll be\njust a minute.\"\n\nIsabelle started toward the dressing-room for a last peek in the mirror,\nbut something decided her to stand there and gaze down the broad stairs\nof the Minnehaha Club. They curved tantalizingly, and she could catch\njust a glimpse of two pairs of masculine feet in the hall below.\nPump-shod in uniform black, they gave no hint of identity, but she\nwondered eagerly if one pair were attached to Amory Blaine. This young\nman, not as yet encountered, had nevertheless taken up a considerable\npart of her day--the first day of her arrival. Coming up in the machine\nfrom the station, Sally had volunteered, amid a rain of question,\ncomment, revelation, and exaggeration:\n\n\"You remember Amory Blaine, of _course_. Well, he's simply mad to\nsee you again. He's stayed over a day from college, and he's coming\nto-night. He's heard so much about you--says he remembers your eyes.\"\n\nThis had pleased Isabelle. It put them on equal terms, although she\nwas quite capable of staging her own romances, with or without advance\nadvertising. But following her happy tremble of anticipation, came a\nsinking sensation that made her ask:\n\n\"How do you mean he's heard about me? What sort of things?\"\n\nSally smiled. She felt rather in the capacity of a showman with her more\nexotic cousin.\n\n\"He knows you're--you're considered beautiful and all that\"--she\npaused--\"and I guess he knows you've been kissed.\"\n\nAt this Isabelle's little fist had clinched suddenly under the fur robe.\nShe was accustomed to be thus followed by her desperate past, and it\nnever failed to rouse in her the same feeling of resentment; yet--in a\nstrange town it was an advantageous reputation. She was a \"Speed,\" was\nshe? Well--let them find out.\n\nOut of the window Isabelle watched the snow glide by in the frosty\nmorning. It was ever so much colder here than in Baltimore; she had\nnot remembered; the glass of the side door was iced, the windows\nwere shirred with snow in the corners. Her mind played still with one\nsubject. Did _he_ dress like that boy there, who walked calmly down a\nbustling business street, in moccasins and winter-carnival costume? How\nvery _Western!_ Of course he wasn't that way: he went to Princeton, was\na sophomore or something. Really she had no distinct idea of him. An\nancient snap-shot she had preserved in an old kodak book had impressed\nher by the big eyes (which he had probably grown up to by now). However,\nin the last month, when her winter visit to Sally had been decided on,\nhe had assumed the proportions of a worthy adversary. Children, most\nastute of match-makers, plot their campaigns quickly, and Sally\nhad played a clever correspondence sonata to Isabelle's excitable\ntemperament. Isabelle had been for some time capable of very strong, if\nvery transient emotions....\n\nThey drew up at a spreading, white-stone building, set back from the\nsnowy street. Mrs. Weatherby greeted her warmly and her various younger\ncousins were produced from the corners where they skulked politely.\nIsabelle met them tactfully. At her best she allied all with whom she\ncame in contact--except older girls and some women. All the impressions\nshe made were conscious. The half-dozen girls she renewed acquaintance\nwith that morning were all rather impressed and as much by her direct\npersonality as by her reputation. Amory Blaine was an open subject.\nEvidently a bit light of love, neither popular nor unpopular--every girl\nthere seemed to have had an affair with him at some time or other, but\nno one volunteered any really useful information. He was going to fall\nfor her.... Sally had published that information to her young set\nand they were retailing it back to Sally as fast as they set eyes on\nIsabelle. Isabelle resolved secretly that she would, if necessary,\n_force_ herself to like him--she owed it to Sally. Suppose she were\nterribly disappointed. Sally had painted him in such glowing colors--he\nwas good-looking, \"sort of distinguished, when he wants to be,\" had a\nline, and was properly inconstant. In fact, he summed up all the romance\nthat her age and environment led her to desire. She wondered if those\nwere his dancing-shoes that fox-trotted tentatively around the soft rug\nbelow.\n\nAll impressions and, in fact, all ideas were extremely kaleidoscopic to\nIsabelle. She had that curious mixture of the social and the artistic\ntemperaments found often in two classes, society women and actresses.\nHer education or, rather, her sophistication, had been absorbed from\nthe boys who had dangled on her favor; her tact was instinctive, and\nher capacity for love-affairs was limited only by the number of the\nsusceptible within telephone distance. Flirt smiled from her large\nblack-brown eyes and shone through her intense physical magnetism.\n\nSo she waited at the head of the stairs that evening while slippers\nwere fetched. Just as she was growing impatient, Sally came out of the\ndressing-room, beaming with her accustomed good nature and high spirits,\nand together they descended to the floor below, while the shifting\nsearch-light of Isabelle's mind flashed on two ideas: she was glad she\nhad high color to-night, and she wondered if he danced well.\n\nDown-stairs, in the club's great room, she was surrounded for a moment\nby the girls she had met in the afternoon, then she heard Sally's voice\nrepeating a cycle of names, and found herself bowing to a sextet of\nblack and white, terribly stiff, vaguely familiar figures. The name\nBlaine figured somewhere, but at first she could not place him. A\nvery confused, very juvenile moment of awkward backings and bumpings\nfollowed, and every one found himself talking to the person he least\ndesired to. Isabelle manoeuvred herself and Froggy Parker, freshman\nat Harvard, with whom she had once played hop-scotch, to a seat on the\nstairs. A humorous reference to the past was all she needed. The things\nIsabelle could do socially with one idea were remarkable. First, she\nrepeated it rapturously in an enthusiastic contralto with a soupcon\nof Southern accent; then she held it off at a distance and smiled at\nit--her wonderful smile; then she delivered it in variations and\nplayed a sort of mental catch with it, all this in the nominal form\nof dialogue. Froggy was fascinated and quite unconscious that this was\nbeing done, not for him, but for the green eyes that glistened under the\nshining carefully watered hair, a little to her left, for Isabelle had\ndiscovered Amory. As an actress even in the fullest flush of her own\nconscious magnetism gets a deep impression of most of the people in the\nfront row, so Isabelle sized up her antagonist. First, he had auburn\nhair, and from her feeling of disappointment she knew that she had\nexpected him to be dark and of garter-advertisement slenderness.... For\nthe rest, a faint flush and a straight, romantic profile; the effect set\noff by a close-fitting dress suit and a silk ruffled shirt of the kind\nthat women still delight to see men wear, but men were just beginning to\nget tired of.\n\nDuring this inspection Amory was quietly watching.\n\n\"Don't _you_ think so?\" she said suddenly, turning to him,\ninnocent-eyed.\n\nThere was a stir, and Sally led the way over to their table. Amory\nstruggled to Isabelle's side, and whispered:\n\n\"You're my dinner partner, you know. We're all coached for each other.\"\n\nIsabelle gasped--this was rather right in line. But really she felt\nas if a good speech had been taken from the star and given to a minor\ncharacter.... She mustn't lose the leadership a bit. The dinner-table\nglittered with laughter at the confusion of getting places and then\ncurious eyes were turned on her, sitting near the head. She was enjoying\nthis immensely, and Froggy Parker was so engrossed with the added\nsparkle of her rising color that he forgot to pull out Sally's chair,\nand fell into a dim confusion. Amory was on the other side, full of\nconfidence and vanity, gazing at her in open admiration. He began\ndirectly, and so did Froggy:\n\n\"I've heard a lot about you since you wore braids--\"\n\n\"Wasn't it funny this afternoon--\"\n\nBoth stopped. Isabelle turned to Amory shyly. Her face was always enough\nanswer for any one, but she decided to speak.\n\n\"How--from whom?\"\n\n\"From everybody--for all the years since you've been away.\" She blushed\nappropriately. On her right Froggy was _hors de combat_ already,\nalthough he hadn't quite realized it.\n\n\"I'll tell you what I remembered about you all these years,\" Amory\ncontinued. She leaned slightly toward him and looked modestly at the\ncelery before her. Froggy sighed--he knew Amory, and the situations that\nAmory seemed born to handle. He turned to Sally and asked her if she was\ngoing away to school next year. Amory opened with grape-shot.\n\n\"I've got an adjective that just fits you.\" This was one of his favorite\nstarts--he seldom had a word in mind, but it was a curiosity provoker,\nand he could always produce something complimentary if he got in a tight\ncorner.\n\n\"Oh--what?\" Isabelle's face was a study in enraptured curiosity.\n\nAmory shook his head.\n\n\"I don't know you very well yet.\"\n\n\"Will you tell me--afterward?\" she half whispered.\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"We'll sit out.\"\n\nIsabelle nodded.\n\n\"Did any one ever tell you, you have keen eyes?\" she said.\n\nAmory attempted to make them look even keener. He fancied, but he was\nnot sure, that her foot had just touched his under the table. But it\nmight possibly have been only the table leg. It was so hard to tell.\nStill it thrilled him. He wondered quickly if there would be any\ndifficulty in securing the little den up-stairs.\n\n *****\n\nBABES IN THE WOODS\n\nIsabelle and Amory were distinctly not innocent, nor were they\nparticularly brazen. Moreover, amateur standing had very little value\nin the game they were playing, a game that would presumably be her\nprincipal study for years to come. She had begun as he had, with good\nlooks and an excitable temperament, and the rest was the result of\naccessible popular novels and dressing-room conversation culled from a\nslightly older set. Isabelle had walked with an artificial gait at nine\nand a half, and when her eyes, wide and starry, proclaimed the ingenue\nmost. Amory was proportionately less deceived. He waited for the mask to\ndrop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear\nit. She, on her part, was not impressed by his studied air of blasé\nsophistication. She had lived in a larger city and had slightly an\nadvantage in range. But she accepted his pose--it was one of the dozen\nlittle conventions of this kind of affair. He was aware that he was\ngetting this particular favor now because she had been coached; he knew\nthat he stood for merely the best game in sight, and that he would\nhave to improve his opportunity before he lost his advantage. So they\nproceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents.\n\nAfter the dinner the dance began... smoothly. Smoothly?--boys cut in\non Isabelle every few feet and then squabbled in the corners with: \"You\nmight let me get more than an inch!\" and \"She didn't like it either--she\ntold me so next time I cut in.\" It was true--she told every one so, and\ngave every hand a parting pressure that said: \"You know that your dances\nare _making_ my evening.\"\n\nBut time passed, two hours of it, and the less subtle beaux had better\nlearned to focus their pseudo-passionate glances elsewhere, for eleven\no'clock found Isabelle and Amory sitting on the couch in the little\nden off the reading-room up-stairs. She was conscious that they were\na handsome pair, and seemed to belong distinctively in this seclusion,\nwhile lesser lights fluttered and chattered down-stairs.\n\nBoys who passed the door looked in enviously--girls who passed only\nlaughed and frowned and grew wise within themselves.\n\nThey had now reached a very definite stage. They had traded accounts of\ntheir progress since they had met last, and she had listened to much\nshe had heard before. He was a sophomore, was on the Princetonian board,\nhoped to be chairman in senior year. He learned that some of the boys\nshe went with in Baltimore were \"terrible speeds\" and came to dances in\nstates of artificial stimulation; most of them were twenty or so, and\ndrove alluring red Stutzes. A good half seemed to have already flunked\nout of various schools and colleges, but some of them bore athletic\nnames that made him look at her admiringly. As a matter of fact,\nIsabelle's closer acquaintance with the universities was just\ncommencing. She had bowing acquaintance with a lot of young men who\nthought she was a \"pretty kid--worth keeping an eye on.\" But Isabelle\nstrung the names into a fabrication of gayety that would have dazzled\na Viennese nobleman. Such is the power of young contralto voices on\nsink-down sofas.\n\nHe asked her if she thought he was conceited. She said there was\na difference between conceit and self-confidence. She adored\nself-confidence in men.\n\n\"Is Froggy a good friend of yours?\" she asked.\n\n\"Rather--why?\"\n\n\"He's a bum dancer.\"\n\nAmory laughed.\n\n\"He dances as if the girl were on his back instead of in his arms.\"\n\nShe appreciated this.\n\n\"You're awfully good at sizing people up.\"\n\nAmory denied this painfully. However, he sized up several people for\nher. Then they talked about hands.\n\n\"You've got awfully nice hands,\" she said. \"They look as if you played\nthe piano. Do you?\"\n\nI have said they had reached a very definite stage--nay, more, a very\ncritical stage. Amory had stayed over a day to see her, and his train\nleft at twelve-eighteen that night. His trunk and suitcase awaited him\nat the station; his watch was beginning to hang heavy in his pocket.\n\n\"Isabelle,\" he said suddenly, \"I want to tell you something.\" They had\nbeen talking lightly about \"that funny look in her eyes,\" and Isabelle\nknew from the change in his manner what was coming--indeed, she had been\nwondering how soon it would come. Amory reached above their heads and\nturned out the electric light, so that they were in the dark, except\nfor the red glow that fell through the door from the reading-room lamps.\nThen he began:\n\n\"I don't know whether or not you know what you--what I'm going to say.\nLordy, Isabelle--this _sounds_ like a line, but it isn't.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Isabelle softly.\n\n\"Maybe we'll never meet again like this--I have darned hard luck\nsometimes.\" He was leaning away from her on the other arm of the lounge,\nbut she could see his eyes plainly in the dark.\n\n\"You'll meet me again--silly.\" There was just the slightest emphasis\non the last word--so that it became almost a term of endearment. He\ncontinued a bit huskily:\n\n\"I've fallen for a lot of people--girls--and I guess you have,\ntoo--boys, I mean, but, honestly, you--\" he broke off suddenly and\nleaned forward, chin on his hands: \"Oh, what's the use--you'll go your\nway and I suppose I'll go mine.\"\n\nSilence for a moment. Isabelle was quite stirred; she wound her\nhandkerchief into a tight ball, and by the faint light that streamed\nover her, dropped it deliberately on the floor. Their hands touched for\nan instant, but neither spoke. Silences were becoming more frequent\nand more delicious. Outside another stray couple had come up and were\nexperimenting on the piano in the next room. After the usual preliminary\nof \"chopsticks,\" one of them started \"Babes in the Woods\" and a light\ntenor carried the words into the den:\n\n\n \"Give me your hand\n I'll understand\n We're off to slumberland.\"\n\n\nIsabelle hummed it softly and trembled as she felt Amory's hand close\nover hers.\n\n\"Isabelle,\" he whispered. \"You know I'm mad about you. You _do_ give a\ndarn about me.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How much do you care--do you like any one better?\"\n\n\"No.\" He could scarcely hear her, although he bent so near that he felt\nher breath against his cheek.\n\n\"Isabelle, I'm going back to college for six long months, and why\nshouldn't we--if I could only just have one thing to remember you by--\"\n\n\"Close the door....\" Her voice had just stirred so that he half wondered\nwhether she had spoken at all. As he swung the door softly shut, the\nmusic seemed quivering just outside.\n\n\n \"Moonlight is bright,\n Kiss me good night.\"\n\n\nWhat a wonderful song, she thought--everything was wonderful to-night,\nmost of all this romantic scene in the den, with their hands clinging\nand the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of her\nlife seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlight\nand pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low, cosy\nroadsters stopped under sheltering trees--only the boy might change, and\nthis one was so nice. He took her hand softly. With a sudden movement he\nturned it and, holding it to his lips, kissed the palm.\n\n\"Isabelle!\" His whisper blended in the music, and they seemed to\nfloat nearer together. Her breath came faster. \"Can't I kiss you,\nIsabelle--Isabelle?\" Lips half parted, she turned her head to him in the\ndark. Suddenly the ring of voices, the sound of running footsteps surged\ntoward them. Quick as a flash Amory reached up and turned on the light,\nand when the door opened and three boys, the wrathy and dance-craving\nFroggy among them, rushed in, he was turning over the magazines on the\ntable, while she sat without moving, serene and unembarrassed, and even\ngreeted them with a welcoming smile. But her heart was beating wildly,\nand she felt somehow as if she had been deprived.\n\nIt was evidently over. There was a clamor for a dance, there was a\nglance that passed between them--on his side despair, on hers regret,\nand then the evening went on, with the reassured beaux and the eternal\ncutting in.\n\nAt quarter to twelve Amory shook hands with her gravely, in the midst of\na small crowd assembled to wish him good-speed. For an instant he lost\nhis poise, and she felt a bit rattled when a satirical voice from a\nconcealed wit cried:\n\n\"Take her outside, Amory!\" As he took her hand he pressed it a little,\nand she returned the pressure as she had done to twenty hands that\nevening--that was all.\n\nAt two o'clock back at the Weatherbys' Sally asked her if she and Amory\nhad had a \"time\" in the den. Isabelle turned to her quietly. In her\neyes was the light of the idealist, the inviolate dreamer of Joan-like\ndreams.\n\n\"No,\" she answered. \"I don't do that sort of thing any more; he asked me\nto, but I said no.\"\n\nAs she crept in bed she wondered what he'd say in his special delivery\nto-morrow. He had such a good-looking mouth--would she ever--?\n\n\"Fourteen angels were watching o'er them,\" sang Sally sleepily from the\nnext room.\n\n\"Damn!\" muttered Isabelle, punching the pillow into a luxurious lump and\nexploring the cold sheets cautiously. \"Damn!\"\n\n *****\n\nCARNIVAL\n\nAmory, by way of the Princetonian, had arrived. The minor snobs, finely\nbalanced thermometers of success, warmed to him as the club elections\ngrew nigh, and he and Tom were visited by groups of upper classmen who\narrived awkwardly, balanced on the edge of the furniture and talked of\nall subjects except the one of absorbing interest. Amory was amused at\nthe intent eyes upon him, and, in case the visitors represented some\nclub in which he was not interested, took great pleasure in shocking\nthem with unorthodox remarks.\n\n\"Oh, let me see--\" he said one night to a flabbergasted delegation,\n\"what club do you represent?\"\n\nWith visitors from Ivy and Cottage and Tiger Inn he played the \"nice,\nunspoilt, ingenuous boy\" very much at ease and quite unaware of the\nobject of the call.\n\nWhen the fatal morning arrived, early in March, and the campus became\na document in hysteria, he slid smoothly into Cottage with Alec Connage\nand watched his suddenly neurotic class with much wonder.\n\nThere were fickle groups that jumped from club to club; there were\nfriends of two or three days who announced tearfully and wildly that\nthey must join the same club, nothing should separate them; there were\nsnarling disclosures of long-hidden grudges as the Suddenly Prominent\nremembered snubs of freshman year. Unknown men were elevated into\nimportance when they received certain coveted bids; others who were\nconsidered \"all set\" found that they had made unexpected enemies, felt\nthemselves stranded and deserted, talked wildly of leaving college.\n\nIn his own crowd Amory saw men kept out for wearing green hats, for\nbeing \"a damn tailor's dummy,\" for having \"too much pull in heaven,\"\nfor getting drunk one night \"not like a gentleman, by God,\" or for\nunfathomable secret reasons known to no one but the wielders of the\nblack balls.\n\nThis orgy of sociability culminated in a gigantic party at the Nassau\nInn, where punch was dispensed from immense bowls, and the whole\ndown-stairs became a delirious, circulating, shouting pattern of faces\nand voices.\n\n\"Hi, Dibby--'gratulations!\"\n\n\"Goo' boy, Tom, you got a good bunch in Cap.\"\n\n\"Say, Kerry--\"\n\n\"Oh, Kerry--I hear you went Tiger with all the weight-lifters!\" \"Well, I\ndidn't go Cottage--the parlor-snakes' delight.\"\n\n\"They say Overton fainted when he got his Ivy bid--Did he sign up the\nfirst day?--oh, _no_. Tore over to Murray-Dodge on a bicycle--afraid it\nwas a mistake.\"\n\n\"How'd you get into Cap--you old roue?\"\n\n\"'Gratulations!\"\n\n\"'Gratulations yourself. Hear you got a good crowd.\"\n\nWhen the bar closed, the party broke up into groups and streamed,\nsinging, over the snow-clad campus, in a weird delusion that\nsnobbishness and strain were over at last, and that they could do what\nthey pleased for the next two years.\n\nLong afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest time of\nhis life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found it; he wanted\nno more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen new-found friendships\nthrough the April afternoons.\n\nAlec Connage came into his room one morning and woke him up into the\nsunshine and peculiar glory of Campbell Hall shining in the window.\n\n\"Wake up, Original Sin, and scrape yourself together. Be in front of\nRenwick's in half an hour. Somebody's got a car.\" He took the bureau\ncover and carefully deposited it, with its load of small articles, upon\nthe bed.\n\n\"Where'd you get the car?\" demanded Amory cynically.\n\n\"Sacred trust, but don't be a critical goopher or you can't go!\"\n\n\"I think I'll sleep,\" Amory said calmly, resettling himself and reaching\nbeside the bed for a cigarette.\n\n\"Sleep!\"\n\n\"Why not? I've got a class at eleven-thirty.\"\n\n\"You damned gloom! Of course, if you don't want to go to the coast--\"\n\nWith a bound Amory was out of bed, scattering the bureau cover's burden\non the floor. The coast... he hadn't seen it for years, since he and his\nmother were on their pilgrimage.\n\n\"Who's going?\" he demanded as he wriggled into his B. V. D.'s.\n\n\"Oh, Dick Humbird and Kerry Holiday and Jesse Ferrenby and--oh about\nfive or six. Speed it up, kid!\"\n\nIn ten minutes Amory was devouring cornflakes in Renwick's, and at\nnine-thirty they bowled happily out of town, headed for the sands of\nDeal Beach.\n\n\"You see,\" said Kerry, \"the car belongs down there. In fact, it was\nstolen from Asbury Park by persons unknown, who deserted it in Princeton\nand left for the West. Heartless Humbird here got permission from the\ncity council to deliver it.\"\n\n\"Anybody got any money?\" suggested Ferrenby, turning around from the\nfront seat.\n\nThere was an emphatic negative chorus.\n\n\"That makes it interesting.\"\n\n\"Money--what's money? We can sell the car.\"\n\n\"Charge him salvage or something.\"\n\n\"How're we going to get food?\" asked Amory.\n\n\"Honestly,\" answered Kerry, eying him reprovingly, \"do you doubt Kerry's\nability for three short days? Some people have lived on nothing for\nyears at a time. Read the Boy Scout Monthly.\"\n\n\"Three days,\" Amory mused, \"and I've got classes.\"\n\n\"One of the days is the Sabbath.\"\n\n\"Just the same, I can only cut six more classes, with over a month and a\nhalf to go.\"\n\n\"Throw him out!\"\n\n\"It's a long walk back.\"\n\n\"Amory, you're running it out, if I may coin a new phrase.\"\n\n\"Hadn't you better get some dope on yourself, Amory?\"\n\nAmory subsided resignedly and drooped into a contemplation of the\nscenery. Swinburne seemed to fit in somehow.\n\n\n \"Oh, winter's rains and ruins are over,\n And all the seasons of snows and sins;\n The days dividing lover and lover,\n The light that loses, the night that wins;\n And time remembered is grief forgotten,\n And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,\n And in green underwood and cover,\n Blossom by blossom the spring begins.\n\n \"The full streams feed on flower of--\"\n\n\n\"What's the matter, Amory? Amory's thinking about poetry, about the\npretty birds and flowers. I can see it in his eye.\"\n\n\"No, I'm not,\" he lied. \"I'm thinking about the Princetonian. I ought to\nmake up to-night; but I can telephone back, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Kerry respectfully, \"these important men--\"\n\nAmory flushed and it seemed to him that Ferrenby, a defeated competitor,\nwinced a little. Of course, Kerry was only kidding, but he really\nmustn't mention the Princetonian.\n\nIt was a halcyon day, and as they neared the shore and the salt breezes\nscurried by, he began to picture the ocean and long, level stretches of\nsand and red roofs over blue sea. Then they hurried through the little\ntown and it all flashed upon his consciousness to a mighty paean of\nemotion....\n\n\"Oh, good Lord! _Look_ at it!\" he cried.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Let me out, quick--I haven't seen it for eight years! Oh, gentlefolk,\nstop the car!\"\n\n\"What an odd child!\" remarked Alec.\n\n\"I do believe he's a bit eccentric.\"\n\nThe car was obligingly drawn up at a curb, and Amory ran for the\nboardwalk. First, he realized that the sea was blue and that there was\nan enormous quantity of it, and that it roared and roared--really all\nthe banalities about the ocean that one could realize, but if any one\nhad told him then that these things were banalities, he would have gaped\nin wonder.\n\n\"Now we'll get lunch,\" ordered Kerry, wandering up with the crowd. \"Come\non, Amory, tear yourself away and get practical.\"\n\n\"We'll try the best hotel first,\" he went on, \"and thence and so forth.\"\n\nThey strolled along the boardwalk to the most imposing hostelry in\nsight, and, entering the dining-room, scattered about a table.\n\n\"Eight Bronxes,\" commanded Alec, \"and a club sandwich and Juliennes. The\nfood for one. Hand the rest around.\"\n\nAmory ate little, having seized a chair where he could watch the sea and\nfeel the rock of it. When luncheon was over they sat and smoked quietly.\n\n\"What's the bill?\"\n\nSome one scanned it.\n\n\"Eight twenty-five.\"\n\n\"Rotten overcharge. We'll give them two dollars and one for the waiter.\nKerry, collect the small change.\"\n\nThe waiter approached, and Kerry gravely handed him a dollar, tossed two\ndollars on the check, and turned away. They sauntered leisurely toward\nthe door, pursued in a moment by the suspicious Ganymede.\n\n\"Some mistake, sir.\"\n\nKerry took the bill and examined it critically.\n\n\"No mistake!\" he said, shaking his head gravely, and, tearing it into\nfour pieces, he handed the scraps to the waiter, who was so dumfounded\nthat he stood motionless and expressionless while they walked out.\n\n\"Won't he send after us?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Kerry; \"for a minute he'll think we're the proprietor's sons\nor something; then he'll look at the check again and call the manager,\nand in the meantime--\"\n\nThey left the car at Asbury and street-car'd to Allenhurst, where\nthey investigated the crowded pavilions for beauty. At four there were\nrefreshments in a lunch-room, and this time they paid an even smaller\nper cent on the total cost; something about the appearance and\nsavoir-faire of the crowd made the thing go, and they were not pursued.\n\n\"You see, Amory, we're Marxian Socialists,\" explained Kerry. \"We don't\nbelieve in property and we're putting it to the great test.\"\n\n\"Night will descend,\" Amory suggested.\n\n\"Watch, and put your trust in Holiday.\"\n\nThey became jovial about five-thirty and, linking arms, strolled up and\ndown the boardwalk in a row, chanting a monotonous ditty about the sad\nsea waves. Then Kerry saw a face in the crowd that attracted him and,\nrushing off, reappeared in a moment with one of the homeliest girls\nAmory had ever set eyes on. Her pale mouth extended from ear to ear, her\nteeth projected in a solid wedge, and she had little, squinty eyes that\npeeped ingratiatingly over the side sweep of her nose. Kerry presented\nthem formally.\n\n\"Name of Kaluka, Hawaiian queen! Let me present Messrs. Connage, Sloane,\nHumbird, Ferrenby, and Blaine.\"\n\nThe girl bobbed courtesies all around. Poor creature; Amory supposed she\nhad never before been noticed in her life--possibly she was half-witted.\nWhile she accompanied them (Kerry had invited her to supper) she said\nnothing which could discountenance such a belief.\n\n\"She prefers her native dishes,\" said Alec gravely to the waiter, \"but\nany coarse food will do.\"\n\nAll through supper he addressed her in the most respectful language,\nwhile Kerry made idiotic love to her on the other side, and she giggled\nand grinned. Amory was content to sit and watch the by-play, thinking\nwhat a light touch Kerry had, and how he could transform the barest\nincident into a thing of curve and contour. They all seemed to have\nthe spirit of it more or less, and it was a relaxation to be with them.\nAmory usually liked men individually, yet feared them in crowds unless\nthe crowd was around him. He wondered how much each one contributed to\nthe party, for there was somewhat of a spiritual tax levied. Alec and\nKerry were the life of it, but not quite the centre. Somehow the quiet\nHumbird, and Sloane, with his impatient superciliousness, were the\ncentre.\n\nDick Humbird had, ever since freshman year, seemed to Amory a perfect\ntype of aristocrat. He was slender but well-built--black curly hair,\nstraight features, and rather a dark skin. Everything he said sounded\nintangibly appropriate. He possessed infinite courage, an averagely good\nmind, and a sense of honor with a clear charm and _noblesse oblige_\nthat varied it from righteousness. He could dissipate without going to\npieces, and even his most bohemian adventures never seemed \"running it\nout.\" People dressed like him, tried to talk as he did.... Amory decided\nthat he probably held the world back, but he wouldn't have changed him.\n...\n\nHe differed from the healthy type that was essentially middle class--he\nnever seemed to perspire. Some people couldn't be familiar with a\nchauffeur without having it returned; Humbird could have lunched at\nSherry's with a colored man, yet people would have somehow known that\nit was all right. He was not a snob, though he knew only half his class.\nHis friends ranged from the highest to the lowest, but it was impossible\nto \"cultivate\" him. Servants worshipped him, and treated him like a god.\nHe seemed the eternal example of what the upper class tries to be.\n\n\"He's like those pictures in the Illustrated London News of the English\nofficers who have been killed,\" Amory had said to Alec. \"Well,\" Alec\nhad answered, \"if you want to know the shocking truth, his father was a\ngrocery clerk who made a fortune in Tacoma real estate and came to New\nYork ten years ago.\"\n\nAmory had felt a curious sinking sensation.\n\nThis present type of party was made possible by the surging together of\nthe class after club elections--as if to make a last desperate attempt\nto know itself, to keep together, to fight off the tightening spirit of\nthe clubs. It was a let-down from the conventional heights they had all\nwalked so rigidly.\n\nAfter supper they saw Kaluka to the boardwalk, and then strolled back\nalong the beach to Asbury. The evening sea was a new sensation, for all\nits color and mellow age was gone, and it seemed the bleak waste that\nmade the Norse sagas sad; Amory thought of Kipling's\n\n \"Beaches of Lukanon before the sealers came.\"\n\n\nIt was still a music, though, infinitely sorrowful.\n\nTen o'clock found them penniless. They had suppered greatly on their\nlast eleven cents and, singing, strolled up through the casinos and\nlighted arches on the boardwalk, stopping to listen approvingly to all\nband concerts. In one place Kerry took up a collection for the French\nWar Orphans which netted a dollar and twenty cents, and with this they\nbought some brandy in case they caught cold in the night. They finished\nthe day in a moving-picture show and went into solemn systematic roars\nof laughter at an ancient comedy, to the startled annoyance of the rest\nof the audience. Their entrance was distinctly strategic, for each man\nas he entered pointed reproachfully at the one just behind him. Sloane,\nbringing up the rear, disclaimed all knowledge and responsibility as\nsoon as the others were scattered inside; then as the irate ticket-taker\nrushed in he followed nonchalantly.\n\nThey reassembled later by the Casino and made arrangements for the\nnight. Kerry wormed permission from the watchman to sleep on the\nplatform and, having collected a huge pile of rugs from the booths to\nserve as mattresses and blankets, they talked until midnight, and then\nfell into a dreamless sleep, though Amory tried hard to stay awake and\nwatch that marvellous moon settle on the sea.\n\nSo they progressed for two happy days, up and down the shore by\nstreet-car or machine, or by shoe-leather on the crowded boardwalk;\nsometimes eating with the wealthy, more frequently dining frugally\nat the expense of an unsuspecting restaurateur. They had their photos\ntaken, eight poses, in a quick-development store. Kerry insisted on\ngrouping them as a \"varsity\" football team, and then as a tough gang\nfrom the East Side, with their coats inside out, and himself sitting\nin the middle on a cardboard moon. The photographer probably has them\nyet--at least, they never called for them. The weather was perfect, and\nagain they slept outside, and again Amory fell unwillingly asleep.\n\nSunday broke stolid and respectable, and even the sea seemed to mumble\nand complain, so they returned to Princeton via the Fords of transient\nfarmers, and broke up with colds in their heads, but otherwise none the\nworse for wandering.\n\nEven more than in the year before, Amory neglected his work, not\ndeliberately but lazily and through a multitude of other interests.\nCo-ordinate geometry and the melancholy hexameters of Corneille and\nRacine held forth small allurements, and even psychology, which he had\neagerly awaited, proved to be a dull subject full of muscular reactions\nand biological phrases rather than the study of personality and\ninfluence. That was a noon class, and it always sent him dozing.\nHaving found that \"subjective and objective, sir,\" answered most of the\nquestions, he used the phrase on all occasions, and it became the class\njoke when, on a query being levelled at him, he was nudged awake by\nFerrenby or Sloane to gasp it out.\n\nMostly there were parties--to Orange or the Shore, more rarely to\nNew York and Philadelphia, though one night they marshalled fourteen\nwaitresses out of Childs' and took them to ride down Fifth Avenue on top\nof an auto bus. They all cut more classes than were allowed, which meant\nan additional course the following year, but spring was too rare to\nlet anything interfere with their colorful ramblings. In May Amory was\nelected to the Sophomore Prom Committee, and when after a long\nevening's discussion with Alec they made out a tentative list of class\nprobabilities for the senior council, they placed themselves among the\nsurest. The senior council was composed presumably of the eighteen most\nrepresentative seniors, and in view of Alec's football managership and\nAmory's chance of nosing out Burne Holiday as Princetonian chairman,\nthey seemed fairly justified in this presumption. Oddly enough, they\nboth placed D'Invilliers as among the possibilities, a guess that a year\nbefore the class would have gaped at.\n\nAll through the spring Amory had kept up an intermittent correspondence\nwith Isabelle Borge, punctuated by violent squabbles and chiefly\nenlivened by his attempts to find new words for love. He discovered\nIsabelle to be discreetly and aggravatingly unsentimental in letters,\nbut he hoped against hope that she would prove not too exotic a bloom\nto fit the large spaces of spring as she had fitted the den in the\nMinnehaha Club. During May he wrote thirty-page documents almost\nnightly, and sent them to her in bulky envelopes exteriorly labelled\n\"Part I\" and \"Part II.\"\n\n\"Oh, Alec, I believe I'm tired of college,\" he said sadly, as they\nwalked the dusk together.\n\n\"I think I am, too, in a way.\"\n\n\"All I'd like would be a little home in the country, some warm country,\nand a wife, and just enough to do to keep from rotting.\"\n\n\"Me, too.\"\n\n\"I'd like to quit.\"\n\n\"What does your girl say?\"\n\n\"Oh!\" Amory gasped in horror. \"She wouldn't _think_ of marrying... that\nis, not now. I mean the future, you know.\"\n\n\"My girl would. I'm engaged.\"\n\n\"Are you really?\"\n\n\"Yes. Don't say a word to anybody, please, but I am. I may not come back\nnext year.\"\n\n\"But you're only twenty! Give up college?\"\n\n\"Why, Amory, you were saying a minute ago--\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Amory interrupted, \"but I was just wishing. I wouldn't think of\nleaving college. It's just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I\nsort of feel they're never coming again, and I'm not really getting all\nI could out of them. I wish my girl lived here. But marry--not a chance.\nEspecially as father says the money isn't forthcoming as it used to be.\"\n\n\"What a waste these nights are!\" agreed Alec.\n\nBut Amory sighed and made use of the nights. He had a snap-shot of\nIsabelle, enshrined in an old watch, and at eight almost every night he\nwould turn off all the lights except the desk lamp and, sitting by the\nopen windows with the picture before him, write her rapturous letters.\n\n ... Oh it's so hard to write you what I really _feel_ when I\n think about you so much; you've gotten to mean to me a _dream_ that\n I can't put on paper any more. Your last letter came and it was\n wonderful! I read it over about six times, especially the last\n part, but I do wish, sometimes, you'd be more _frank_ and tell me\n what you really do think of me, yet your last letter was too good\n to be true, and I can hardly wait until June! Be sure and be able\n to come to the prom. It'll be fine, I think, and I want to bring\n _you_ just at the end of a wonderful year. I often think over what\n you said on that night and wonder how much you meant. If it were\n anyone but you--but you see I _thought_ you were fickle the first\n time I saw you and you are so popular and everthing that I can't\n imagine you really liking me _best_.\n\n Oh, Isabelle, dear--it's a wonderful night. Somebody is playing\n \"Love Moon\" on a mandolin far across the campus, and the music\n seems to bring you into the window. Now he's playing \"Good-by,\n Boys, I'm Through,\" and how well it suits me. For I am through\n with everything. I have decided never to take a cocktail again,\n and I know I'll never again fall in love--I couldn't--you've been\n too much a part of my days and nights to ever let me think of\n another girl. I meet them all the time and they don't interest me.\n I'm not pretending to be blasé, because it's not that. It's just\n that I'm in love. Oh, _dearest_ Isabelle (somehow I can't call you\n just Isabelle, and I'm afraid I'll come out with the \"dearest\"\n before your family this June), you've got to come to the prom,\n and then I'll come up to your house for a day and everything'll be\n perfect....\n\nAnd so on in an eternal monotone that seemed to both of them infinitely\ncharming, infinitely new.\n\n *****\n\nJune came and the days grew so hot and lazy that they could not worry\neven about exams, but spent dreamy evenings on the court of Cottage,\ntalking of long subjects until the sweep of country toward Stony Brook\nbecame a blue haze and the lilacs were white around tennis-courts, and\nwords gave way to silent cigarettes.... Then down deserted Prospect and\nalong McCosh with song everywhere around them, up to the hot joviality\nof Nassau Street.\n\nTom D'Invilliers and Amory walked late in those days. A gambling fever\nswept through the sophomore class and they bent over the bones till\nthree o'clock many a sultry night. After one session they came out of\nSloane's room to find the dew fallen and the stars old in the sky.\n\n\"Let's borrow bicycles and take a ride,\" Amory suggested.\n\n\"All right. I'm not a bit tired and this is almost the last night of the\nyear, really, because the prom stuff starts Monday.\"\n\nThey found two unlocked bicycles in Holder Court and rode out about\nhalf-past three along the Lawrenceville Road.\n\n\"What are you going to do this summer, Amory?\"\n\n\"Don't ask me--same old things, I suppose. A month or two in Lake\nGeneva--I'm counting on you to be there in July, you know--then there'll\nbe Minneapolis, and that means hundreds of summer hops, parlor-snaking,\ngetting bored--But oh, Tom,\" he added suddenly, \"hasn't this year been\nslick!\"\n\n\"No,\" declared Tom emphatically, a new Tom, clothed by Brooks, shod\nby Franks, \"I've won this game, but I feel as if I never want to play\nanother. You're all right--you're a rubber ball, and somehow it suits\nyou, but I'm sick of adapting myself to the local snobbishness of this\ncorner of the world. I want to go where people aren't barred because of\nthe color of their neckties and the roll of their coats.\"\n\n\"You can't, Tom,\" argued Amory, as they rolled along through the\nscattering night; \"wherever you go now you'll always unconsciously apply\nthese standards of 'having it' or 'lacking it.' For better or worse\nwe've stamped you; you're a Princeton type!\"\n\n\"Well, then,\" complained Tom, his cracked voice rising plaintively, \"why\ndo I have to come back at all? I've learned all that Princeton has to\noffer. Two years more of mere pedantry and lying around a club aren't\ngoing to help. They're just going to disorganize me, conventionalize me\ncompletely. Even now I'm so spineless that I wonder how I get away with\nit.\"\n\n\"Oh, but you're missing the real point, Tom,\" Amory interrupted. \"You've\njust had your eyes opened to the snobbishness of the world in a rather\nabrupt manner. Princeton invariably gives the thoughtful man a social\nsense.\"\n\n\"You consider you taught me that, don't you?\" he asked quizzically,\neying Amory in the half dark.\n\nAmory laughed quietly.\n\n\"Didn't I?\"\n\n\"Sometimes,\" he said slowly, \"I think you're my bad angel. I might have\nbeen a pretty fair poet.\"\n\n\"Come on, that's rather hard. You chose to come to an Eastern college.\nEither your eyes were opened to the mean scrambling quality of people,\nor you'd have gone through blind, and you'd hate to have done that--been\nlike Marty Kaye.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he agreed, \"you're right. I wouldn't have liked it. Still, it's\nhard to be made a cynic at twenty.\"\n\n\"I was born one,\" Amory murmured. \"I'm a cynical idealist.\" He paused\nand wondered if that meant anything.\n\nThey reached the sleeping school of Lawrenceville, and turned to ride\nback.\n\n\"It's good, this ride, isn't it?\" Tom said presently.\n\n\"Yes; it's a good finish, it's knock-out; everything's good to-night.\nOh, for a hot, languorous summer and Isabelle!\"\n\n\"Oh, you and your Isabelle! I'll bet she's a simple one... let's say\nsome poetry.\"\n\nSo Amory declaimed \"The Ode to a Nightingale\" to the bushes they passed.\n\n\"I'll never be a poet,\" said Amory as he finished. \"I'm not enough of a\nsensualist really; there are only a few obvious things that I notice as\nprimarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea;\nI don't catch the subtle things like 'silver-snarling trumpets.' I may\nturn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre\npoetry.\"\n\nThey rode into Princeton as the sun was making colored maps of the sky\nbehind the graduate school, and hurried to the refreshment of a shower\nthat would have to serve in place of sleep. By noon the bright-costumed\nalumni crowded the streets with their bands and choruses, and in the\ntents there was great reunion under the orange-and-black banners that\ncurled and strained in the wind. Amory looked long at one house which\nbore the legend \"Sixty-nine.\" There a few gray-haired men sat and talked\nquietly while the classes swept by in panorama of life.\n\n *****\n\nUNDER THE ARC-LIGHT\n\nThen tragedy's emerald eyes glared suddenly at Amory over the edge of\nJune. On the night after his ride to Lawrenceville a crowd sallied to\nNew York in quest of adventure, and started back to Princeton about\ntwelve o'clock in two machines. It had been a gay party and different\nstages of sobriety were represented. Amory was in the car behind; they\nhad taken the wrong road and lost the way, and so were hurrying to catch\nup.\n\nIt was a clear night and the exhilaration of the road went to Amory's\nhead. He had the ghost of two stanzas of a poem forming in his mind. ...\n\n\n So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life\n stirred as it went by.... As the still ocean paths before the\n shark in starred and glittering waterways, beauty-high, the\n moon-swathed trees divided, pair on pair, while flapping\n nightbirds cried across the air....\n\n A moment by an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a\n yellow moon--then silence, where crescendo laughter fades... the\n car swung out again to the winds of June, mellowed the shadows\n where the distance grew, then crushed the yellow shadows into\n blue....\n\n\nThey jolted to a stop, and Amory peered up, startled. A woman was\nstanding beside the road, talking to Alec at the wheel. Afterward\nhe remembered the harpy effect that her old kimono gave her, and the\ncracked hollowness of her voice as she spoke:\n\n\"You Princeton boys?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Well, there's one of you killed here, and two others about dead.\"\n\n\"_My God!_\"\n\n\"Look!\" She pointed and they gazed in horror. Under the full light of\na roadside arc-light lay a form, face downward in a widening circle of\nblood.\n\nThey sprang from the car. Amory thought of the back of that head--that\nhair--that hair... and then they turned the form over.\n\n\"It's Dick--Dick Humbird!\"\n\n\"Oh, Christ!\"\n\n\"Feel his heart!\"\n\nThen the insistent voice of the old crone in a sort of croaking triumph:\n\n\"He's quite dead, all right. The car turned over. Two of the men that\nweren't hurt just carried the others in, but this one's no use.\"\n\nAmory rushed into the house and the rest followed with a limp mass that\nthey laid on the sofa in the shoddy little front parlor. Sloane, with\nhis shoulder punctured, was on another lounge. He was half delirious,\nand kept calling something about a chemistry lecture at 8:10.\n\n\"I don't know what happened,\" said Ferrenby in a strained voice. \"Dick\nwas driving and he wouldn't give up the wheel; we told him he'd been\ndrinking too much--then there was this damn curve--oh, my _God!_...\" He\nthrew himself face downward on the floor and broke into dry sobs.\n\nThe doctor had arrived, and Amory went over to the couch, where some\none handed him a sheet to put over the body. With a sudden hardness, he\nraised one of the hands and let it fall back inertly. The brow was cold\nbut the face not expressionless. He looked at the shoe-laces--Dick had\ntied them that morning. _He_ had tied them--and now he was this heavy\nwhite mass. All that remained of the charm and personality of the Dick\nHumbird he had known--oh, it was all so horrible and unaristocratic and\nclose to the earth. All tragedy has that strain of the grotesque\nand squalid--so useless, futile... the way animals die.... Amory was\nreminded of a cat that had lain horribly mangled in some alley of his\nchildhood.\n\n\"Some one go to Princeton with Ferrenby.\"\n\nAmory stepped outside the door and shivered slightly at the late night\nwind--a wind that stirred a broken fender on the mass of bent metal to a\nplaintive, tinny sound.\n\n *****\n\nCRESCENDO!\n\nNext day, by a merciful chance, passed in a whirl. When Amory was by\nhimself his thoughts zigzagged inevitably to the picture of that red\nmouth yawning incongruously in the white face, but with a determined\neffort he piled present excitement upon the memory of it and shut it\ncoldly away from his mind.\n\nIsabelle and her mother drove into town at four, and they rode up\nsmiling Prospect Avenue, through the gay crowd, to have tea at Cottage.\nThe clubs had their annual dinners that night, so at seven he loaned her\nto a freshman and arranged to meet her in the gymnasium at eleven, when\nthe upper classmen were admitted to the freshman dance. She was all he\nhad expected, and he was happy and eager to make that night the centre\nof every dream. At nine the upper classes stood in front of the clubs\nas the freshman torchlight parade rioted past, and Amory wondered if the\ndress-suited groups against the dark, stately backgrounds and under\nthe flare of the torches made the night as brilliant to the staring,\ncheering freshmen as it had been to him the year before.\n\nThe next day was another whirl. They lunched in a gay party of six in a\nprivate dining-room at the club, while Isabelle and Amory looked at each\nother tenderly over the fried chicken and knew that their love was to be\neternal. They danced away the prom until five, and the stags cut in on\nIsabelle with joyous abandon, which grew more and more enthusiastic as\nthe hour grew late, and their wines, stored in overcoat pockets in the\ncoat room, made old weariness wait until another day. The stag line is\na most homogeneous mass of men. It fairly sways with a single soul. A\ndark-haired beauty dances by and there is a half-gasping sound as the\nripple surges forward and some one sleeker than the rest darts out and\ncuts in. Then when the six-foot girl (brought by Kaye in your class, and\nto whom he has been trying to introduce you all evening) gallops by,\nthe line surges back and the groups face about and become intent on far\ncorners of the hall, for Kaye, anxious and perspiring, appears elbowing\nthrough the crowd in search of familiar faces.\n\n\"I say, old man, I've got an awfully nice--\"\n\n\"Sorry, Kaye, but I'm set for this one. I've got to cut in on a fella.\"\n\n\"Well, the next one?\"\n\n\"What--ah--er--I swear I've got to go cut in--look me up when she's got\na dance free.\"\n\nIt delighted Amory when Isabelle suggested that they leave for a while\nand drive around in her car. For a delicious hour that passed too soon\nthey glided the silent roads about Princeton and talked from the surface\nof their hearts in shy excitement. Amory felt strangely ingenuous and\nmade no attempt to kiss her.\n\nNext day they rode up through the Jersey country, had luncheon in New\nYork, and in the afternoon went to see a problem play at which Isabelle\nwept all through the second act, rather to Amory's embarrassment--though\nit filled him with tenderness to watch her. He was tempted to lean over\nand kiss away her tears, and she slipped her hand into his under cover\nof darkness to be pressed softly.\n\nThen at six they arrived at the Borges' summer place on Long Island, and\nAmory rushed up-stairs to change into a dinner coat. As he put in his\nstuds he realized that he was enjoying life as he would probably never\nenjoy it again. Everything was hallowed by the haze of his own youth. He\nhad arrived, abreast of the best in his generation at Princeton. He was\nin love and his love was returned. Turning on all the lights, he looked\nat himself in the mirror, trying to find in his own face the qualities\nthat made him see clearer than the great crowd of people, that made him\ndecide firmly, and able to influence and follow his own will. There was\nlittle in his life now that he would have changed. ... Oxford might have\nbeen a bigger field.\n\nSilently he admired himself. How conveniently well he looked, and how\nwell a dinner coat became him. He stepped into the hall and then\nwaited at the top of the stairs, for he heard footsteps coming. It was\nIsabelle, and from the top of her shining hair to her little golden\nslippers she had never seemed so beautiful.\n\n\"Isabelle!\" he cried, half involuntarily, and held out his arms. As in\nthe story-books, she ran into them, and on that half-minute, as their\nlips first touched, rested the high point of vanity, the crest of his\nyoung egotism.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 3. The Egotist Considers\n\n\n\"Ouch! Let me go!\"\n\nHe dropped his arms to his sides.\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"Your shirt stud--it hurt me--look!\" She was looking down at her neck,\nwhere a little blue spot about the size of a pea marred its pallor.\n\n\"Oh, Isabelle,\" he reproached himself, \"I'm a goopher. Really, I'm\nsorry--I shouldn't have held you so close.\"\n\nShe looked up impatiently.\n\n\"Oh, Amory, of course you couldn't help it, and it didn't hurt much; but\nwhat _are_ we going to do about it?\"\n\n\"_Do_ about it?\" he asked. \"Oh--that spot; it'll disappear in a second.\"\n\n\"It isn't,\" she said, after a moment of concentrated gazing, \"it's still\nthere--and it looks like Old Nick--oh, Amory, what'll we do! It's _just_\nthe height of your shoulder.\"\n\n\"Massage it,\" he suggested, repressing the faintest inclination to\nlaugh.\n\nShe rubbed it delicately with the tips of her fingers, and then a tear\ngathered in the corner of her eye, and slid down her cheek.\n\n\"Oh, Amory,\" she said despairingly, lifting up a most pathetic face,\n\"I'll just make my whole neck _flame_ if I rub it. What'll I do?\"\n\nA quotation sailed into his head and he couldn't resist repeating it\naloud.\n\n \"All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this little hand.\"\n\n\nShe looked up and the sparkle of the tear in her eye was like ice.\n\n\"You're not very sympathetic.\"\n\nAmory mistook her meaning.\n\n\"Isabelle, darling, I think it'll--\"\n\n\"Don't touch me!\" she cried. \"Haven't I enough on my mind and you stand\nthere and _laugh!_\"\n\nThen he slipped again.\n\n\"Well, it _is_ funny, Isabelle, and we were talking the other day about\na sense of humor being--\"\n\nShe was looking at him with something that was not a smile, rather the\nfaint, mirthless echo of a smile, in the corners of her mouth.\n\n\"Oh, shut up!\" she cried suddenly, and fled down the hallway toward her\nroom. Amory stood there, covered with remorseful confusion.\n\n\"Damn!\"\n\nWhen Isabelle reappeared she had thrown a light wrap about her\nshoulders, and they descended the stairs in a silence that endured\nthrough dinner.\n\n\"Isabelle,\" he began rather testily, as they arranged themselves in the\ncar, bound for a dance at the Greenwich Country Club, \"you're angry, and\nI'll be, too, in a minute. Let's kiss and make up.\"\n\nIsabelle considered glumly.\n\n\"I hate to be laughed at,\" she said finally.\n\n\"I won't laugh any more. I'm not laughing now, am I?\"\n\n\"You did.\"\n\n\"Oh, don't be so darned feminine.\"\n\nHer lips curled slightly.\n\n\"I'll be anything I want.\"\n\nAmory kept his temper with difficulty. He became aware that he had not\nan ounce of real affection for Isabelle, but her coldness piqued him. He\nwanted to kiss her, kiss her a lot, because then he knew he could leave\nin the morning and not care. On the contrary, if he didn't kiss her, it\nwould worry him.... It would interfere vaguely with his idea of himself\nas a conqueror. It wasn't dignified to come off second best, _pleading_,\nwith a doughty warrior like Isabelle.\n\nPerhaps she suspected this. At any rate, Amory watched the night that\nshould have been the consummation of romance glide by with great moths\noverhead and the heavy fragrance of roadside gardens, but without those\nbroken words, those little sighs....\n\nAfterward they suppered on ginger ale and devil's food in the pantry,\nand Amory announced a decision.\n\n\"I'm leaving early in the morning.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Why not?\" he countered.\n\n\"There's no need.\"\n\n\"However, I'm going.\"\n\n\"Well, if you insist on being ridiculous--\"\n\n\"Oh, don't put it that way,\" he objected.\n\n\"--just because I won't let you kiss me. Do you think--\"\n\n\"Now, Isabelle,\" he interrupted, \"you know it's not that--even\nsuppose it is. We've reached the stage where we either ought to\nkiss--or--or--nothing. It isn't as if you were refusing on moral\ngrounds.\"\n\nShe hesitated.\n\n\"I really don't know what to think about you,\" she began, in a feeble,\nperverse attempt at conciliation. \"You're so funny.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Well, I thought you had a lot of self-confidence and all that; remember\nyou told me the other day that you could do anything you wanted, or get\nanything you wanted?\"\n\nAmory flushed. He _had_ told her a lot of things.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Well, you didn't seem to feel so self-confident to-night. Maybe you're\njust plain conceited.\"\n\n\"No, I'm not,\" he hesitated. \"At Princeton--\"\n\n\"Oh, you and Princeton! You'd think that was the world, the way you\ntalk! Perhaps you _can_ write better than anybody else on your old\nPrincetonian; maybe the freshmen _do_ think you're important--\"\n\n\"You don't understand--\"\n\n\"Yes, I do,\" she interrupted. \"I _do_, because you're always talking\nabout yourself and I used to like it; now I don't.\"\n\n\"Have I to-night?\"\n\n\"That's just the point,\" insisted Isabelle. \"You got all upset to-night.\nYou just sat and watched my eyes. Besides, I have to think all the time\nI'm talking to you--you're so critical.\"\n\n\"I make you think, do I?\" Amory repeated with a touch of vanity.\n\n\"You're a nervous strain\"--this emphatically--\"and when you analyze\nevery little emotion and instinct I just don't have 'em.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Amory admitted her point and shook his head helplessly.\n\n\"Let's go.\" She stood up.\n\nHe rose abstractedly and they walked to the foot of the stairs.\n\n\"What train can I get?\"\n\n\"There's one about 9:11 if you really must go.\"\n\n\"Yes, I've got to go, really. Good night.\"\n\n\"Good night.\"\n\nThey were at the head of the stairs, and as Amory turned into his room\nhe thought he caught just the faintest cloud of discontent in her face.\nHe lay awake in the darkness and wondered how much he cared--how much\nof his sudden unhappiness was hurt vanity--whether he was, after all,\ntemperamentally unfitted for romance.\n\nWhen he awoke, it was with a glad flood of consciousness. The early wind\nstirred the chintz curtains at the windows and he was idly puzzled not\nto be in his room at Princeton with his school football picture over\nthe bureau and the Triangle Club on the wall opposite. Then the\ngrandfather's clock in the hall outside struck eight, and the memory\nof the night before came to him. He was out of bed, dressing, like the\nwind; he must get out of the house before he saw Isabelle. What had\nseemed a melancholy happening, now seemed a tiresome anticlimax. He was\ndressed at half past, so he sat down by the window; felt that the sinews\nof his heart were twisted somewhat more than he had thought. What an\nironic mockery the morning seemed!--bright and sunny, and full of the\nsmell of the garden; hearing Mrs. Borge's voice in the sun-parlor below,\nhe wondered where was Isabelle.\n\nThere was a knock at the door.\n\n\"The car will be around at ten minutes of nine, sir.\"\n\nHe returned to his contemplation of the outdoors, and began repeating\nover and over, mechanically, a verse from Browning, which he had once\nquoted to Isabelle in a letter:\n\n\n \"Each life unfulfilled, you see,\n It hangs still, patchy and scrappy;\n We have not sighed deep, laughed free,\n Starved, feasted, despaired--been happy.\"\n\n\nBut his life would not be unfulfilled. He took a sombre satisfaction in\nthinking that perhaps all along she had been nothing except what he had\nread into her; that this was her high point, that no one else would ever\nmake her think. Yet that was what she had objected to in him; and Amory\nwas suddenly tired of thinking, thinking!\n\n\"Damn her!\" he said bitterly, \"she's spoiled my year!\"\n\n *****\n\nTHE SUPERMAN GROWS CARELESS\n\nOn a dusty day in September Amory arrived in Princeton and joined the\nsweltering crowd of conditioned men who thronged the streets. It seemed\na stupid way to commence his upper-class years, to spend four hours a\nmorning in the stuffy room of a tutoring school, imbibing the infinite\nboredom of conic sections. Mr. Rooney, pander to the dull, conducted the\nclass and smoked innumerable Pall Malls as he drew diagrams and worked\nequations from six in the morning until midnight.\n\n\"Now, Langueduc, if I used that formula, where would my A point be?\"\n\nLangueduc lazily shifts his six-foot-three of football material and\ntries to concentrate.\n\n\"Oh--ah--I'm damned if I know, Mr. Rooney.\"\n\n\"Oh, why of course, of course you can't _use_ that formula. _That's_\nwhat I wanted you to say.\"\n\n\"Why, sure, of course.\"\n\n\"Do you see why?\"\n\n\"You bet--I suppose so.\"\n\n\"If you don't see, tell me. I'm here to show you.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Rooney, if you don't mind, I wish you'd go over that again.\"\n\n\"Gladly. Now here's 'A'...\"\n\nThe room was a study in stupidity--two huge stands for paper, Mr. Rooney\nin his shirt-sleeves in front of them, and slouched around on chairs,\na dozen men: Fred Sloane, the pitcher, who absolutely _had_ to get\neligible; \"Slim\" Langueduc, who would beat Yale this fall, if only he\ncould master a poor fifty per cent; McDowell, gay young sophomore, who\nthought it was quite a sporting thing to be tutoring here with all these\nprominent athletes.\n\n\"Those poor birds who haven't a cent to tutor, and have to study during\nthe term are the ones I pity,\" he announced to Amory one day, with a\nflaccid camaraderie in the droop of the cigarette from his pale lips. \"I\nshould think it would be such a bore, there's so much else to do in New\nYork during the term. I suppose they don't know what they miss, anyhow.\"\nThere was such an air of \"you and I\" about Mr. McDowell that Amory very\nnearly pushed him out of the open window when he said this. ... Next\nFebruary his mother would wonder why he didn't make a club and increase\nhis allowance... simple little nut....\n\nThrough the smoke and the air of solemn, dense earnestness that filled\nthe room would come the inevitable helpless cry:\n\n\"I don't get it! Repeat that, Mr. Rooney!\" Most of them were so stupid\nor careless that they wouldn't admit when they didn't understand, and\nAmory was of the latter. He found it impossible to study conic sections;\nsomething in their calm and tantalizing respectability breathing\ndefiantly through Mr. Rooney's fetid parlors distorted their equations\ninto insoluble anagrams. He made a last night's effort with the\nproverbial wet towel, and then blissfully took the exam, wondering\nunhappily why all the color and ambition of the spring before had faded\nout. Somehow, with the defection of Isabelle the idea of undergraduate\nsuccess had loosed its grasp on his imagination, and he contemplated a\npossible failure to pass off his condition with equanimity, even though\nit would arbitrarily mean his removal from the Princetonian board and\nthe slaughter of his chances for the Senior Council.\n\nThere was always his luck.\n\nHe yawned, scribbled his honor pledge on the cover, and sauntered from\nthe room.\n\n\"If you don't pass it,\" said the newly arrived Alec as they sat on the\nwindow-seat of Amory's room and mused upon a scheme of wall decoration,\n\"you're the world's worst goopher. Your stock will go down like an\nelevator at the club and on the campus.\"\n\n\"Oh, hell, I know it. Why rub it in?\"\n\n\"'Cause you deserve it. Anybody that'd risk what you were in line for\n_ought_ to be ineligible for Princetonian chairman.\"\n\n\"Oh, drop the subject,\" Amory protested. \"Watch and wait and shut up.\nI don't want every one at the club asking me about it, as if I were a\nprize potato being fattened for a vegetable show.\" One evening a week\nlater Amory stopped below his own window on the way to Renwick's, and,\nseeing a light, called up:\n\n\"Oh, Tom, any mail?\"\n\nAlec's head appeared against the yellow square of light.\n\n\"Yes, your result's here.\"\n\nHis heart clamored violently.\n\n\"What is it, blue or pink?\"\n\n\"Don't know. Better come up.\"\n\nHe walked into the room and straight over to the table, and then\nsuddenly noticed that there were other people in the room.\n\n\"'Lo, Kerry.\" He was most polite. \"Ah, men of Princeton.\" They seemed\nto be mostly friends, so he picked up the envelope marked \"Registrar's\nOffice,\" and weighed it nervously.\n\n\"We have here quite a slip of paper.\"\n\n\"Open it, Amory.\"\n\n\"Just to be dramatic, I'll let you know that if it's blue, my name is\nwithdrawn from the editorial board of the Prince, and my short career is\nover.\"\n\nHe paused, and then saw for the first time Ferrenby's eyes, wearing a\nhungry look and watching him eagerly. Amory returned the gaze pointedly.\n\n\"Watch my face, gentlemen, for the primitive emotions.\"\n\nHe tore it open and held the slip up to the light.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Pink or blue?\"\n\n\"Say what it is.\"\n\n\"We're all ears, Amory.\"\n\n\"Smile or swear--or something.\"\n\nThere was a pause... a small crowd of seconds swept by... then he looked\nagain and another crowd went on into time.\n\n\"Blue as the sky, gentlemen....\"\n\n *****\n\nAFTERMATH\n\nWhat Amory did that year from early September to late in the spring was\nso purposeless and inconsecutive that it seems scarcely worth recording.\nHe was, of course, immediately sorry for what he had lost. His\nphilosophy of success had tumbled down upon him, and he looked for the\nreasons.\n\n\"Your own laziness,\" said Alec later.\n\n\"No--something deeper than that. I've begun to feel that I was meant to\nlose this chance.\"\n\n\"They're rather off you at the club, you know; every man that doesn't\ncome through makes our crowd just so much weaker.\"\n\n\"I hate that point of view.\"\n\n\"Of course, with a little effort you could still stage a comeback.\"\n\n\"No--I'm through--as far as ever being a power in college is concerned.\"\n\n\"But, Amory, honestly, what makes me the angriest isn't the fact that\nyou won't be chairman of the Prince and on the Senior Council, but just\nthat you didn't get down and pass that exam.\"\n\n\"Not me,\" said Amory slowly; \"I'm mad at the concrete thing. My own\nidleness was quite in accord with my system, but the luck broke.\"\n\n\"Your system broke, you mean.\"\n\n\"Maybe.\"\n\n\"Well, what are you going to do? Get a better one quick, or just bum\naround for two more years as a has-been?\"\n\n\"I don't know yet...\"\n\n\"Oh, Amory, buck up!\"\n\n\"Maybe.\"\n\nAmory's point of view, though dangerous, was not far from the true one.\nIf his reactions to his environment could be tabulated, the chart would\nhave appeared like this, beginning with his earliest years:\n\n 1. The fundamental Amory.\n\n 2. Amory plus Beatrice.\n\n 3. Amory plus Beatrice plus Minneapolis.\n\nThen St. Regis' had pulled him to pieces and started him over again:\n\n 4. Amory plus St. Regis'.\n\n 5. Amory plus St. Regis' plus Princeton.\n\nThat had been his nearest approach to success through conformity. The\nfundamental Amory, idle, imaginative, rebellious, had been nearly snowed\nunder. He had conformed, he had succeeded, but as his imagination was\nneither satisfied nor grasped by his own success, he had listlessly,\nhalf-accidentally chucked the whole thing and become again:\n\n 6. The fundamental Amory.\n\n *****\n\nFINANCIAL\n\nHis father died quietly and inconspicuously at Thanksgiving. The\nincongruity of death with either the beauties of Lake Geneva or with his\nmother's dignified, reticent attitude diverted him, and he looked at the\nfuneral with an amused tolerance. He decided that burial was after all\npreferable to cremation, and he smiled at his old boyhood choice,\nslow oxidation in the top of a tree. The day after the ceremony he\nwas amusing himself in the great library by sinking back on a couch in\ngraceful mortuary attitudes, trying to determine whether he would, when\nhis day came, be found with his arms crossed piously over his chest\n(Monsignor Darcy had once advocated this posture as being the most\ndistinguished), or with his hands clasped behind his head, a more pagan\nand Byronic attitude.\n\nWhat interested him much more than the final departure of his father\nfrom things mundane was a tri-cornered conversation between Beatrice,\nMr. Barton, of Barton and Krogman, their lawyers, and himself, that took\nplace several days after the funeral. For the first time he came into\nactual cognizance of the family finances, and realized what a tidy\nfortune had once been under his father's management. He took a\nledger labelled \"1906\" and ran through it rather carefully. The total\nexpenditure that year had come to something over one hundred and ten\nthousand dollars. Forty thousand of this had been Beatrice's own income,\nand there had been no attempt to account for it: it was all under the\nheading, \"Drafts, checks, and letters of credit forwarded to Beatrice\nBlaine.\" The dispersal of the rest was rather minutely itemized: the\ntaxes and improvements on the Lake Geneva estate had come to almost nine\nthousand dollars; the general up-keep, including Beatrice's electric and\na French car, bought that year, was over thirty-five thousand dollars.\nThe rest was fully taken care of, and there were invariably items which\nfailed to balance on the right side of the ledger.\n\nIn the volume for 1912 Amory was shocked to discover the decrease in the\nnumber of bond holdings and the great drop in the income. In the case of\nBeatrice's money this was not so pronounced, but it was obvious that his\nfather had devoted the previous year to several unfortunate gambles in\noil. Very little of the oil had been burned, but Stephen Blaine had\nbeen rather badly singed. The next year and the next and the next showed\nsimilar decreases, and Beatrice had for the first time begun using her\nown money for keeping up the house. Yet her doctor's bill for 1913 had\nbeen over nine thousand dollars.\n\nAbout the exact state of things Mr. Barton was quite vague and confused.\nThere had been recent investments, the outcome of which was for\nthe present problematical, and he had an idea there were further\nspeculations and exchanges concerning which he had not been consulted.\n\nIt was not for several months that Beatrice wrote Amory the full\nsituation. The entire residue of the Blaine and O'Hara fortunes\nconsisted of the place at Lake Geneva and approximately a half million\ndollars, invested now in fairly conservative six-per-cent holdings. In\nfact, Beatrice wrote that she was putting the money into railroad and\nstreet-car bonds as fast as she could conveniently transfer it.\n\n\n \"I am quite sure,\" she wrote to Amory, \"that if there is one\n thing we can be positive of, it is that people will not stay in\n one place. This Ford person has certainly made the most of that\n idea. So I am instructing Mr. Barton to specialize on such things\n as Northern Pacific and these Rapid Transit Companies, as they\n call the street-cars. I shall never forgive myself for not buying\n Bethlehem Steel. I've heard the most fascinating stories. You\n must go into finance, Amory. I'm sure you would revel in it.\n You start as a messenger or a teller, I believe, and from that you\n go up--almost indefinitely. I'm sure if I were a man I'd love the\n handling of money; it has become quite a senile passion with me.\n Before I get any farther I want to discuss something. A Mrs. Bispam,\n an overcordial little lady whom I met at a tea the other day,\n told me that her son, he is at Yale, wrote her that all the\n boys there wore their summer underwear all during the winter,\n and also went about with their heads wet and in low shoes on the\n coldest days. Now, Amory, I don't know whether that is a fad at\n Princeton too, but I don't want you to be so foolish. It not only\n inclines a young man to pneumonia and infantile paralysis, but to\n all forms of lung trouble, to which you are particularly\n inclined. You cannot experiment with your health. I have found\n that out. I will not make myself ridiculous as some mothers no\n doubt do, by insisting that you wear overshoes, though I remember\n one Christmas you wore them around constantly without a single\n buckle latched, making such a curious swishing sound, and you\n refused to buckle them because it was not the thing to do. The\n very next Christmas you would not wear even rubbers, though I\n begged you. You are nearly twenty years old now, dear, and I\n can't be with you constantly to find whether you are doing the\n sensible thing.\n\n \"This has been a very _practical_ letter. I warned you in my last\n that the lack of money to do the things one wants to makes one\n quite prosy and domestic, but there is still plenty for\n everything if we are not too extravagant. Take care of yourself,\n my dear boy, and do try to write at least _once_ a week, because I\n imagine all sorts of horrible things if I don't hear from you.\n Affectionately, MOTHER.\"\n\n *****\n\nFIRST APPEARANCE OF THE TERM \"PERSONAGE\"\n\nMonsignor Darcy invited Amory up to the Stuart palace on the Hudson for\na week at Christmas, and they had enormous conversations around the open\nfire. Monsignor was growing a trifle stouter and his personality had\nexpanded even with that, and Amory felt both rest and security in\nsinking into a squat, cushioned chair and joining him in the middle-aged\nsanity of a cigar.\n\n\"I've felt like leaving college, Monsignor.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"All my career's gone up in smoke; you think it's petty and all that,\nbut--\"\n\n\"Not at all petty. I think it's most important. I want to hear the whole\nthing. Everything you've been doing since I saw you last.\"\n\nAmory talked; he went thoroughly into the destruction of his egotistic\nhighways, and in a half-hour the listless quality had left his voice.\n\n\"What would you do if you left college?\" asked Monsignor.\n\n\"Don't know. I'd like to travel, but of course this tiresome war\nprevents that. Anyways, mother would hate not having me graduate. I'm\njust at sea. Kerry Holiday wants me to go over with him and join the\nLafayette Esquadrille.\"\n\n\"You know you wouldn't like to go.\"\n\n\"Sometimes I would--to-night I'd go in a second.\"\n\n\"Well, you'd have to be very much more tired of life than I think you\nare. I know you.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid you do,\" agreed Amory reluctantly. \"It just seemed an easy\nway out of everything--when I think of another useless, draggy year.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know; but to tell you the truth, I'm not worried about you; you\nseem to me to be progressing perfectly naturally.\"\n\n\"No,\" Amory objected. \"I've lost half my personality in a year.\"\n\n\"Not a bit of it!\" scoffed Monsignor. \"You've lost a great amount of\nvanity and that's all.\"\n\n\"Lordy! I feel, anyway, as if I'd gone through another fifth form at St.\nRegis's.\"\n\n\"No.\" Monsignor shook his head. \"That was a misfortune; this has been\na good thing. Whatever worth while comes to you, won't be through the\nchannels you were searching last year.\"\n\n\"What could be more unprofitable than my present lack of pep?\"\n\n\"Perhaps in itself... but you're developing. This has given you time to\nthink and you're casting off a lot of your old luggage about success and\nthe superman and all. People like us can't adopt whole theories, as you\ndid. If we can do the next thing, and have an hour a day to think in,\nwe can accomplish marvels, but as far as any high-handed scheme of blind\ndominance is concerned--we'd just make asses of ourselves.\"\n\n\"But, Monsignor, I can't do the next thing.\"\n\n\"Amory, between you and me, I have only just learned to do it myself. I\ncan do the one hundred things beyond the next thing, but I stub my toe\non that, just as you stubbed your toe on mathematics this fall.\"\n\n\"Why do we have to do the next thing? It never seems the sort of thing I\nshould do.\"\n\n\"We have to do it because we're not personalities, but personages.\"\n\n\"That's a good line--what do you mean?\"\n\n\"A personality is what you thought you were, what this Kerry and Sloane\nyou tell me of evidently are. Personality is a physical matter almost\nentirely; it lowers the people it acts on--I've seen it vanish in a\nlong sickness. But while a personality is active, it overrides 'the next\nthing.' Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought\nof apart from what he's done. He's a bar on which a thousand things have\nbeen hung--glittering things sometimes, as ours are; but he uses those\nthings with a cold mentality back of them.\"\n\n\"And several of my most glittering possessions had fallen off when I\nneeded them.\" Amory continued the simile eagerly.\n\n\"Yes, that's it; when you feel that your garnered prestige and talents\nand all that are hung out, you need never bother about anybody; you can\ncope with them without difficulty.\"\n\n\"But, on the other hand, if I haven't my possessions, I'm helpless!\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\"\n\n\"That's certainly an idea.\"\n\n\"Now you've a clean start--a start Kerry or Sloane can constitutionally\nnever have. You brushed three or four ornaments down, and, in a fit of\npique, knocked off the rest of them. The thing now is to collect some\nnew ones, and the farther you look ahead in the collecting the better.\nBut remember, do the next thing!\"\n\n\"How clear you can make things!\"\n\nSo they talked, often about themselves, sometimes of philosophy and\nreligion, and life as respectively a game or a mystery. The priest\nseemed to guess Amory's thoughts before they were clear in his own head,\nso closely related were their minds in form and groove.\n\n\"Why do I make lists?\" Amory asked him one night. \"Lists of all sorts of\nthings?\"\n\n\"Because you're a mediaevalist,\" Monsignor answered. \"We both are. It's\nthe passion for classifying and finding a type.\"\n\n\"It's a desire to get something definite.\"\n\n\"It's the nucleus of scholastic philosophy.\"\n\n\"I was beginning to think I was growing eccentric till I came up here.\nIt was a pose, I guess.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about that; for you not posing may be the biggest pose of\nall. Pose--\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"But do the next thing.\"\n\nAfter Amory returned to college he received several letters from\nMonsignor which gave him more egotistic food for consumption.\n\n I am afraid that I gave you too much assurance of your inevitable\n safety, and you must remember that I did that through faith in\n your springs of effort; not in the silly conviction that you will\n arrive without struggle. Some nuances of character you will have\n to take for granted in yourself, though you must be careful in\n confessing them to others. You are unsentimental, almost incapable\n of affection, astute without being cunning and vain without being\n proud.\n\n Don't let yourself feel worthless; often through life you will\n really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself;\n and don't worry about losing your \"personality,\" as you persist\n in calling it; at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning,\n at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of\n the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do,\n the genial golden warmth of 4 P.M.\n\n If you write me letters, please let them be natural ones. Your\n last, that dissertation on architecture, was perfectly awful--\n so \"highbrow\" that I picture you living in an intellectual and\n emotional vacuum; and beware of trying to classify people too\n definitely into types; you will find that all through their youth\n they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and\n by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are\n merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at\n you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with\n the world. An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da\n Vinci would be a more valuable beacon to you at present.\n\n You are bound to go up and down, just as I did in my youth, but\n do keep your clarity of mind, and if fools or sages dare to\n criticise don't blame yourself too much.\n\n You say that convention is all that really keeps you straight in\n this \"woman proposition\"; but it's more than that, Amory; it's\n the fear that what you begin you can't stop; you would run amuck,\n and I know whereof I speak; it's that half-miraculous sixth sense\n by which you detect evil, it's the half-realized fear of God in\n your heart.\n\n Whatever your metier proves to be--religion, architecture,\n literature--I'm sure you would be much safer anchored to the\n Church, but I won't risk my influence by arguing with you even\n though I am secretly sure that the \"black chasm of Romanism\"\n yawns beneath you. Do write me soon.\n\n With affectionate regards, THAYER DARCY.\n\n\nEven Amory's reading paled during this period; he delved further into\nthe misty side streets of literature: Huysmans, Walter Pater, Theophile\nGautier, and the racier sections of Rabelais, Boccaccio, Petronius, and\nSuetonius. One week, through general curiosity, he inspected the private\nlibraries of his classmates and found Sloane's as typical as any: sets\nof Kipling, O. Henry, John Fox, Jr., and Richard Harding Davis; \"What\nEvery Middle-Aged Woman Ought to Know,\" \"The Spell of the Yukon\";\na \"gift\" copy of James Whitcomb Riley, an assortment of battered,\nannotated schoolbooks, and, finally, to his surprise, one of his own\nlate discoveries, the collected poems of Rupert Brooke.\n\nTogether with Tom D'Invilliers, he sought among the lights of Princeton\nfor some one who might found the Great American Poetic Tradition.\n\nThe undergraduate body itself was rather more interesting that year than\nhad been the entirely Philistine Princeton of two years before. Things\nhad livened surprisingly, though at the sacrifice of much of the\nspontaneous charm of freshman year. In the old Princeton they would\nnever have discovered Tanaduke Wylie. Tanaduke was a sophomore, with\ntremendous ears and a way of saying, \"The earth swirls down through\nthe ominous moons of preconsidered generations!\" that made them vaguely\nwonder why it did not sound quite clear, but never question that it was\nthe utterance of a supersoul. At least so Tom and Amory took him. They\ntold him in all earnestness that he had a mind like Shelley's, and\nfeatured his ultrafree free verse and prose poetry in the Nassau\nLiterary Magazine. But Tanaduke's genius absorbed the many colors of the\nage, and he took to the Bohemian life, to their great disappointment. He\ntalked of Greenwich Village now instead of \"noon-swirled moons,\" and\nmet winter muses, unacademic, and cloistered by Forty-second Street\nand Broadway, instead of the Shelleyan dream-children with whom he had\nregaled their expectant appreciation. So they surrendered Tanaduke to\nthe futurists, deciding that he and his flaming ties would do better\nthere. Tom gave him the final advice that he should stop writing for two\nyears and read the complete works of Alexander Pope four times, but on\nAmory's suggestion that Pope for Tanaduke was like foot-ease for stomach\ntrouble, they withdrew in laughter, and called it a coin's toss whether\nthis genius was too big or too petty for them.\n\nAmory rather scornfully avoided the popular professors who dispensed\neasy epigrams and thimblefuls of Chartreuse to groups of admirers every\nnight. He was disappointed, too, at the air of general uncertainty on\nevery subject that seemed linked with the pedantic temperament; his\nopinions took shape in a miniature satire called \"In a Lecture-Room,\"\nwhich he persuaded Tom to print in the Nassau Lit.\n\n\n \"Good-morning, Fool...\n Three times a week\n You hold us helpless while you speak,\n Teasing our thirsty souls with the\n Sleek 'yeas' of your philosophy...\n Well, here we are, your hundred sheep,\n Tune up, play on, pour forth... we sleep...\n You are a student, so they say;\n You hammered out the other day\n A syllabus, from what we know\n Of some forgotten folio;\n You'd sniffled through an era's must,\n Filling your nostrils up with dust,\n And then, arising from your knees,\n Published, in one gigantic sneeze...\n But here's a neighbor on my right,\n An Eager Ass, considered bright;\n Asker of questions.... How he'll stand,\n With earnest air and fidgy hand,\n After this hour, telling you\n He sat all night and burrowed through\n Your book.... Oh, you'll be coy and he\n Will simulate precosity,\n And pedants both, you'll smile and smirk,\n And leer, and hasten back to work....\n\n 'Twas this day week, sir, you returned\n A theme of mine, from which I learned\n (Through various comment on the side\n Which you had scrawled) that I defied\n The _highest rules of criticism_\n For _cheap_ and _careless_ witticism....\n 'Are you quite sure that this could be?'\n And\n 'Shaw is no authority!'\n But Eager Ass, with what he's sent,\n Plays havoc with your best per cent.\n\n Still--still I meet you here and there...\n When Shakespeare's played you hold a chair,\n And some defunct, moth-eaten star\n Enchants the mental prig you are...\n A radical comes down and shocks\n The atheistic orthodox?\n You're representing Common Sense,\n Mouth open, in the audience.\n And, sometimes, even chapel lures\n That conscious tolerance of yours,\n That broad and beaming view of truth\n (Including Kant and General Booth...)\n And so from shock to shock you live,\n A hollow, pale affirmative...\n\n The hour's up... and roused from rest\n One hundred children of the blest\n Cheat you a word or two with feet\n That down the noisy aisle-ways beat...\n Forget on _narrow-minded earth_\n The Mighty Yawn that gave you birth.\"\n\n\nIn April, Kerry Holiday left college and sailed for France to enroll in\nthe Lafayette Esquadrille. Amory's envy and admiration of this step\nwas drowned in an experience of his own to which he never succeeded in\ngiving an appropriate value, but which, nevertheless, haunted him for\nthree years afterward.\n\n *****\n\nTHE DEVIL\n\nHealy's they left at twelve and taxied to Bistolary's. There were Axia\nMarlowe and Phoebe Column, from the Summer Garden show, Fred Sloane\nand Amory. The evening was so very young that they felt ridiculous with\nsurplus energy, and burst into the cafe like Dionysian revellers.\n\n\"Table for four in the middle of the floor,\" yelled Phoebe. \"Hurry, old\ndear, tell 'em we're here!\"\n\n\"Tell 'em to play 'Admiration'!\" shouted Sloane. \"You two order; Phoebe\nand I are going to shake a wicked calf,\" and they sailed off in the\nmuddled crowd. Axia and Amory, acquaintances of an hour, jostled behind\na waiter to a table at a point of vantage; there they took seats and\nwatched.\n\n\"There's Findle Margotson, from New Haven!\" she cried above the uproar.\n\"'Lo, Findle! Whoo-ee!\"\n\n\"Oh, Axia!\" he shouted in salutation. \"C'mon over to our table.\" \"No!\"\nAmory whispered.\n\n\"Can't do it, Findle; I'm with somebody else! Call me up to-morrow about\none o'clock!\"\n\nFindle, a nondescript man-about-Bisty's, answered incoherently and\nturned back to the brilliant blonde whom he was endeavoring to steer\naround the room.\n\n\"There's a natural damn fool,\" commented Amory.\n\n\"Oh, he's all right. Here's the old jitney waiter. If you ask me, I want\na double Daiquiri.\"\n\n\"Make it four.\"\n\nThe crowd whirled and changed and shifted. They were mostly from the\ncolleges, with a scattering of the male refuse of Broadway, and women of\ntwo types, the higher of which was the chorus girl. On the whole it was\na typical crowd, and their party as typical as any. About three-fourths\nof the whole business was for effect and therefore harmless, ended at\nthe door of the cafe, soon enough for the five-o'clock train back to\nYale or Princeton; about one-fourth continued on into the dimmer hours\nand gathered strange dust from strange places. Their party was scheduled\nto be one of the harmless kind. Fred Sloane and Phoebe Column were old\nfriends; Axia and Amory new ones. But strange things are prepared even\nin the dead of night, and the unusual, which lurks least in the cafe,\nhome of the prosaic and inevitable, was preparing to spoil for him\nthe waning romance of Broadway. The way it took was so inexpressibly\nterrible, so unbelievable, that afterward he never thought of it as\nexperience; but it was a scene from a misty tragedy, played far behind\nthe veil, and that it meant something definite he knew.\n\nAbout one o'clock they moved to Maxim's, and two found them in\nDeviniere's. Sloane had been drinking consecutively and was in a state\nof unsteady exhilaration, but Amory was quite tiresomely sober; they\nhad run across none of those ancient, corrupt buyers of champagne who\nusually assisted their New York parties. They were just through dancing\nand were making their way back to their chairs when Amory became aware\nthat some one at a near-by table was looking at him. He turned and\nglanced casually... a middle-aged man dressed in a brown sack suit, it\nwas, sitting a little apart at a table by himself and watching their\nparty intently. At Amory's glance he smiled faintly. Amory turned to\nFred, who was just sitting down.\n\n\"Who's that pale fool watching us?\" he complained indignantly.\n\n\"Where?\" cried Sloane. \"We'll have him thrown out!\" He rose to his feet\nand swayed back and forth, clinging to his chair. \"Where is he?\"\n\nAxia and Phoebe suddenly leaned and whispered to each other across the\ntable, and before Amory realized it they found themselves on their way\nto the door.\n\n\"Where now?\"\n\n\"Up to the flat,\" suggested Phoebe. \"We've got brandy and fizz--and\neverything's slow down here to-night.\"\n\nAmory considered quickly. He hadn't been drinking, and decided that if\nhe took no more, it would be reasonably discreet for him to trot along\nin the party. In fact, it would be, perhaps, the thing to do in order to\nkeep an eye on Sloane, who was not in a state to do his own thinking. So\nhe took Axia's arm and, piling intimately into a taxicab, they drove out\nover the hundreds and drew up at a tall, white-stone apartment-house.\n... Never would he forget that street.... It was a broad street, lined\non both sides with just such tall, white-stone buildings, dotted with\ndark windows; they stretched along as far as the eye could see, flooded\nwith a bright moonlight that gave them a calcium pallor. He imagined\neach one to have an elevator and a colored hall-boy and a key-rack; each\none to be eight stories high and full of three and four room suites. He\nwas rather glad to walk into the cheeriness of Phoebe's living-room and\nsink onto a sofa, while the girls went rummaging for food.\n\n\"Phoebe's great stuff,\" confided Sloane, sotto voce.\n\n\"I'm only going to stay half an hour,\" Amory said sternly. He wondered\nif it sounded priggish.\n\n\"Hell y' say,\" protested Sloane. \"We're here now--don't le's rush.\"\n\n\"I don't like this place,\" Amory said sulkily, \"and I don't want any\nfood.\"\n\nPhoebe reappeared with sandwiches, brandy bottle, siphon, and four\nglasses.\n\n\"Amory, pour 'em out,\" she said, \"and we'll drink to Fred Sloane, who\nhas a rare, distinguished edge.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Axia, coming in, \"and Amory. I like Amory.\" She sat down\nbeside him and laid her yellow head on his shoulder.\n\n\"I'll pour,\" said Sloane; \"you use siphon, Phoebe.\"\n\nThey filled the tray with glasses.\n\n\"Ready, here she goes!\"\n\nAmory hesitated, glass in hand.\n\nThere was a minute while temptation crept over him like a warm wind,\nand his imagination turned to fire, and he took the glass from Phoebe's\nhand. That was all; for at the second that his decision came, he looked\nup and saw, ten yards from him, the man who had been in the cafe, and\nwith his jump of astonishment the glass fell from his uplifted hand.\nThere the man half sat, half leaned against a pile of pillows on the\ncorner divan. His face was cast in the same yellow wax as in the cafe,\nneither the dull, pasty color of a dead man--rather a sort of virile\npallor--nor unhealthy, you'd have called it; but like a strong man who'd\nworked in a mine or done night shifts in a damp climate. Amory looked\nhim over carefully and later he could have drawn him after a fashion,\ndown to the merest details. His mouth was the kind that is called frank,\nand he had steady gray eyes that moved slowly from one to the other\nof their group, with just the shade of a questioning expression. Amory\nnoticed his hands; they weren't fine at all, but they had versatility\nand a tenuous strength... they were nervous hands that sat lightly\nalong the cushions and moved constantly with little jerky openings and\nclosings. Then, suddenly, Amory perceived the feet, and with a rush of\nblood to the head he realized he was afraid. The feet were all wrong ...\nwith a sort of wrongness that he felt rather than knew.... It was like\nweakness in a good woman, or blood on satin; one of those terrible\nincongruities that shake little things in the back of the brain. He wore\nno shoes, but, instead, a sort of half moccasin, pointed, though, like\nthe shoes they wore in the fourteenth century, and with the little ends\ncurling up. They were a darkish brown and his toes seemed to fill them\nto the end.... They were unutterably terrible....\n\nHe must have said something, or looked something, for Axia's voice came\nout of the void with a strange goodness.\n\n\"Well, look at Amory! Poor old Amory's sick--old head going 'round?\"\n\n\"Look at that man!\" cried Amory, pointing toward the corner divan.\n\n\"You mean that purple zebra!\" shrieked Axia facetiously. \"Ooo-ee!\nAmory's got a purple zebra watching him!\"\n\nSloane laughed vacantly.\n\n\"Ole zebra gotcha, Amory?\"\n\nThere was a silence.... The man regarded Amory quizzically.... Then the\nhuman voices fell faintly on his ear:\n\n\"Thought you weren't drinking,\" remarked Axia sardonically, but her\nvoice was good to hear; the whole divan that held the man was alive;\nalive like heat waves over asphalt, like wriggling worms....\n\n\"Come back! Come back!\" Axia's arm fell on his. \"Amory, dear, you aren't\ngoing, Amory!\" He was half-way to the door.\n\n\"Come on, Amory, stick 'th us!\"\n\n\"Sick, are you?\"\n\n\"Sit down a second!\"\n\n\"Take some water.\"\n\n\"Take a little brandy....\"\n\nThe elevator was close, and the colored boy was half asleep, paled to\na livid bronze... Axia's beseeching voice floated down the shaft. Those\nfeet... those feet...\n\nAs they settled to the lower floor the feet came into view in the sickly\nelectric light of the paved hall.\n\n *****\n\nIN THE ALLEY\n\nDown the long street came the moon, and Amory turned his back on it and\nwalked. Ten, fifteen steps away sounded the footsteps. They were like a\nslow dripping, with just the slightest insistence in their fall.\nAmory's shadow lay, perhaps, ten feet ahead of him, and soft shoes was\npresumably that far behind. With the instinct of a child Amory edged in\nunder the blue darkness of the white buildings, cleaving the moonlight\nfor haggard seconds, once bursting into a slow run with clumsy\nstumblings. After that he stopped suddenly; he must keep hold, he\nthought. His lips were dry and he licked them.\n\nIf he met any one good--were there any good people left in the world or\ndid they all live in white apartment-houses now? Was every one followed\nin the moonlight? But if he met some one good who'd know what he meant\nand hear this damned scuffle... then the scuffling grew suddenly nearer,\nand a black cloud settled over the moon. When again the pale sheen\nskimmed the cornices, it was almost beside him, and Amory thought he\nheard a quiet breathing. Suddenly he realized that the footsteps were\nnot behind, had never been behind, they were ahead and he was not\neluding but following... following. He began to run, blindly, his heart\nknocking heavily, his hands clinched. Far ahead a black dot showed\nitself, resolved slowly into a human shape. But Amory was beyond that\nnow; he turned off the street and darted into an alley, narrow and\ndark and smelling of old rottenness. He twisted down a long, sinuous\nblackness, where the moonlight was shut away except for tiny glints\nand patches... then suddenly sank panting into a corner by a fence,\nexhausted. The steps ahead stopped, and he could hear them shift\nslightly with a continuous motion, like waves around a dock.\n\nHe put his face in his hands and covered eyes and ears as well as\nhe could. During all this time it never occurred to him that he was\ndelirious or drunk. He had a sense of reality such as material things\ncould never give him. His intellectual content seemed to submit\npassively to it, and it fitted like a glove everything that had ever\npreceded it in his life. It did not muddle him. It was like a problem\nwhose answer he knew on paper, yet whose solution he was unable to\ngrasp. He was far beyond horror. He had sunk through the thin surface of\nthat, now moved in a region where the feet and the fear of white walls\nwere real, living things, things he must accept. Only far inside his\nsoul a little fire leaped and cried that something was pulling him down,\ntrying to get him inside a door and slam it behind him. After that door\nwas slammed there would be only footfalls and white buildings in the\nmoonlight, and perhaps he would be one of the footfalls.\n\nDuring the five or ten minutes he waited in the shadow of the fence,\nthere was somehow this fire... that was as near as he could name it\nafterward. He remembered calling aloud:\n\n\"I want some one stupid. Oh, send some one stupid!\" This to the\nblack fence opposite him, in whose shadows the footsteps shuffled\n... shuffled. He supposed \"stupid\" and \"good\" had become somehow\nintermingled through previous association. When he called thus it was\nnot an act of will at all--will had turned him away from the moving\nfigure in the street; it was almost instinct that called, just the pile\non pile of inherent tradition or some wild prayer from way over the\nnight. Then something clanged like a low gong struck at a distance,\nand before his eyes a face flashed over the two feet, a face pale and\ndistorted with a sort of infinite evil that twisted it like flame in\nthe wind; _but he knew, for the half instant that the gong tanged and\nhummed, that it was the face of Dick Humbird._\n\nMinutes later he sprang to his feet, realizing dimly that there was no\nmore sound, and that he was alone in the graying alley. It was cold, and\nhe started on a steady run for the light that showed the street at the\nother end.\n\n *****\n\nAT THE WINDOW\n\nIt was late morning when he woke and found the telephone beside his bed\nin the hotel tolling frantically, and remembered that he had left word\nto be called at eleven. Sloane was snoring heavily, his clothes in a\npile by his bed. They dressed and ate breakfast in silence, and then\nsauntered out to get some air. Amory's mind was working slowly, trying\nto assimilate what had happened and separate from the chaotic imagery\nthat stacked his memory the bare shreds of truth. If the morning had\nbeen cold and gray he could have grasped the reins of the past in an\ninstant, but it was one of those days that New York gets sometimes in\nMay, when the air on Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine. How much or how\nlittle Sloane remembered Amory did not care to know; he apparently had\nnone of the nervous tension that was gripping Amory and forcing his mind\nback and forth like a shrieking saw.\n\nThen Broadway broke upon them, and with the babel of noise and the\npainted faces a sudden sickness rushed over Amory.\n\n\"For God's sake, let's go back! Let's get off of this--this place!\"\n\nSloane looked at him in amazement.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"This street, it's ghastly! Come on! let's get back to the Avenue!\"\n\n\"Do you mean to say,\" said Sloane stolidly, \"that 'cause you had some\nsort of indigestion that made you act like a maniac last night, you're\nnever coming on Broadway again?\"\n\nSimultaneously Amory classed him with the crowd, and he seemed no longer\nSloane of the debonair humor and the happy personality, but only one of\nthe evil faces that whirled along the turbid stream.\n\n\"Man!\" he shouted so loud that the people on the corner turned and\nfollowed them with their eyes, \"it's filthy, and if you can't see it,\nyou're filthy, too!\"\n\n\"I can't help it,\" said Sloane doggedly. \"What's the matter with you?\nOld remorse getting you? You'd be in a fine state if you'd gone through\nwith our little party.\"\n\n\"I'm going, Fred,\" said Amory slowly. His knees were shaking under him,\nand he knew that if he stayed another minute on this street he would\nkeel over where he stood. \"I'll be at the Vanderbilt for lunch.\" And he\nstrode rapidly off and turned over to Fifth Avenue. Back at the hotel he\nfelt better, but as he walked into the barber-shop, intending to get a\nhead massage, the smell of the powders and tonics brought back Axia's\nsidelong, suggestive smile, and he left hurriedly. In the doorway of his\nroom a sudden blackness flowed around him like a divided river.\n\nWhen he came to himself he knew that several hours had passed. He\npitched onto the bed and rolled over on his face with a deadly fear that\nhe was going mad. He wanted people, people, some one sane and stupid and\ngood. He lay for he knew not how long without moving. He could feel\nthe little hot veins on his forehead standing out, and his terror had\nhardened on him like plaster. He felt he was passing up again through\nthe thin crust of horror, and now only could he distinguish the shadowy\ntwilight he was leaving. He must have fallen asleep again, for when he\nnext recollected himself he had paid the hotel bill and was stepping\ninto a taxi at the door. It was raining torrents.\n\nOn the train for Princeton he saw no one he knew, only a crowd of\nfagged-looking Philadelphians. The presence of a painted woman across\nthe aisle filled him with a fresh burst of sickness and he changed to\nanother car, tried to concentrate on an article in a popular magazine.\nHe found himself reading the same paragraphs over and over, so he\nabandoned this attempt and leaning over wearily pressed his hot forehead\nagainst the damp window-pane. The car, a smoker, was hot and stuffy with\nmost of the smells of the state's alien population; he opened a window\nand shivered against the cloud of fog that drifted in over him. The two\nhours' ride were like days, and he nearly cried aloud with joy when the\ntowers of Princeton loomed up beside him and the yellow squares of light\nfiltered through the blue rain.\n\nTom was standing in the centre of the room, pensively relighting a\ncigar-stub. Amory fancied he looked rather relieved on seeing him.\n\n\"Had a hell of a dream about you last night,\" came in the cracked voice\nthrough the cigar smoke. \"I had an idea you were in some trouble.\"\n\n\"Don't tell me about it!\" Amory almost shrieked. \"Don't say a word; I'm\ntired and pepped out.\"\n\nTom looked at him queerly and then sank into a chair and opened his\nItalian note-book. Amory threw his coat and hat on the floor, loosened\nhis collar, and took a Wells novel at random from the shelf. \"Wells is\nsane,\" he thought, \"and if he won't do I'll read Rupert Brooke.\"\n\nHalf an hour passed. Outside the wind came up, and Amory started as\nthe wet branches moved and clawed with their finger-nails at the\nwindow-pane. Tom was deep in his work, and inside the room only the\noccasional scratch of a match or the rustle of leather as they shifted\nin their chairs broke the stillness. Then like a zigzag of lightning\ncame the change. Amory sat bolt upright, frozen cold in his chair. Tom\nwas looking at him with his mouth drooping, eyes fixed.\n\n\"God help us!\" Amory cried.\n\n\"Oh, my heavens!\" shouted Tom, \"look behind!\" Quick as a flash Amory\nwhirled around. He saw nothing but the dark window-pane. \"It's gone\nnow,\" came Tom's voice after a second in a still terror. \"Something was\nlooking at you.\"\n\nTrembling violently, Amory dropped into his chair again.\n\n\"I've got to tell you,\" he said. \"I've had one hell of an experience.\nI think I've--I've seen the devil or--something like him. What face did\nyou just see?--or no,\" he added quickly, \"don't tell me!\"\n\nAnd he gave Tom the story. It was midnight when he finished, and after\nthat, with all lights burning, two sleepy, shivering boys read to each\nother from \"The New Machiavelli,\" until dawn came up out of Witherspoon\nHall, and the Princetonian fell against the door, and the May birds\nhailed the sun on last night's rain.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 4. Narcissus Off Duty\n\n\nDuring Princeton's transition period, that is, during Amory's last\ntwo years there, while he saw it change and broaden and live up to its\nGothic beauty by better means than night parades, certain individuals\narrived who stirred it to its plethoric depths. Some of them had been\nfreshmen, and wild freshmen, with Amory; some were in the class below;\nand it was in the beginning of his last year and around small tables at\nthe Nassau Inn that they began questioning aloud the institutions that\nAmory and countless others before him had questioned so long in secret.\nFirst, and partly by accident, they struck on certain books, a definite\ntype of biographical novel that Amory christened \"quest\" books. In the\n\"quest\" book the hero set off in life armed with the best weapons and\navowedly intending to use them as such weapons are usually used, to push\ntheir possessors ahead as selfishly and blindly as possible, but the\nheroes of the \"quest\" books discovered that there might be a more\nmagnificent use for them. \"None Other Gods,\" \"Sinister Street,\" and \"The\nResearch Magnificent\" were examples of such books; it was the latter\nof these three that gripped Burne Holiday and made him wonder in the\nbeginning of senior year how much it was worth while being a diplomatic\nautocrat around his club on Prospect Avenue and basking in the high\nlights of class office. It was distinctly through the channels of\naristocracy that Burne found his way. Amory, through Kerry, had had a\nvague drifting acquaintance with him, but not until January of senior\nyear did their friendship commence.\n\n\"Heard the latest?\" said Tom, coming in late one drizzly evening with\nthat triumphant air he always wore after a successful conversational\nbout.\n\n\"No. Somebody flunked out? Or another ship sunk?\"\n\n\"Worse than that. About one-third of the junior class are going to\nresign from their clubs.\"\n\n\"What!\"\n\n\"Actual fact!\"\n\n\"Why!\"\n\n\"Spirit of reform and all that. Burne Holiday is behind it. The club\npresidents are holding a meeting to-night to see if they can find a\njoint means of combating it.\"\n\n\"Well, what's the idea of the thing?\"\n\n\"Oh, clubs injurious to Princeton democracy; cost a lot; draw social\nlines, take time; the regular line you get sometimes from disappointed\nsophomores. Woodrow thought they should be abolished and all that.\"\n\n\"But this is the real thing?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. I think it'll go through.\"\n\n\"For Pete's sake, tell me more about it.\"\n\n\"Well,\" began Tom, \"it seems that the idea developed simultaneously in\nseveral heads. I was talking to Burne awhile ago, and he claims that\nit's a logical result if an intelligent person thinks long enough\nabout the social system. They had a 'discussion crowd' and the point of\nabolishing the clubs was brought up by some one--everybody there leaped\nat it--it had been in each one's mind, more or less, and it just needed\na spark to bring it out.\"\n\n\"Fine! I swear I think it'll be most entertaining. How do they feel up\nat Cap and Gown?\"\n\n\"Wild, of course. Every one's been sitting and arguing and swearing and\ngetting mad and getting sentimental and getting brutal. It's the same at\nall the clubs; I've been the rounds. They get one of the radicals in the\ncorner and fire questions at him.\"\n\n\"How do the radicals stand up?\"\n\n\"Oh, moderately well. Burne's a damn good talker, and so obviously\nsincere that you can't get anywhere with him. It's so evident that\nresigning from his club means so much more to him than preventing it\ndoes to us that I felt futile when I argued; finally took a position\nthat was brilliantly neutral. In fact, I believe Burne thought for a\nwhile that he'd converted me.\"\n\n\"And you say almost a third of the junior class are going to resign?\"\n\n\"Call it a fourth and be safe.\"\n\n\"Lord--who'd have thought it possible!\"\n\nThere was a brisk knock at the door, and Burne himself came in. \"Hello,\nAmory--hello, Tom.\"\n\nAmory rose.\n\n\"'Evening, Burne. Don't mind if I seem to rush; I'm going to Renwick's.\"\n\nBurne turned to him quickly.\n\n\"You probably know what I want to talk to Tom about, and it isn't a bit\nprivate. I wish you'd stay.\"\n\n\"I'd be glad to.\" Amory sat down again, and as Burne perched on a table\nand launched into argument with Tom, he looked at this revolutionary\nmore carefully than he ever had before. Broad-browed and strong-chinned,\nwith a fineness in the honest gray eyes that were like Kerry's,\nBurne was a man who gave an immediate impression of bigness and\nsecurity--stubborn, that was evident, but his stubbornness wore no\nstolidity, and when he had talked for five minutes Amory knew that this\nkeen enthusiasm had in it no quality of dilettantism.\n\nThe intense power Amory felt later in Burne Holiday differed from the\nadmiration he had had for Humbird. This time it began as purely a\nmental interest. With other men of whom he had thought as primarily\nfirst-class, he had been attracted first by their personalities, and\nin Burne he missed that immediate magnetism to which he usually\nswore allegiance. But that night Amory was struck by Burne's intense\nearnestness, a quality he was accustomed to associate only with the\ndread stupidity, and by the great enthusiasm that struck dead chords in\nhis heart. Burne stood vaguely for a land Amory hoped he was drifting\ntoward--and it was almost time that land was in sight. Tom and Amory and\nAlec had reached an impasse; never did they seem to have new experiences\nin common, for Tom and Alec had been as blindly busy with their\ncommittees and boards as Amory had been blindly idling, and the things\nthey had for dissection--college, contemporary personality and the\nlike--they had hashed and rehashed for many a frugal conversational\nmeal.\n\nThat night they discussed the clubs until twelve, and, in the main, they\nagreed with Burne. To the roommates it did not seem such a vital subject\nas it had in the two years before, but the logic of Burne's objections\nto the social system dovetailed so completely with everything they had\nthought, that they questioned rather than argued, and envied the sanity\nthat enabled this man to stand out so against all traditions.\n\nThen Amory branched off and found that Burne was deep in other things\nas well. Economics had interested him and he was turning socialist.\nPacifism played in the back of his mind, and he read The Masses and\nLyoff Tolstoi faithfully.\n\n\"How about religion?\" Amory asked him.\n\n\"Don't know. I'm in a muddle about a lot of things--I've just discovered\nthat I've a mind, and I'm starting to read.\"\n\n\"Read what?\"\n\n\"Everything. I have to pick and choose, of course, but mostly things to\nmake me think. I'm reading the four gospels now, and the 'Varieties of\nReligious Experience.'\"\n\n\"What chiefly started you?\"\n\n\"Wells, I guess, and Tolstoi, and a man named Edward Carpenter. I've\nbeen reading for over a year now--on a few lines, on what I consider the\nessential lines.\"\n\n\"Poetry?\"\n\n\"Well, frankly, not what you call poetry, or for your reasons--you two\nwrite, of course, and look at things differently. Whitman is the man\nthat attracts me.\"\n\n\"Whitman?\"\n\n\"Yes; he's a definite ethical force.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm ashamed to say that I'm a blank on the subject of Whitman.\nHow about you, Tom?\"\n\nTom nodded sheepishly.\n\n\"Well,\" continued Burne, \"you may strike a few poems that are tiresome,\nbut I mean the mass of his work. He's tremendous--like Tolstoi. They\nboth look things in the face, and, somehow, different as they are, stand\nfor somewhat the same things.\"\n\n\"You have me stumped, Burne,\" Amory admitted. \"I've read 'Anna Karenina'\nand the 'Kreutzer Sonata' of course, but Tolstoi is mostly in the\noriginal Russian as far as I'm concerned.\"\n\n\"He's the greatest man in hundreds of years,\" cried Burne\nenthusiastically. \"Did you ever see a picture of that shaggy old head of\nhis?\"\n\nThey talked until three, from biology to organized religion, and when\nAmory crept shivering into bed it was with his mind aglow with ideas\nand a sense of shock that some one else had discovered the path he might\nhave followed. Burne Holiday was so evidently developing--and Amory\nhad considered that he was doing the same. He had fallen into a deep\ncynicism over what had crossed his path, plotted the imperfectability of\nman and read Shaw and Chesterton enough to keep his mind from the edges\nof decadence--now suddenly all his mental processes of the last year and\na half seemed stale and futile--a petty consummation of himself... and\nlike a sombre background lay that incident of the spring before, that\nfilled half his nights with a dreary terror and made him unable to pray.\nHe was not even a Catholic, yet that was the only ghost of a code that\nhe had, the gaudy, ritualistic, paradoxical Catholicism whose prophet\nwas Chesterton, whose claqueurs were such reformed rakes of literature\nas Huysmans and Bourget, whose American sponsor was Ralph Adams Cram,\nwith his adulation of thirteenth-century cathedrals--a Catholicism which\nAmory found convenient and ready-made, without priest or sacraments or\nsacrifice.\n\nHe could not sleep, so he turned on his reading-lamp and, taking down\nthe \"Kreutzer Sonata,\" searched it carefully for the germs of Burne's\nenthusiasm. Being Burne was suddenly so much realler than being clever.\nYet he sighed... here were other possible clay feet.\n\nHe thought back through two years, of Burne as a hurried, nervous\nfreshman, quite submerged in his brother's personality. Then he\nremembered an incident of sophomore year, in which Burne had been\nsuspected of the leading role.\n\nDean Hollister had been heard by a large group arguing with a\ntaxi-driver, who had driven him from the junction. In the course of the\naltercation the dean remarked that he \"might as well buy the taxicab.\"\nHe paid and walked off, but next morning he entered his private office\nto find the taxicab itself in the space usually occupied by his desk,\nbearing a sign which read \"Property of Dean Hollister. Bought and Paid\nfor.\"... It took two expert mechanics half a day to dissemble it into\nits minutest parts and remove it, which only goes to prove the rare\nenergy of sophomore humor under efficient leadership.\n\nThen again, that very fall, Burne had caused a sensation. A certain\nPhyllis Styles, an intercollegiate prom-trotter, had failed to get her\nyearly invitation to the Harvard-Princeton game.\n\nJesse Ferrenby had brought her to a smaller game a few weeks before,\nand had pressed Burne into service--to the ruination of the latter's\nmisogyny.\n\n\"Are you coming to the Harvard game?\" Burne had asked indiscreetly,\nmerely to make conversation.\n\n\"If you ask me,\" cried Phyllis quickly.\n\n\"Of course I do,\" said Burne feebly. He was unversed in the arts of\nPhyllis, and was sure that this was merely a vapid form of kidding.\nBefore an hour had passed he knew that he was indeed involved. Phyllis\nhad pinned him down and served him up, informed him the train she was\narriving by, and depressed him thoroughly. Aside from loathing Phyllis,\nhe had particularly wanted to stag that game and entertain some Harvard\nfriends.\n\n\"She'll see,\" he informed a delegation who arrived in his room to josh\nhim. \"This will be the last game she ever persuades any young innocent\nto take her to!\"\n\n\"But, Burne--why did you _invite_ her if you didn't want her?\"\n\n\"Burne, you _know_ you're secretly mad about her--that's the _real_\ntrouble.\"\n\n\"What can _you_ do, Burne? What can _you_ do against Phyllis?\"\n\nBut Burne only shook his head and muttered threats which consisted\nlargely of the phrase: \"She'll see, she'll see!\"\n\nThe blithesome Phyllis bore her twenty-five summers gayly from the\ntrain, but on the platform a ghastly sight met her eyes. There were\nBurne and Fred Sloane arrayed to the last dot like the lurid figures\non college posters. They had bought flaring suits with huge peg-top\ntrousers and gigantic padded shoulders. On their heads were rakish\ncollege hats, pinned up in front and sporting bright orange-and-black\nbands, while from their celluloid collars blossomed flaming orange ties.\nThey wore black arm-bands with orange \"P's,\" and carried canes\nflying Princeton pennants, the effect completed by socks and peeping\nhandkerchiefs in the same color motifs. On a clanking chain they led a\nlarge, angry tom-cat, painted to represent a tiger.\n\nA good half of the station crowd was already staring at them, torn\nbetween horrified pity and riotous mirth, and as Phyllis, with her\nsvelte jaw dropping, approached, the pair bent over and emitted a\ncollege cheer in loud, far-carrying voices, thoughtfully adding the\nname \"Phyllis\" to the end. She was vociferously greeted and escorted\nenthusiastically across the campus, followed by half a hundred village\nurchins--to the stifled laughter of hundreds of alumni and visitors,\nhalf of whom had no idea that this was a practical joke, but thought\nthat Burne and Fred were two varsity sports showing their girl a\ncollegiate time.\n\nPhyllis's feelings as she was paraded by the Harvard and Princeton\nstands, where sat dozens of her former devotees, can be imagined. She\ntried to walk a little ahead, she tried to walk a little behind--but\nthey stayed close, that there should be no doubt whom she was with,\ntalking in loud voices of their friends on the football team, until she\ncould almost hear her acquaintances whispering:\n\n\"Phyllis Styles must be _awfully hard up_ to have to come with _those\ntwo_.\"\n\nThat had been Burne, dynamically humorous, fundamentally serious. From\nthat root had blossomed the energy that he was now trying to orient with\nprogress....\n\nSo the weeks passed and March came and the clay feet that Amory looked\nfor failed to appear. About a hundred juniors and seniors resigned\nfrom their clubs in a final fury of righteousness, and the clubs in\nhelplessness turned upon Burne their finest weapon: ridicule. Every one\nwho knew him liked him--but what he stood for (and he began to stand for\nmore all the time) came under the lash of many tongues, until a frailer\nman than he would have been snowed under.\n\n\"Don't you mind losing prestige?\" asked Amory one night. They had taken\nto exchanging calls several times a week.\n\n\"Of course I don't. What's prestige, at best?\"\n\n\"Some people say that you're just a rather original politician.\"\n\nHe roared with laughter.\n\n\"That's what Fred Sloane told me to-day. I suppose I have it coming.\"\n\nOne afternoon they dipped into a subject that had interested Amory for\na long time--the matter of the bearing of physical attributes on a man's\nmake-up. Burne had gone into the biology of this, and then:\n\n\"Of course health counts--a healthy man has twice the chance of being\ngood,\" he said.\n\n\"I don't agree with you--I don't believe in 'muscular Christianity.'\"\n\n\"I do--I believe Christ had great physical vigor.\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" Amory protested. \"He worked too hard for that. I imagine that\nwhen he died he was a broken-down man--and the great saints haven't been\nstrong.\"\n\n\"Half of them have.\"\n\n\"Well, even granting that, I don't think health has anything to do with\ngoodness; of course, it's valuable to a great saint to be able to stand\nenormous strains, but this fad of popular preachers rising on their\ntoes in simulated virility, bellowing that calisthenics will save the\nworld--no, Burne, I can't go that.\"\n\n\"Well, let's waive it--we won't get anywhere, and besides I haven't\nquite made up my mind about it myself. Now, here's something I _do_\nknow--personal appearance has a lot to do with it.\"\n\n\"Coloring?\" Amory asked eagerly.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"That's what Tom and I figured,\" Amory agreed. \"We took the year-books\nfor the last ten years and looked at the pictures of the senior council.\nI know you don't think much of that august body, but it does represent\nsuccess here in a general way. Well, I suppose only about thirty-five\nper cent of every class here are blonds, are really light--yet\n_two-thirds_ of every senior council are light. We looked at pictures\nof ten years of them, mind you; that means that out of every _fifteen_\nlight-haired men in the senior class _one_ is on the senior council, and\nof the dark-haired men it's only one in _fifty_.\"\n\n\"It's true,\" Burne agreed. \"The light-haired man _is_ a higher type,\ngenerally speaking. I worked the thing out with the Presidents of\nthe United States once, and found that way over half of them were\nlight-haired--yet think of the preponderant number of brunettes in the\nrace.\"\n\n\"People unconsciously admit it,\" said Amory. \"You'll notice a blond\nperson is _expected_ to talk. If a blond girl doesn't talk we call her a\n'doll'; if a light-haired man is silent he's considered stupid. Yet\nthe world is full of 'dark silent men' and 'languorous brunettes' who\nhaven't a brain in their heads, but somehow are never accused of the\ndearth.\"\n\n\"And the large mouth and broad chin and rather big nose undoubtedly make\nthe superior face.\"\n\n\"I'm not so sure.\" Amory was all for classical features.\n\n\"Oh, yes--I'll show you,\" and Burne pulled out of his desk a\nphotographic collection of heavily bearded, shaggy celebrities--Tolstoi,\nWhitman, Carpenter, and others.\n\n\"Aren't they wonderful?\"\n\nAmory tried politely to appreciate them, and gave up laughingly.\n\n\"Burne, I think they're the ugliest-looking crowd I ever came across.\nThey look like an old man's home.\"\n\n\"Oh, Amory, look at that forehead on Emerson; look at Tolstoi's eyes.\"\nHis tone was reproachful.\n\nAmory shook his head.\n\n\"No! Call them remarkable-looking or anything you want--but ugly they\ncertainly are.\"\n\nUnabashed, Burne ran his hand lovingly across the spacious foreheads,\nand piling up the pictures put them back in his desk.\n\nWalking at night was one of his favorite pursuits, and one night he\npersuaded Amory to accompany him.\n\n\"I hate the dark,\" Amory objected. \"I didn't use to--except when I was\nparticularly imaginative, but now, I really do--I'm a regular fool about\nit.\"\n\n\"That's useless, you know.\"\n\n\"Quite possibly.\"\n\n\"We'll go east,\" Burne suggested, \"and down that string of roads through\nthe woods.\"\n\n\"Doesn't sound very appealing to me,\" admitted Amory reluctantly, \"but\nlet's go.\"\n\nThey set off at a good gait, and for an hour swung along in a brisk\nargument until the lights of Princeton were luminous white blots behind\nthem.\n\n\"Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid,\" said Burne\nearnestly. \"And this very walking at night is one of the things I was\nafraid about. I'm going to tell you why I can walk anywhere now and not\nbe afraid.\"\n\n\"Go on,\" Amory urged eagerly. They were striding toward the woods,\nBurne's nervous, enthusiastic voice warming to his subject.\n\n\"I used to come out here alone at night, oh, three months ago, and I\nalways stopped at that cross-road we just passed. There were the woods\nlooming up ahead, just as they do now, there were dogs howling and\nthe shadows and no human sound. Of course, I peopled the woods with\neverything ghastly, just like you do; don't you?\"\n\n\"I do,\" Amory admitted.\n\n\"Well, I began analyzing it--my imagination persisted in sticking\nhorrors into the dark--so I stuck my imagination into the dark instead,\nand let it look out at me--I let it play stray dog or escaped convict\nor ghost, and then saw myself coming along the road. That made it all\nright--as it always makes everything all right to project yourself\ncompletely into another's place. I knew that if I were the dog or the\nconvict or the ghost I wouldn't be a menace to Burne Holiday any more\nthan he was a menace to me. Then I thought of my watch. I'd better go\nback and leave it and then essay the woods. No; I decided, it's\nbetter on the whole that I should lose a watch than that I should turn\nback--and I did go into them--not only followed the road through them,\nbut walked into them until I wasn't frightened any more--did it until\none night I sat down and dozed off in there; then I knew I was through\nbeing afraid of the dark.\"\n\n\"Lordy,\" Amory breathed. \"I couldn't have done that. I'd have come out\nhalf-way, and the first time an automobile passed and made the dark\nthicker when its lamps disappeared, I'd have come in.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Burne said suddenly, after a few moments' silence, \"we're\nhalf-way through, let's turn back.\"\n\nOn the return he launched into a discussion of will.\n\n\"It's the whole thing,\" he asserted. \"It's the one dividing line between\ngood and evil. I've never met a man who led a rotten life and didn't\nhave a weak will.\"\n\n\"How about great criminals?\"\n\n\"They're usually insane. If not, they're weak. There is no such thing as\na strong, sane criminal.\"\n\n\"Burne, I disagree with you altogether; how about the superman?\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"He's evil, I think, yet he's strong and sane.\"\n\n\"I've never met him. I'll bet, though, that he's stupid or insane.\"\n\n\"I've met him over and over and he's neither. That's why I think you're\nwrong.\"\n\n\"I'm sure I'm not--and so I don't believe in imprisonment except for the\ninsane.\"\n\nOn this point Amory could not agree. It seemed to him that life\nand history were rife with the strong criminal, keen, but often\nself-deluding; in politics and business one found him and among the\nold statesmen and kings and generals; but Burne never agreed and their\ncourses began to split on that point.\n\nBurne was drawing farther and farther away from the world about him. He\nresigned the vice-presidency of the senior class and took to reading and\nwalking as almost his only pursuits. He voluntarily attended graduate\nlectures in philosophy and biology, and sat in all of them with a rather\npathetically intent look in his eyes, as if waiting for something the\nlecturer would never quite come to. Sometimes Amory would see him squirm\nin his seat; and his face would light up; he was on fire to debate a\npoint.\n\nHe grew more abstracted on the street and was even accused of becoming\na snob, but Amory knew it was nothing of the sort, and once when Burne\npassed him four feet off, absolutely unseeingly, his mind a thousand\nmiles away, Amory almost choked with the romantic joy of watching him.\nBurne seemed to be climbing heights where others would be forever unable\nto get a foothold.\n\n\"I tell you,\" Amory declared to Tom, \"he's the first contemporary I've\never met whom I'll admit is my superior in mental capacity.\"\n\n\"It's a bad time to admit it--people are beginning to think he's odd.\"\n\n\"He's way over their heads--you know you think so yourself when you\ntalk to him--Good Lord, Tom, you _used_ to stand out against 'people.'\nSuccess has completely conventionalized you.\"\n\nTom grew rather annoyed.\n\n\"What's he trying to do--be excessively holy?\"\n\n\"No! not like anybody you've ever seen. Never enters the Philadelphian\nSociety. He has no faith in that rot. He doesn't believe that public\nswimming-pools and a kind word in time will right the wrongs of the\nworld; moreover, he takes a drink whenever he feels like it.\"\n\n\"He certainly is getting in wrong.\"\n\n\"Have you talked to him lately?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then you haven't any conception of him.\"\n\nThe argument ended nowhere, but Amory noticed more than ever how the\nsentiment toward Burne had changed on the campus.\n\n\"It's odd,\" Amory said to Tom one night when they had grown more\namicable on the subject, \"that the people who violently disapprove of\nBurne's radicalism are distinctly the Pharisee class--I mean they're the\nbest-educated men in college--the editors of the papers, like yourself\nand Ferrenby, the younger professors.... The illiterate athletes like\nLangueduc think he's getting eccentric, but they just say, 'Good old\nBurne has got some queer ideas in his head,' and pass on--the Pharisee\nclass--Gee! they ridicule him unmercifully.\"\n\nThe next morning he met Burne hurrying along McCosh walk after a\nrecitation.\n\n\"Whither bound, Tsar?\"\n\n\"Over to the Prince office to see Ferrenby,\" he waved a copy of the\nmorning's Princetonian at Amory. \"He wrote this editorial.\"\n\n\"Going to flay him alive?\"\n\n\"No--but he's got me all balled up. Either I've misjudged him or he's\nsuddenly become the world's worst radical.\"\n\nBurne hurried on, and it was several days before Amory heard an account\nof the ensuing conversation. Burne had come into the editor's sanctum\ndisplaying the paper cheerfully.\n\n\"Hello, Jesse.\"\n\n\"Hello there, Savonarola.\"\n\n\"I just read your editorial.\"\n\n\"Good boy--didn't know you stooped that low.\"\n\n\"Jesse, you startled me.\"\n\n\"How so?\"\n\n\"Aren't you afraid the faculty'll get after you if you pull this\nirreligious stuff?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Like this morning.\"\n\n\"What the devil--that editorial was on the coaching system.\"\n\n\"Yes, but that quotation--\"\n\nJesse sat up.\n\n\"What quotation?\"\n\n\"You know: 'He who is not with me is against me.'\"\n\n\"Well--what about it?\"\n\nJesse was puzzled but not alarmed.\n\n\"Well, you say here--let me see.\" Burne opened the paper and read:\n\"'_He who is not with me is against me_, as that gentleman said who\nwas notoriously capable of only coarse distinctions and puerile\ngeneralities.'\"\n\n\"What of it?\" Ferrenby began to look alarmed. \"Oliver Cromwell said it,\ndidn't he? or was it Washington, or one of the saints? Good Lord, I've\nforgotten.\"\n\nBurne roared with laughter.\n\n\"Oh, Jesse, oh, good, kind Jesse.\"\n\n\"Who said it, for Pete's sake?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Burne, recovering his voice, \"St. Matthew attributes it to\nChrist.\"\n\n\"My God!\" cried Jesse, and collapsed backward into the waste-basket.\n\n *****\n\nAMORY WRITES A POEM\n\nThe weeks tore by. Amory wandered occasionally to New York on the chance\nof finding a new shining green auto-bus, that its stick-of-candy\nglamour might penetrate his disposition. One day he ventured into a\nstock-company revival of a play whose name was faintly familiar. The\ncurtain rose--he watched casually as a girl entered. A few phrases rang\nin his ear and touched a faint chord of memory. Where--? When--?\n\nThen he seemed to hear a voice whispering beside him, a very soft,\nvibrant voice: \"Oh, I'm such a poor little fool; _do_ tell me when I do\nwrong.\"\n\nThe solution came in a flash and he had a quick, glad memory of\nIsabelle.\n\nHe found a blank space on his programme, and began to scribble rapidly:\n\n \"Here in the figured dark I watch once more,\n There, with the curtain, roll the years away;\n Two years of years--there was an idle day\n Of ours, when happy endings didn't bore\n Our unfermented souls; I could adore\n Your eager face beside me, wide-eyed, gay,\n Smiling a repertoire while the poor play\n Reached me as a faint ripple reaches shore.\n\n \"Yawning and wondering an evening through,\n I watch alone... and chatterings, of course,\n Spoil the one scene which, somehow, _did_ have charms;\n You wept a bit, and I grew sad for you\n Right here! Where Mr. X defends divorce\n And What's-Her-Name falls fainting in his arms.\"\n\n *****\n\nSTILL CALM\n\n\"Ghosts are such dumb things,\" said Alec, \"they're slow-witted. I can\nalways outguess a ghost.\"\n\n\"How?\" asked Tom.\n\n\"Well, it depends where. Take a bedroom, for example. If you use _any_\ndiscretion a ghost can never get you in a bedroom.\"\n\n\"Go on, s'pose you think there's maybe a ghost in your bedroom--what\nmeasures do you take on getting home at night?\" demanded Amory,\ninterested.\n\n\"Take a stick\" answered Alec, with ponderous reverence, \"one about the\nlength of a broom-handle. Now, the first thing to do is to get the room\n_cleared_--to do this you rush with your eyes closed into your study\nand turn on the lights--next, approaching the closet, carefully run the\nstick in the door three or four times. Then, if nothing happens, you can\nlook in. _Always, always_ run the stick in viciously first--_never_ look\nfirst!\"\n\n\"Of course, that's the ancient Celtic school,\" said Tom gravely.\n\n\"Yes--but they usually pray first. Anyway, you use this method to clear\nthe closets and also for behind all doors--\"\n\n\"And the bed,\" Amory suggested.\n\n\"Oh, Amory, no!\" cried Alec in horror. \"That isn't the way--the bed\nrequires different tactics--let the bed alone, as you value your\nreason--if there is a ghost in the room and that's only about a third of\nthe time, it is _almost always_ under the bed.\"\n\n\"Well\" Amory began.\n\nAlec waved him into silence.\n\n\"Of _course_ you never look. You stand in the middle of the floor and\nbefore he knows what you're going to do make a sudden leap for the\nbed--never walk near the bed; to a ghost your ankle is your most\nvulnerable part--once in bed, you're safe; he may lie around under the\nbed all night, but you're safe as daylight. If you still have doubts\npull the blanket over your head.\"\n\n\"All that's very interesting, Tom.\"\n\n\"Isn't it?\" Alec beamed proudly. \"All my own, too--the Sir Oliver Lodge\nof the new world.\"\n\nAmory was enjoying college immensely again. The sense of going forward\nin a direct, determined line had come back; youth was stirring and\nshaking out a few new feathers. He had even stored enough surplus energy\nto sally into a new pose.\n\n\"What's the idea of all this 'distracted' stuff, Amory?\" asked Alec one\nday, and then as Amory pretended to be cramped over his book in a daze:\n\"Oh, don't try to act Burne, the mystic, to me.\"\n\nAmory looked up innocently.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"What?\" mimicked Alec. \"Are you trying to read yourself into a rhapsody\nwith--let's see the book.\"\n\nHe snatched it; regarded it derisively.\n\n\"Well?\" said Amory a little stiffly.\n\n\"'The Life of St. Teresa,'\" read Alec aloud. \"Oh, my gosh!\"\n\n\"Say, Alec.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Does it bother you?\"\n\n\"Does what bother me?\"\n\n\"My acting dazed and all that?\"\n\n\"Why, no--of course it doesn't _bother_ me.\"\n\n\"Well, then, don't spoil it. If I enjoy going around telling people\nguilelessly that I think I'm a genius, let me do it.\"\n\n\"You're getting a reputation for being eccentric,\" said Alec, laughing,\n\"if that's what you mean.\"\n\nAmory finally prevailed, and Alec agreed to accept his face value in the\npresence of others if he was allowed rest periods when they were alone;\nso Amory \"ran it out\" at a great rate, bringing the most eccentric\ncharacters to dinner, wild-eyed grad students, preceptors with strange\ntheories of God and government, to the cynical amazement of the\nsupercilious Cottage Club.\n\nAs February became slashed by sun and moved cheerfully into March,\nAmory went several times to spend week-ends with Monsignor; once he\ntook Burne, with great success, for he took equal pride and delight in\ndisplaying them to each other. Monsignor took him several times to see\nThornton Hancock, and once or twice to the house of a Mrs. Lawrence, a\ntype of Rome-haunting American whom Amory liked immediately.\n\nThen one day came a letter from Monsignor, which appended an interesting\nP. S.:\n\n \"Do you know,\" it ran, \"that your third cousin, Clara Page,\n widowed six months and very poor, is living in Philadelphia?\n I don't think you've ever met her, but I wish, as a favor to me,\n you'd go to see her. To my mind, she's rather a remarkable woman,\n and just about your age.\"\n\n\nAmory sighed and decided to go, as a favor....\n\n *****\n\nCLARA\n\nShe was immemorial.... Amory wasn't good enough for Clara, Clara of\nripply golden hair, but then no man was. Her goodness was above the\nprosy morals of the husband-seeker, apart from the dull literature of\nfemale virtue.\n\nSorrow lay lightly around her, and when Amory found her in Philadelphia\nhe thought her steely blue eyes held only happiness; a latent strength,\na realism, was brought to its fullest development by the facts that\nshe was compelled to face. She was alone in the world, with two small\nchildren, little money, and, worst of all, a host of friends. He saw\nher that winter in Philadelphia entertaining a houseful of men for an\nevening, when he knew she had not a servant in the house except the\nlittle colored girl guarding the babies overhead. He saw one of the\ngreatest libertines in that city, a man who was habitually drunk and\nnotorious at home and abroad, sitting opposite her for an evening,\ndiscussing _girls' boarding-schools_ with a sort of innocent excitement.\nWhat a twist Clara had to her mind! She could make fascinating and\nalmost brilliant conversation out of the thinnest air that ever floated\nthrough a drawing-room.\n\nThe idea that the girl was poverty-stricken had appealed to Amory's\nsense of situation. He arrived in Philadelphia expecting to be told\nthat 921 Ark Street was in a miserable lane of hovels. He was even\ndisappointed when it proved to be nothing of the sort. It was an old\nhouse that had been in her husband's family for years. An elderly aunt,\nwho objected to having it sold, had put ten years' taxes with a\nlawyer and pranced off to Honolulu, leaving Clara to struggle with the\nheating-problem as best she could. So no wild-haired woman with a hungry\nbaby at her breast and a sad Amelia-like look greeted him. Instead,\nAmory would have thought from his reception that she had not a care in\nthe world.\n\nA calm virility and a dreamy humor, marked contrasts to her\nlevel-headedness--into these moods she slipped sometimes as a refuge.\nShe could do the most prosy things (though she was wise enough never\nto stultify herself with such \"household arts\" as _knitting_ and\n_embroidery_), yet immediately afterward pick up a book and let her\nimagination rove as a formless cloud with the wind. Deepest of all in\nher personality was the golden radiance that she diffused around her.\nAs an open fire in a dark room throws romance and pathos into the quiet\nfaces at its edge, so she cast her lights and shadows around the rooms\nthat held her, until she made of her prosy old uncle a man of quaint and\nmeditative charm, metamorphosed the stray telegraph boy into a Puck-like\ncreature of delightful originality. At first this quality of hers\nsomehow irritated Amory. He considered his own uniqueness sufficient,\nand it rather embarrassed him when she tried to read new interests into\nhim for the benefit of what other adorers were present. He felt as if\na polite but insistent stage-manager were attempting to make him give a\nnew interpretation of a part he had conned for years.\n\nBut Clara talking, Clara telling a slender tale of a hatpin and an\ninebriated man and herself.... People tried afterward to repeat her\nanecdotes but for the life of them they could make them sound like\nnothing whatever. They gave her a sort of innocent attention and the\nbest smiles many of them had smiled for long; there were few tears in\nClara, but people smiled misty-eyed at her.\n\nVery occasionally Amory stayed for little half-hours after the rest of\nthe court had gone, and they would have bread and jam and tea late in\nthe afternoon or \"maple-sugar lunches,\" as she called them, at night.\n\n\"You _are_ remarkable, aren't you!\" Amory was becoming trite from where\nhe perched in the centre of the dining-room table one six o'clock.\n\n\"Not a bit,\" she answered. She was searching out napkins in the\nsideboard. \"I'm really most humdrum and commonplace. One of those people\nwho have no interest in anything but their children.\"\n\n\"Tell that to somebody else,\" scoffed Amory. \"You know you're perfectly\neffulgent.\" He asked her the one thing that he knew might embarrass her.\nIt was the remark that the first bore made to Adam.\n\n\"Tell me about yourself.\" And she gave the answer that Adam must have\ngiven.\n\n\"There's nothing to tell.\"\n\nBut eventually Adam probably told the bore all the things he thought\nabout at night when the locusts sang in the sandy grass, and he must\nhave remarked patronizingly how _different_ he was from Eve, forgetting\nhow different she was from him... at any rate, Clara told Amory much\nabout herself that evening. She had had a harried life from sixteen on,\nand her education had stopped sharply with her leisure. Browsing in her\nlibrary, Amory found a tattered gray book out of which fell a yellow\nsheet that he impudently opened. It was a poem that she had written\nat school about a gray convent wall on a gray day, and a girl with\nher cloak blown by the wind sitting atop of it and thinking about the\nmany-colored world. As a rule such sentiment bored him, but this was\ndone with so much simplicity and atmosphere, that it brought a picture\nof Clara to his mind, of Clara on such a cool, gray day with her keen\nblue eyes staring out, trying to see her tragedies come marching over\nthe gardens outside. He envied that poem. How he would have loved to\nhave come along and seen her on the wall and talked nonsense or romance\nto her, perched above him in the air. He began to be frightfully jealous\nof everything about Clara: of her past, of her babies, of the men and\nwomen who flocked to drink deep of her cool kindness and rest their\ntired minds as at an absorbing play.\n\n\"_Nobody_ seems to bore you,\" he objected.\n\n\"About half the world do,\" she admitted, \"but I think that's a pretty\ngood average, don't you?\" and she turned to find something in Browning\nthat bore on the subject. She was the only person he ever met who\ncould look up passages and quotations to show him in the middle of\nthe conversation, and yet not be irritating to distraction. She did it\nconstantly, with such a serious enthusiasm that he grew fond of watching\nher golden hair bent over a book, brow wrinkled ever so little at\nhunting her sentence.\n\nThrough early March he took to going to Philadelphia for week-ends.\nAlmost always there was some one else there and she seemed not anxious\nto see him alone, for many occasions presented themselves when a word\nfrom her would have given him another delicious half-hour of adoration.\nBut he fell gradually in love and began to speculate wildly on marriage.\nThough this design flowed through his brain even to his lips, still\nhe knew afterward that the desire had not been deeply rooted. Once he\ndreamt that it had come true and woke up in a cold panic, for in his\ndream she had been a silly, flaxen Clara, with the gold gone out of her\nhair and platitudes falling insipidly from her changeling tongue. But\nshe was the first fine woman he ever knew and one of the few good people\nwho ever interested him. She made her goodness such an asset. Amory\nhad decided that most good people either dragged theirs after them as a\nliability, or else distorted it to artificial geniality, and of course\nthere were the ever-present prig and Pharisee--(but Amory never included\n_them_ as being among the saved).\n\n *****\n\nST. CECILIA\n\n \"Over her gray and velvet dress,\n Under her molten, beaten hair,\n Color of rose in mock distress\n Flushes and fades and makes her fair;\n Fills the air from her to him\n With light and languor and little sighs,\n Just so subtly he scarcely knows...\n Laughing lightning, color of rose.\"\n\n\n\"Do you like me?\"\n\n\"Of course I do,\" said Clara seriously.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Well, we have some qualities in common. Things that are spontaneous in\neach of us--or were originally.\"\n\n\"You're implying that I haven't used myself very well?\"\n\nClara hesitated.\n\n\"Well, I can't judge. A man, of course, has to go through a lot more,\nand I've been sheltered.\"\n\n\"Oh, don't stall, please, Clara,\" Amory interrupted; \"but do talk about\nme a little, won't you?\"\n\n\"Surely, I'd adore to.\" She didn't smile.\n\n\"That's sweet of you. First answer some questions. Am I painfully\nconceited?\"\n\n\"Well--no, you have tremendous vanity, but it'll amuse the people who\nnotice its preponderance.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"You're really humble at heart. You sink to the third hell of depression\nwhen you think you've been slighted. In fact, you haven't much\nself-respect.\"\n\n\"Centre of target twice, Clara. How do you do it? You never let me say a\nword.\"\n\n\"Of course not--I can never judge a man while he's talking. But I'm not\nthrough; the reason you have so little real self-confidence, even though\nyou gravely announce to the occasional philistine that you think you're\na genius, is that you've attributed all sorts of atrocious faults to\nyourself and are trying to live up to them. For instance, you're always\nsaying that you are a slave to high-balls.\"\n\n\"But I am, potentially.\"\n\n\"And you say you're a weak character, that you've no will.\"\n\n\"Not a bit of will--I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my\nhatred of boredom, to most of my desires--\"\n\n\"You are not!\" She brought one little fist down onto the other.\n\"You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your\nimagination.\"\n\n\"You certainly interest me. If this isn't boring you, go on.\"\n\n\"I notice that when you want to stay over an extra day from college you\ngo about it in a sure way. You never decide at first while the merits of\ngoing or staying are fairly clear in your mind. You let your imagination\nshinny on the side of your desires for a few hours, and then you decide.\nNaturally your imagination, after a little freedom, thinks up a million\nreasons why you should stay, so your decision when it comes isn't true.\nIt's biassed.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" objected Amory, \"but isn't it lack of will-power to let my\nimagination shinny on the wrong side?\"\n\n\"My dear boy, there's your big mistake. This has nothing to do with\nwill-power; that's a crazy, useless word, anyway; you lack judgment--the\njudgment to decide at once when you know your imagination will play you\nfalse, given half a chance.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll be darned!\" exclaimed Amory in surprise, \"that's the last\nthing I expected.\"\n\nClara didn't gloat. She changed the subject immediately. But she had\nstarted him thinking and he believed she was partly right. He felt like\na factory-owner who after accusing a clerk of dishonesty finds that his\nown son, in the office, is changing the books once a week. His poor,\nmistreated will that he had been holding up to the scorn of himself and\nhis friends, stood before him innocent, and his judgment walked off to\nprison with the unconfinable imp, imagination, dancing in mocking glee\nbeside him. Clara's was the only advice he ever asked without dictating\nthe answer himself--except, perhaps, in his talks with Monsignor Darcy.\n\nHow he loved to do any sort of thing with Clara! Shopping with her was a\nrare, epicurean dream. In every store where she had ever traded she was\nwhispered about as the beautiful Mrs. Page.\n\n\"I'll bet she won't stay single long.\"\n\n\"Well, don't scream it out. She ain't lookin' for no advice.\"\n\n\"_Ain't_ she beautiful!\"\n\n (Enter a floor-walker--silence till he moves forward, smirking.)\n\n\"Society person, ain't she?\"\n\n\"Yeah, but poor now, I guess; so they say.\"\n\n\"Gee! girls, _ain't_ she some kid!\"\n\nAnd Clara beamed on all alike. Amory believed that tradespeople gave her\ndiscounts, sometimes to her knowledge and sometimes without it. He knew\nshe dressed very well, had always the best of everything in the house,\nand was inevitably waited upon by the head floor-walker at the very\nleast.\n\nSometimes they would go to church together on Sunday and he would walk\nbeside her and revel in her cheeks moist from the soft water in the new\nair. She was very devout, always had been, and God knows what heights\nshe attained and what strength she drew down to herself when she knelt\nand bent her golden hair into the stained-glass light.\n\n\"St. Cecelia,\" he cried aloud one day, quite involuntarily, and the\npeople turned and peered, and the priest paused in his sermon and Clara\nand Amory turned to fiery red.\n\nThat was the last Sunday they had, for he spoiled it all that night. He\ncouldn't help it.\n\nThey were walking through the March twilight where it was as warm as\nJune, and the joy of youth filled his soul so that he felt he must\nspeak.\n\n\"I think,\" he said and his voice trembled, \"that if I lost faith in you\nI'd lose faith in God.\"\n\nShe looked at him with such a startled face that he asked her the\nmatter.\n\n\"Nothing,\" she said slowly, \"only this: five men have said that to me\nbefore, and it frightens me.\"\n\n\"Oh, Clara, is that your fate!\"\n\nShe did not answer.\n\n\"I suppose love to you is--\" he began.\n\nShe turned like a flash.\n\n\"I have never been in love.\"\n\nThey walked along, and he realized slowly how much she had told him...\nnever in love.... She seemed suddenly a daughter of light alone. His\nentity dropped out of her plane and he longed only to touch her dress\nwith almost the realization that Joseph must have had of Mary's eternal\nsignificance. But quite mechanically he heard himself saying:\n\n\"And I love you--any latent greatness that I've got is... oh, I can't\ntalk, but Clara, if I come back in two years in a position to marry\nyou--\"\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"No,\" she said; \"I'd never marry again. I've got my two children and I\nwant myself for them. I like you--I like all clever men, you more than\nany--but you know me well enough to know that I'd never marry a clever\nman--\" She broke off suddenly.\n\n\"Amory.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You're not in love with me. You never wanted to marry me, did you?\"\n\n\"It was the twilight,\" he said wonderingly. \"I didn't feel as though I\nwere speaking aloud. But I love you--or adore you--or worship you--\"\n\n\"There you go--running through your catalogue of emotions in five\nseconds.\"\n\nHe smiled unwillingly.\n\n\"Don't make me out such a light-weight, Clara; you _are_ depressing\nsometimes.\"\n\n\"You're not a light-weight, of all things,\" she said intently, taking\nhis arm and opening wide her eyes--he could see their kindliness in the\nfading dusk. \"A light-weight is an eternal nay.\"\n\n\"There's so much spring in the air--there's so much lazy sweetness in\nyour heart.\"\n\nShe dropped his arm.\n\n\"You're all fine now, and I feel glorious. Give me a cigarette. You've\nnever seen me smoke, have you? Well, I do, about once a month.\"\n\nAnd then that wonderful girl and Amory raced to the corner like two mad\nchildren gone wild with pale-blue twilight.\n\n\"I'm going to the country for to-morrow,\" she announced, as she stood\npanting, safe beyond the flare of the corner lamp-post. \"These days are\ntoo magnificent to miss, though perhaps I feel them more in the city.\"\n\n\"Oh, Clara!\" Amory said; \"what a devil you could have been if the Lord\nhad just bent your soul a little the other way!\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" she answered; \"but I think not. I'm never really wild and never\nhave been. That little outburst was pure spring.\"\n\n\"And you are, too,\" said he.\n\nThey were walking along now.\n\n\"No--you're wrong again, how can a person of your own self-reputed\nbrains be so constantly wrong about me? I'm the opposite of everything\nspring ever stood for. It's unfortunate, if I happen to look like what\npleased some soppy old Greek sculptor, but I assure you that if it\nweren't for my face I'd be a quiet nun in the convent without\"--then\nshe broke into a run and her raised voice floated back to him as he\nfollowed--\"my precious babies, which I must go back and see.\"\n\nShe was the only girl he ever knew with whom he could understand how\nanother man might be preferred. Often Amory met wives whom he had known\nas debutantes, and looking intently at them imagined that he found\nsomething in their faces which said:\n\n\"Oh, if I could only have gotten _you!_\" Oh, the enormous conceit of the\nman!\n\nBut that night seemed a night of stars and singing and Clara's bright\nsoul still gleamed on the ways they had trod.\n\n\"Golden, golden is the air--\" he chanted to the little pools of water.\n... \"Golden is the air, golden notes from golden mandolins, golden\nfrets of golden violins, fair, oh, wearily fair.... Skeins from braided\nbasket, mortals may not hold; oh, what young extravagant God, who would\nknow or ask it?... who could give such gold...\"\n\n *****\n\nAMORY IS RESENTFUL\n\nSlowly and inevitably, yet with a sudden surge at the last, while Amory\ntalked and dreamed, war rolled swiftly up the beach and washed the sands\nwhere Princeton played. Every night the gymnasium echoed as platoon\nafter platoon swept over the floor and shuffled out the basket-ball\nmarkings. When Amory went to Washington the next week-end he caught some\nof the spirit of crisis which changed to repulsion in the Pullman car\ncoming back, for the berths across from him were occupied by stinking\naliens--Greeks, he guessed, or Russians. He thought how much easier\npatriotism had been to a homogeneous race, how much easier it would have\nbeen to fight as the Colonies fought, or as the Confederacy fought. And\nhe did no sleeping that night, but listened to the aliens guffaw and\nsnore while they filled the car with the heavy scent of latest America.\n\nIn Princeton every one bantered in public and told themselves privately\nthat their deaths at least would be heroic. The literary students read\nRupert Brooke passionately; the lounge-lizards worried over whether the\ngovernment would permit the English-cut uniform for officers; a few of\nthe hopelessly lazy wrote to the obscure branches of the War Department,\nseeking an easy commission and a soft berth.\n\nThen, after a week, Amory saw Burne and knew at once that argument would\nbe futile--Burne had come out as a pacifist. The socialist magazines,\na great smattering of Tolstoi, and his own intense longing for a cause\nthat would bring out whatever strength lay in him, had finally decided\nhim to preach peace as a subjective ideal.\n\n\"When the German army entered Belgium,\" he began, \"if the inhabitants\nhad gone peaceably about their business, the German army would have been\ndisorganized in--\"\n\n\"I know,\" Amory interrupted, \"I've heard it all. But I'm not going to\ntalk propaganda with you. There's a chance that you're right--but even\nso we're hundreds of years before the time when non-resistance can touch\nus as a reality.\"\n\n\"But, Amory, listen--\"\n\n\"Burne, we'd just argue--\"\n\n\"Very well.\"\n\n\"Just one thing--I don't ask you to think of your family or friends,\nbecause I know they don't count a picayune with you beside your sense\nof duty--but, Burne, how do you know that the magazines you read and\nthe societies you join and these idealists you meet aren't just plain\n_German?_\"\n\n\"Some of them are, of course.\"\n\n\"How do you know they aren't _all_ pro-German--just a lot of weak\nones--with German-Jewish names.\"\n\n\"That's the chance, of course,\" he said slowly. \"How much or how little\nI'm taking this stand because of propaganda I've heard, I don't know;\nnaturally I think that it's my most innermost conviction--it seems a\npath spread before me just now.\"\n\nAmory's heart sank.\n\n\"But think of the cheapness of it--no one's really going to martyr you\nfor being a pacifist--it's just going to throw you in with the worst--\"\n\n\"I doubt it,\" he interrupted.\n\n\"Well, it all smells of Bohemian New York to me.\"\n\n\"I know what you mean, and that's why I'm not sure I'll agitate.\"\n\n\"You're one man, Burne--going to talk to people who won't listen--with\nall God's given you.\"\n\n\"That's what Stephen must have thought many years ago. But he preached\nhis sermon and they killed him. He probably thought as he was dying what\na waste it all was. But you see, I've always felt that Stephen's death\nwas the thing that occurred to Paul on the road to Damascus, and sent\nhim to preach the word of Christ all over the world.\"\n\n\"Go on.\"\n\n\"That's all--this is my particular duty. Even if right now I'm just a\npawn--just sacrificed. God! Amory--you don't think I like the Germans!\"\n\n\"Well, I can't say anything else--I get to the end of all the logic\nabout non-resistance, and there, like an excluded middle, stands the\nhuge spectre of man as he is and always will be. And this spectre stands\nright beside the one logical necessity of Tolstoi's, and the other\nlogical necessity of Nietzsche's--\" Amory broke off suddenly. \"When are\nyou going?\"\n\n\"I'm going next week.\"\n\n\"I'll see you, of course.\"\n\nAs he walked away it seemed to Amory that the look in his face bore\na great resemblance to that in Kerry's when he had said good-by under\nBlair Arch two years before. Amory wondered unhappily why he could never\ngo into anything with the primal honesty of those two.\n\n\"Burne's a fanatic,\" he said to Tom, \"and he's dead wrong and, I'm\ninclined to think, just an unconscious pawn in the hands of anarchistic\npublishers and German-paid rag wavers--but he haunts me--just leaving\neverything worth while--\"\n\nBurne left in a quietly dramatic manner a week later. He sold all his\npossessions and came down to the room to say good-by, with a battered\nold bicycle, on which he intended to ride to his home in Pennsylvania.\n\n\"Peter the Hermit bidding farewell to Cardinal Richelieu,\" suggested\nAlec, who was lounging in the window-seat as Burne and Amory shook\nhands.\n\nBut Amory was not in a mood for that, and as he saw Burne's long legs\npropel his ridiculous bicycle out of sight beyond Alexander Hall,\nhe knew he was going to have a bad week. Not that he doubted the\nwar--Germany stood for everything repugnant to him; for materialism and\nthe direction of tremendous licentious force; it was just that Burne's\nface stayed in his memory and he was sick of the hysteria he was\nbeginning to hear.\n\n\"What on earth is the use of suddenly running down Goethe,\" he declared\nto Alec and Tom. \"Why write books to prove he started the war--or that\nthat stupid, overestimated Schiller is a demon in disguise?\"\n\n\"Have you ever read anything of theirs?\" asked Tom shrewdly.\n\n\"No,\" Amory admitted.\n\n\"Neither have I,\" he said laughing.\n\n\"People will shout,\" said Alec quietly, \"but Goethe's on his same old\nshelf in the library--to bore any one that wants to read him!\"\n\nAmory subsided, and the subject dropped.\n\n\"What are you going to do, Amory?\"\n\n\"Infantry or aviation, I can't make up my mind--I hate mechanics, but\nthen of course aviation's the thing for me--\"\n\n\"I feel as Amory does,\" said Tom. \"Infantry or aviation--aviation sounds\nlike the romantic side of the war, of course--like cavalry used to be,\nyou know; but like Amory I don't know a horse-power from a piston-rod.\"\n\nSomehow Amory's dissatisfaction with his lack of enthusiasm culminated\nin an attempt to put the blame for the whole war on the ancestors of his\ngeneration... all the people who cheered for Germany in 1870.... All\nthe materialists rampant, all the idolizers of German science and\nefficiency. So he sat one day in an English lecture and heard \"Locksley\nHall\" quoted and fell into a brown study with contempt for Tennyson and\nall he stood for--for he took him as a representative of the Victorians.\n\n\n Victorians, Victorians, who never learned to weep\n Who sowed the bitter harvest that your children go to reap--\n\nscribbled Amory in his note-book. The lecturer was saying something\nabout Tennyson's solidity and fifty heads were bent to take notes. Amory\nturned over to a fresh page and began scrawling again.\n\n\n \"They shuddered when they found what Mr. Darwin was about,\n They shuddered when the waltz came in and Newman hurried out--\"\n\n\nBut the waltz came in much earlier; he crossed that out.\n\n\"And entitled A Song in the Time of Order,\" came the professor's voice,\ndroning far away. \"Time of Order\"--Good Lord! Everything crammed in\nthe box and the Victorians sitting on the lid smiling serenely.... With\nBrowning in his Italian villa crying bravely: \"All's for the best.\"\nAmory scribbled again.\n\n\n \"You knelt up in the temple and he bent to hear you pray,\n You thanked him for your 'glorious gains'--reproached him for\n 'Cathay.'\"\n\n\nWhy could he never get more than a couplet at a time? Now he needed\nsomething to rhyme with:\n\n\n \"You would keep Him straight with science, tho He had gone wrong\n before...\"\n\n\nWell, anyway....\n\n\n \"You met your children in your home--'I've fixed it up!' you cried,\n Took your fifty years of Europe, and then virtuously--died.\"\n\n\"That was to a great extent Tennyson's idea,\" came the lecturer's voice.\n\"Swinburne's Song in the Time of Order might well have been Tennyson's\ntitle. He idealized order against chaos, against waste.\"\n\nAt last Amory had it. He turned over another page and scrawled\nvigorously for the twenty minutes that was left of the hour. Then he\nwalked up to the desk and deposited a page torn out of his note-book.\n\n\"Here's a poem to the Victorians, sir,\" he said coldly.\n\nThe professor picked it up curiously while Amory backed rapidly through\nthe door.\n\nHere is what he had written:\n\n\n \"Songs in the time of order\n You left for us to sing,\n Proofs with excluded middles,\n Answers to life in rhyme,\n Keys of the prison warder\n And ancient bells to ring,\n Time was the end of riddles,\n We were the end of time...\n\n Here were domestic oceans\n And a sky that we might reach,\n Guns and a guarded border,\n Gantlets--but not to fling,\n Thousands of old emotions\n And a platitude for each,\n Songs in the time of order--\n And tongues, that we might sing.\"\n\n\n *****\n\nTHE END OF MANY THINGS\n\nEarly April slipped by in a haze--a haze of long evenings on the club\nveranda with the graphophone playing \"Poor Butterfly\" inside... for\n\"Poor Butterfly\" had been the song of that last year. The war seemed\nscarcely to touch them and it might have been one of the senior springs\nof the past, except for the drilling every other afternoon, yet Amory\nrealized poignantly that this was the last spring under the old regime.\n\n\"This is the great protest against the superman,\" said Amory.\n\n\"I suppose so,\" Alec agreed.\n\n\"He's absolutely irreconcilable with any Utopia. As long as he occurs,\nthere's trouble and all the latent evil that makes a crowd list and sway\nwhen he talks.\"\n\n\"And of course all that he is is a gifted man without a moral sense.\"\n\n\"That's all. I think the worst thing to contemplate is this--it's\nall happened before, how soon will it happen again? Fifty years after\nWaterloo Napoleon was as much a hero to English school children\nas Wellington. How do we know our grandchildren won't idolize Von\nHindenburg the same way?\"\n\n\"What brings it about?\"\n\n\"Time, damn it, and the historian. If we could only learn to look\non evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or\nmagnificence.\"\n\n\"God! Haven't we raked the universe over the coals for four years?\"\n\nThen the night came that was to be the last. Tom and Amory, bound in the\nmorning for different training-camps, paced the shadowy walks as usual\nand seemed still to see around them the faces of the men they knew.\n\n\"The grass is full of ghosts to-night.\"\n\n\"The whole campus is alive with them.\"\n\nThey paused by Little and watched the moon rise, to make silver of the\nslate roof of Dodd and blue the rustling trees.\n\n\"You know,\" whispered Tom, \"what we feel now is the sense of all the\ngorgeous youth that has rioted through here in two hundred years.\"\n\nA last burst of singing flooded up from Blair Arch--broken voices for\nsome long parting.\n\n\"And what we leave here is more than this class; it's the whole heritage\nof youth. We're just one generation--we're breaking all the links that\nseemed to bind us here to top-booted and high-stocked generations. We've\nwalked arm and arm with Burr and Light-Horse Harry Lee through half\nthese deep-blue nights.\"\n\n\"That's what they are,\" Tom tangented off, \"deep blue--a bit of color\nwould spoil them, make them exotic. Spires, against a sky that's\na promise of dawn, and blue light on the slate roofs--it hurts...\nrather--\"\n\n\"Good-by, Aaron Burr,\" Amory called toward deserted Nassau Hall, \"you\nand I knew strange corners of life.\"\n\nHis voice echoed in the stillness.\n\n\"The torches are out,\" whispered Tom. \"Ah, Messalina, the long shadows\nare building minarets on the stadium--\"\n\nFor an instant the voices of freshman year surged around them and then\nthey looked at each other with faint tears in their eyes.\n\n\"Damn!\"\n\n\"Damn!\"\n\nThe last light fades and drifts across the land--the low, long land, the\nsunny land of spires; the ghosts of evening tune again their lyres and\nwander singing in a plaintive band down the long corridors of trees;\npale fires echo the night from tower top to tower: Oh, sleep that\ndreams, and dream that never tires, press from the petals of the lotus\nflower something of this to keep, the essence of an hour.\n\nNo more to wait the twilight of the moon in this sequestered vale of\nstar and spire, for one eternal morning of desire passes to time and\nearthy afternoon. Here, Heraclitus, did you find in fire and shifting\nthings the prophecy you hurled down the dead years; this midnight\nmy desire will see, shadowed among the embers, furled in flame, the\nsplendor and the sadness of the world.\n\n\n\n\nINTERLUDE\n\nMay, 1917-February, 1919\n\n\nA letter dated January, 1918, written by Monsignor Darcy to Amory, who\nis a second lieutenant in the 171st Infantry, Port of Embarkation, Camp\nMills, Long Island.\n\n\nMY DEAR BOY:\n\nAll you need tell me of yourself is that you still are; for the rest I\nmerely search back in a restive memory, a thermometer that records only\nfevers, and match you with what I was at your age. But men will chatter\nand you and I will still shout our futilities to each other across\nthe stage until the last silly curtain falls _plump!_ upon our bobbing\nheads. But you are starting the spluttering magic-lantern show of life\nwith much the same array of slides as I had, so I need to write you if\nonly to shriek the colossal stupidity of people....\n\nThis is the end of one thing: for better or worse you will never again\nbe quite the Amory Blaine that I knew, never again will we meet as we\nhave met, because your generation is growing hard, much harder than mine\never grew, nourished as they were on the stuff of the nineties.\n\nAmory, lately I reread Aeschylus and there in the divine irony of the\n\"Agamemnon\" I find the only answer to this bitter age--all the world\ntumbled about our ears, and the closest parallel ages back in that\nhopeless resignation. There are times when I think of the men out there\nas Roman legionaries, miles from their corrupt city, stemming back the\nhordes... hordes a little more menacing, after all, than the corrupt\ncity... another blind blow at the race, furies that we passed with\novations years ago, over whose corpses we bleated triumphantly all\nthrough the Victorian era....\n\nAnd afterward an out-and-out materialistic world--and the Catholic\nChurch. I wonder where you'll fit in. Of one thing I'm sure--Celtic\nyou'll live and Celtic you'll die; so if you don't use heaven as a\ncontinual referendum for your ideas you'll find earth a continual recall\nto your ambitions.\n\nAmory, I've discovered suddenly that I'm an old man. Like all old\nmen, I've had dreams sometimes and I'm going to tell you of them. I've\nenjoyed imagining that you were my son, that perhaps when I was young\nI went into a state of coma and begat you, and when I came to, had no\nrecollection of it... it's the paternal instinct, Amory--celibacy goes\ndeeper than the flesh....\n\nSometimes I think that the explanation of our deep resemblance is some\ncommon ancestor, and I find that the only blood that the Darcys and\nthe O'Haras have in common is that of the O'Donahues... Stephen was his\nname, I think....\n\nWhen the lightning strikes one of us it strikes both: you had hardly\narrived at the port of embarkation when I got my papers to start for\nRome, and I am waiting every moment to be told where to take ship. Even\nbefore you get this letter I shall be on the ocean; then will come your\nturn. You went to war as a gentleman should, just as you went to school\nand college, because it was the thing to do. It's better to leave the\nblustering and tremulo-heroism to the middle classes; they do it so much\nbetter.\n\nDo you remember that week-end last March when you brought Burne Holiday\nfrom Princeton to see me? What a magnificent boy he is! It gave me a\nfrightful shock afterward when you wrote that he thought me splendid;\nhow could he be so deceived? Splendid is the one thing that neither you\nnor I are. We are many other things--we're extraordinary, we're clever,\nwe could be said, I suppose, to be brilliant. We can attract people,\nwe can make atmosphere, we can almost lose our Celtic souls in Celtic\nsubtleties, we can almost always have our own way; but splendid--rather\nnot!\n\nI am going to Rome with a wonderful dossier and letters of introduction\nthat cover every capital in Europe, and there will be \"no small stir\"\nwhen I get there. How I wish you were with me! This sounds like a rather\ncynical paragraph, not at all the sort of thing that a middle-aged\nclergyman should write to a youth about to depart for the war; the only\nexcuse is that the middle-aged clergyman is talking to himself. There\nare deep things in us and you know what they are as well as I do. We\nhave great faith, though yours at present is uncrystallized; we have a\nterrible honesty that all our sophistry cannot destroy and, above all, a\nchildlike simplicity that keeps us from ever being really malicious.\n\nI have written a keen for you which follows. I am sorry your cheeks are\nnot up to the description I have written of them, but you _will_ smoke\nand read all night--\n\nAt any rate here it is:\n\n\nA Lament for a Foster Son, and He going to the War Against the King of\nForeign.\n\n \"Ochone\n He is gone from me the son of my mind\n And he in his golden youth like Angus Oge\n Angus of the bright birds\n And his mind strong and subtle like the mind of Cuchulin on\n Muirtheme.\n\n Awirra sthrue\n His brow is as white as the milk of the cows of Maeve\n And his cheeks like the cherries of the tree\n And it bending down to Mary and she feeding the Son of God.\n\n Aveelia Vrone\n His hair is like the golden collar of the Kings at Tara\n And his eyes like the four gray seas of Erin.\n And they swept with the mists of rain.\n\n Mavrone go Gudyo\n He to be in the joyful and red battle\n Amongst the chieftains and they doing great deeds of valor\n His life to go from him\n It is the chords of my own soul would be loosed.\n\n A Vich Deelish\n My heart is in the heart of my son\n And my life is in his life surely\n A man can be twice young\n In the life of his sons only.\n\n Jia du Vaha Alanav\n May the Son of God be above him and beneath him, before him and\n behind him\n May the King of the elements cast a mist over the eyes of the\n King of Foreign,\n May the Queen of the Graces lead him by the hand the way he can\n go through the midst of his enemies and they not seeing him\n\n May Patrick of the Gael and Collumb of the Churches and the five\n thousand Saints of Erin be better than a shield to him\n And he got into the fight.\n Och Ochone.\"\n\nAmory--Amory--I feel, somehow, that this is all; one or both of us is\nnot going to last out this war.... I've been trying to tell you how much\nthis reincarnation of myself in you has meant in the last few years...\ncuriously alike we are... curiously unlike. Good-by, dear boy, and God\nbe with you. THAYER DARCY.\n\n *****\n\nEMBARKING AT NIGHT\n\nAmory moved forward on the deck until he found a stool under an electric\nlight. He searched in his pocket for note-book and pencil and then began\nto write, slowly, laboriously:\n\n\n \"We leave to-night...\n Silent, we filled the still, deserted street,\n A column of dim gray,\n And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat\n Along the moonless way;\n The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet\n That turned from night and day.\n\n And so we linger on the windless decks,\n See on the spectre shore\n Shades of a thousand days, poor gray-ribbed wrecks...\n Oh, shall we then deplore\n Those futile years!\n See how the sea is white!\n The clouds have broken and the heavens burn\n To hollow highways, paved with gravelled light\n The churning of the waves about the stern\n Rises to one voluminous nocturne,\n ... We leave to-night.\"\n\n\nA letter from Amory, headed \"Brest, March 11th, 1919,\" to Lieutenant T.\nP. D'Invilliers, Camp Gordon, Ga.\n\n\nDEAR BAUDELAIRE:--\n\nWe meet in Manhattan on the 30th of this very mo.; we then proceed to\ntake a very sporty apartment, you and I and Alec, who is at me elbow as\nI write. I don't know what I'm going to do but I have a vague dream of\ngoing into politics. Why is it that the pick of the young Englishmen\nfrom Oxford and Cambridge go into politics and in the U. S. A. we leave\nit to the muckers?--raised in the ward, educated in the assembly and\nsent to Congress, fat-paunched bundles of corruption, devoid of \"both\nideas and ideals\" as the debaters used to say. Even forty years ago we\nhad good men in politics, but we, we are brought up to pile up a million\nand \"show what we are made of.\" Sometimes I wish I'd been an Englishman;\nAmerican life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy.\n\nSince poor Beatrice died I'll probably have a little money, but very\ndarn little. I can forgive mother almost everything except the fact that\nin a sudden burst of religiosity toward the end, she left half of what\nremained to be spent in stained-glass windows and seminary endowments.\nMr. Barton, my lawyer, writes me that my thousands are mostly in street\nrailways and that the said Street R.R. s are losing money because of the\nfive-cent fares. Imagine a salary list that gives $350 a month to a man\nthat can't read and write!--yet I believe in it, even though I've\nseen what was once a sizable fortune melt away between speculation,\nextravagance, the democratic administration, and the income tax--modern,\nthat's me all over, Mabel.\n\nAt any rate we'll have really knock-out rooms--you can get a job on some\nfashion magazine, and Alec can go into the Zinc Company or whatever it\nis that his people own--he's looking over my shoulder and he says it's\na brass company, but I don't think it matters much, do you? There's\nprobably as much corruption in zinc-made money as brass-made money. As\nfor the well-known Amory, he would write immortal literature if he were\nsure enough about anything to risk telling any one else about it.\nThere is no more dangerous gift to posterity than a few cleverly turned\nplatitudes.\n\nTom, why don't you become a Catholic? Of course to be a good one you'd\nhave to give up those violent intrigues you used to tell me about,\nbut you'd write better poetry if you were linked up to tall golden\ncandlesticks and long, even chants, and even if the American priests are\nrather burgeois, as Beatrice used to say, still you need only go to the\nsporty churches, and I'll introduce you to Monsignor Darcy who really is\na wonder.\n\nKerry's death was a blow, so was Jesse's to a certain extent. And I have\na great curiosity to know what queer corner of the world has swallowed\nBurne. Do you suppose he's in prison under some false name? I confess\nthat the war instead of making me orthodox, which is the correct\nreaction, has made me a passionate agnostic. The Catholic Church has had\nits wings clipped so often lately that its part was timidly negligible,\nand they haven't any good writers any more. I'm sick of Chesterton.\n\nI've only discovered one soldier who passed through the much-advertised\nspiritual crisis, like this fellow, Donald Hankey, and the one I knew\nwas already studying for the ministry, so he was ripe for it. I honestly\nthink that's all pretty much rot, though it seemed to give sentimental\ncomfort to those at home; and may make fathers and mothers appreciate\ntheir children. This crisis-inspired religion is rather valueless and\nfleeting at best. I think four men have discovered Paris to one that\ndiscovered God.\n\nBut us--you and me and Alec--oh, we'll get a Jap butler and dress for\ndinner and have wine on the table and lead a contemplative, emotionless\nlife until we decide to use machine-guns with the property owners--or\nthrow bombs with the Bolshevik God! Tom, I hope something happens. I'm\nrestless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in\nlove and growing domestic.\n\nThe place at Lake Geneva is now for rent but when I land I'm going West\nto see Mr. Barton and get some details. Write me care of the Blackstone,\nChicago.\n\n S'ever, dear Boswell,\n\n SAMUEL JOHNSON.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK TWO--The Education of a Personage\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 1. The Debutante\n\n\nThe time is February. The place is a large, dainty bedroom in the\nConnage house on Sixty-eighth Street, New York. A girl's room: pink\nwalls and curtains and a pink bedspread on a cream-colored bed. Pink and\ncream are the motifs of the room, but the only article of furniture\nin full view is a luxurious dressing-table with a glass top and a\nthree-sided mirror. On the walls there is an expensive print of \"Cherry\nRipe,\" a few polite dogs by Landseer, and the \"King of the Black Isles,\"\nby Maxfield Parrish.\n\nGreat disorder consisting of the following items: (1) seven or eight\nempty cardboard boxes, with tissue-paper tongues hanging panting from\ntheir mouths; (2) an assortment of street dresses mingled with their\nsisters of the evening, all upon the table, all evidently new; (3) a\nroll of tulle, which has lost its dignity and wound itself tortuously\naround everything in sight, and (4) upon the two small chairs, a\ncollection of lingerie that beggars description. One would enjoy seeing\nthe bill called forth by the finery displayed and one is possessed by\na desire to see the princess for whose benefit--Look! There's some one!\nDisappointment! This is only a maid hunting for something--she lifts\na heap from a chair--Not there; another heap, the dressing-table, the\nchiffonier drawers. She brings to light several beautiful chemises and\nan amazing pajama but this does not satisfy her--she goes out.\n\nAn indistinguishable mumble from the next room.\n\nNow, we are getting warm. This is Alec's mother, Mrs. Connage, ample,\ndignified, rouged to the dowager point and quite worn out. Her lips move\nsignificantly as she looks for IT. Her search is less thorough than the\nmaid's but there is a touch of fury in it, that quite makes up for its\nsketchiness. She stumbles on the tulle and her \"damn\" is quite audible.\nShe retires, empty-handed.\n\nMore chatter outside and a girl's voice, a very spoiled voice, says: \"Of\nall the stupid people--\"\n\nAfter a pause a third seeker enters, not she of the spoiled voice, but\na younger edition. This is Cecelia Connage, sixteen, pretty, shrewd, and\nconstitutionally good-humored. She is dressed for the evening in a gown\nthe obvious simplicity of which probably bores her. She goes to the\nnearest pile, selects a small pink garment and holds it up appraisingly.\n\nCECELIA: Pink?\n\nROSALIND: (Outside) Yes!\n\nCECELIA: _Very_ snappy?\n\nROSALIND: Yes!\n\nCECELIA: I've got it!\n\n(She sees herself in the mirror of the dressing-table and commences to\nshimmy enthusiastically.)\n\nROSALIND: (Outside) What are you doing--trying it on?\n\n(CECELIA ceases and goes out carrying the garment at the right shoulder.\n\nFrom the other door, enters ALEC CONNAGE. He looks around quickly and in\na huge voice shouts: Mama! There is a chorus of protest from next door\nand encouraged he starts toward it, but is repelled by another chorus.)\n\nALEC: So _that's_ where you all are! Amory Blaine is here.\n\nCECELIA: (Quickly) Take him down-stairs.\n\nALEC: Oh, he _is_ down-stairs.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Well, you can show him where his room is. Tell him I'm\nsorry that I can't meet him now.\n\nALEC: He's heard a lot about you all. I wish you'd hurry. Father's\ntelling him all about the war and he's restless. He's sort of\ntemperamental.\n\n(This last suffices to draw CECELIA into the room.)\n\nCECELIA: (Seating herself high upon lingerie) How do you\nmean--temperamental? You used to say that about him in letters.\n\nALEC: Oh, he writes stuff.\n\nCECELIA: Does he play the piano?\n\nALEC: Don't think so.\n\nCECELIA: (Speculatively) Drink?\n\nALEC: Yes--nothing queer about him.\n\nCECELIA: Money?\n\nALEC: Good Lord--ask him, he used to have a lot, and he's got some\nincome now.\n\n(MRS. CONNAGE appears.)\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Alec, of course we're glad to have any friend of yours--\n\nALEC: You certainly ought to meet Amory.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Of course, I want to. But I think it's so childish of you\nto leave a perfectly good home to go and live with two other boys in\nsome impossible apartment. I hope it isn't in order that you can all\ndrink as much as you want. (She pauses.) He'll be a little neglected\nto-night. This is Rosalind's week, you see. When a girl comes out, she\nneeds _all_ the attention.\n\nROSALIND: (Outside) Well, then, prove it by coming here and hooking me.\n\n(MRS. CONNAGE goes.)\n\nALEC: Rosalind hasn't changed a bit.\n\nCECELIA: (In a lower tone) She's awfully spoiled.\n\nALEC: She'll meet her match to-night.\n\nCECELIA: Who--Mr. Amory Blaine?\n\n(ALEC nods.)\n\nCECELIA: Well, Rosalind has still to meet the man she can't outdistance.\nHonestly, Alec, she treats men terribly. She abuses them and cuts them\nand breaks dates with them and yawns in their faces--and they come back\nfor more.\n\nALEC: They love it.\n\nCECELIA: They hate it. She's a--she's a sort of vampire, I think--and\nshe can make girls do what she wants usually--only she hates girls.\n\nALEC: Personality runs in our family.\n\nCECELIA: (Resignedly) I guess it ran out before it got to me.\n\nALEC: Does Rosalind behave herself?\n\nCECELIA: Not particularly well. Oh, she's average--smokes sometimes,\ndrinks punch, frequently kissed--Oh, yes--common knowledge--one of the\neffects of the war, you know.\n\n(Emerges MRS. CONNAGE.)\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Rosalind's almost finished so I can go down and meet your\nfriend.\n\n(ALEC and his mother go out.)\n\nROSALIND: (Outside) Oh, mother--\n\nCECELIA: Mother's gone down.\n\n(And now ROSALIND enters. ROSALIND is--utterly ROSALIND. She is one of\nthose girls who need never make the slightest effort to have men fall in\nlove with them. Two types of men seldom do: dull men are usually afraid\nof her cleverness and intellectual men are usually afraid of her beauty.\nAll others are hers by natural prerogative.\n\nIf ROSALIND could be spoiled the process would have been complete by\nthis time, and as a matter of fact, her disposition is not all it should\nbe; she wants what she wants when she wants it and she is prone to make\nevery one around her pretty miserable when she doesn't get it--but in\nthe true sense she is not spoiled. Her fresh enthusiasm, her will to\ngrow and learn, her endless faith in the inexhaustibility of romance,\nher courage and fundamental honesty--these things are not spoiled.\n\nThere are long periods when she cordially loathes her whole family.\nShe is quite unprincipled; her philosophy is carpe diem for herself\nand laissez faire for others. She loves shocking stories: she has that\ncoarse streak that usually goes with natures that are both fine and big.\nShe wants people to like her, but if they do not it never worries her or\nchanges her. She is by no means a model character.\n\nThe education of all beautiful women is the knowledge of men. ROSALIND\nhad been disappointed in man after man as individuals, but she had great\nfaith in man as a sex. Women she detested. They represented qualities\nthat she felt and despised in herself--incipient meanness, conceit,\ncowardice, and petty dishonesty. She once told a roomful of her\nmother's friends that the only excuse for women was the necessity for\na disturbing element among men. She danced exceptionally well, drew\ncleverly but hastily, and had a startling facility with words, which she\nused only in love-letters.\n\nBut all criticism of ROSALIND ends in her beauty. There was that shade\nof glorious yellow hair, the desire to imitate which supports the dye\nindustry. There was the eternal kissable mouth, small, slightly sensual,\nand utterly disturbing. There were gray eyes and an unimpeachable skin\nwith two spots of vanishing color. She was slender and athletic, without\nunderdevelopment, and it was a delight to watch her move about a room,\nwalk along a street, swing a golf club, or turn a \"cartwheel.\"\n\nA last qualification--her vivid, instant personality escaped that\nconscious, theatrical quality that AMORY had found in ISABELLE.\nMONSIGNOR DARCY would have been quite up a tree whether to call her\na personality or a personage. She was perhaps the delicious,\ninexpressible, once-in-a-century blend.\n\nOn the night of her debut she is, for all her strange, stray wisdom,\nquite like a happy little girl. Her mother's maid has just done her\nhair, but she has decided impatiently that she can do a better job\nherself. She is too nervous just now to stay in one place. To that\nwe owe her presence in this littered room. She is going to speak.\nISABELLE'S alto tones had been like a violin, but if you could hear\nROSALIND, you would say her voice was musical as a waterfall.)\n\nROSALIND: Honestly, there are only two costumes in the world that I\nreally enjoy being in--(Combing her hair at the dressing-table.) One's\na hoop skirt with pantaloons; the other's a one-piece bathing-suit. I'm\nquite charming in both of them.\n\nCECELIA: Glad you're coming out?\n\nROSALIND: Yes; aren't you?\n\nCECELIA: (Cynically) You're glad so you can get married and live on Long\nIsland with the _fast younger married set_. You want life to be a chain\nof flirtation with a man for every link.\n\nROSALIND: _Want_ it to be one! You mean I've _found_ it one.\n\nCECELIA: Ha!\n\nROSALIND: Cecelia, darling, you don't know what a trial it is to\nbe--like me. I've got to keep my face like steel in the street to keep\nmen from winking at me. If I laugh hard from a front row in the theatre,\nthe comedian plays to me for the rest of the evening. If I drop my\nvoice, my eyes, my handkerchief at a dance, my partner calls me up on\nthe 'phone every day for a week.\n\nCECELIA: It must be an awful strain.\n\nROSALIND: The unfortunate part is that the only men who interest me at\nall are the totally ineligible ones. Now--if I were poor I'd go on the\nstage.\n\nCECELIA: Yes, you might as well get paid for the amount of acting you\ndo.\n\nROSALIND: Sometimes when I've felt particularly radiant I've thought,\nwhy should this be wasted on one man?\n\nCECELIA: Often when you're particularly sulky, I've wondered why it\nshould all be wasted on just one family. (Getting up.) I think I'll go\ndown and meet Mr. Amory Blaine. I like temperamental men.\n\nROSALIND: There aren't any. Men don't know how to be really angry or\nreally happy--and the ones that do, go to pieces.\n\nCECELIA: Well, I'm glad I don't have all your worries. I'm engaged.\n\nROSALIND: (With a scornful smile) Engaged? Why, you little lunatic!\nIf mother heard you talking like that she'd send you off to\nboarding-school, where you belong.\n\nCECELIA: You won't tell her, though, because I know things I could\ntell--and you're too selfish!\n\nROSALIND: (A little annoyed) Run along, little girl! Who are you engaged\nto, the iceman? the man that keeps the candy-store?\n\nCECELIA: Cheap wit--good-by, darling, I'll see you later.\n\nROSALIND: Oh, be _sure_ and do that--you're such a help.\n\n(Exit CECELIA. ROSALIND finished her hair and rises, humming. She goes\nup to the mirror and starts to dance in front of it on the soft carpet.\nShe watches not her feet, but her eyes--never casually but always\nintently, even when she smiles. The door suddenly opens and then slams\nbehind AMORY, very cool and handsome as usual. He melts into instant\nconfusion.)\n\nHE: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought--\n\nSHE: (Smiling radiantly) Oh, you're Amory Blaine, aren't you?\n\nHE: (Regarding her closely) And you're Rosalind?\n\nSHE: I'm going to call you Amory--oh, come in--it's all right--mother'll\nbe right in--(under her breath) unfortunately.\n\nHE: (Gazing around) This is sort of a new wrinkle for me.\n\nSHE: This is No Man's Land.\n\nHE: This is where you--you--(pause)\n\nSHE: Yes--all those things. (She crosses to the bureau.) See, here's my\nrouge--eye pencils.\n\nHE: I didn't know you were that way.\n\nSHE: What did you expect?\n\nHE: I thought you'd be sort of--sort of--sexless, you know, swim and\nplay golf.\n\nSHE: Oh, I do--but not in business hours.\n\nHE: Business?\n\nSHE: Six to two--strictly.\n\nHE: I'd like to have some stock in the corporation.\n\nSHE: Oh, it's not a corporation--it's just \"Rosalind, Unlimited.\"\nFifty-one shares, name, good-will, and everything goes at $25,000 a\nyear.\n\nHE: (Disapprovingly) Sort of a chilly proposition.\n\nSHE: Well, Amory, you don't mind--do you? When I meet a man that doesn't\nbore me to death after two weeks, perhaps it'll be different.\n\nHE: Odd, you have the same point of view on men that I have on women.\n\nSHE: I'm not really feminine, you know--in my mind.\n\nHE: (Interested) Go on.\n\nSHE: No, you--you go on--you've made me talk about myself. That's\nagainst the rules.\n\nHE: Rules?\n\nSHE: My own rules--but you--Oh, Amory, I hear you're brilliant. The\nfamily expects _so_ much of you.\n\nHE: How encouraging!\n\nSHE: Alec said you'd taught him to think. Did you? I didn't believe any\none could.\n\nHE: No. I'm really quite dull.\n\n(He evidently doesn't intend this to be taken seriously.)\n\nSHE: Liar.\n\nHE: I'm--I'm religious--I'm literary. I've--I've even written poems.\n\nSHE: Vers libre--splendid! (She declaims.)\n\n\n \"The trees are green,\n The birds are singing in the trees,\n The girl sips her poison\n The bird flies away the girl dies.\"\n\n\nHE: (Laughing) No, not that kind.\n\nSHE: (Suddenly) I like you.\n\nHE: Don't.\n\nSHE: Modest too--\n\nHE: I'm afraid of you. I'm always afraid of a girl--until I've kissed\nher.\n\nSHE: (Emphatically) My dear boy, the war is over.\n\nHE: So I'll always be afraid of you.\n\nSHE: (Rather sadly) I suppose you will.\n\n(A slight hesitation on both their parts.)\n\nHE: (After due consideration) Listen. This is a frightful thing to ask.\n\nSHE: (Knowing what's coming) After five minutes.\n\nHE: But will you--kiss me? Or are you afraid?\n\nSHE: I'm never afraid--but your reasons are so poor.\n\nHE: Rosalind, I really _want_ to kiss you.\n\nSHE: So do I.\n\n(They kiss--definitely and thoroughly.)\n\nHE: (After a breathless second) Well, is your curiosity satisfied?\n\nSHE: Is yours?\n\nHE: No, it's only aroused.\n\n(He looks it.)\n\nSHE: (Dreamily) I've kissed dozens of men. I suppose I'll kiss dozens\nmore.\n\nHE: (Abstractedly) Yes, I suppose you could--like that.\n\nSHE: Most people like the way I kiss.\n\nHE: (Remembering himself) Good Lord, yes. Kiss me once more, Rosalind.\n\nSHE: No--my curiosity is generally satisfied at one.\n\nHE: (Discouraged) Is that a rule?\n\nSHE: I make rules to fit the cases.\n\nHE: You and I are somewhat alike--except that I'm years older in\nexperience.\n\nSHE: How old are you?\n\nHE: Almost twenty-three. You?\n\nSHE: Nineteen--just.\n\nHE: I suppose you're the product of a fashionable school.\n\nSHE: No--I'm fairly raw material. I was expelled from Spence--I've\nforgotten why.\n\nHE: What's your general trend?\n\nSHE: Oh, I'm bright, quite selfish, emotional when aroused, fond of\nadmiration--\n\nHE: (Suddenly) I don't want to fall in love with you--\n\nSHE: (Raising her eyebrows) Nobody asked you to.\n\nHE: (Continuing coldly) But I probably will. I love your mouth.\n\nSHE: Hush! Please don't fall in love with my mouth--hair, eyes,\nshoulders, slippers--but _not_ my mouth. Everybody falls in love with my\nmouth.\n\nHE: It's quite beautiful.\n\nSHE: It's too small.\n\nHE: No it isn't--let's see.\n\n(He kisses her again with the same thoroughness.)\n\nSHE: (Rather moved) Say something sweet.\n\nHE: (Frightened) Lord help me.\n\nSHE: (Drawing away) Well, don't--if it's so hard.\n\nHE: Shall we pretend? So soon?\n\nSHE: We haven't the same standards of time as other people.\n\nHE: Already it's--other people.\n\nSHE: Let's pretend.\n\nHE: No--I can't--it's sentiment.\n\nSHE: You're not sentimental?\n\nHE: No, I'm romantic--a sentimental person thinks things will last--a\nromantic person hopes against hope that they won't. Sentiment is\nemotional.\n\nSHE: And you're not? (With her eyes half-closed.) You probably flatter\nyourself that that's a superior attitude.\n\nHE: Well--Rosalind, Rosalind, don't argue--kiss me again.\n\nSHE: (Quite chilly now) No--I have no desire to kiss you.\n\nHE: (Openly taken aback) You wanted to kiss me a minute ago.\n\nSHE: This is now.\n\nHE: I'd better go.\n\nSHE: I suppose so.\n\n(He goes toward the door.)\n\nSHE: Oh!\n\n(He turns.)\n\nSHE: (Laughing) Score--Home Team: One hundred--Opponents: Zero.\n\n(He starts back.)\n\nSHE: (Quickly) Rain--no game.\n\n(He goes out.)\n\n(She goes quietly to the chiffonier, takes out a cigarette-case and\nhides it in the side drawer of a desk. Her mother enters, note-book in\nhand.)\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Good--I've been wanting to speak to you alone before we go\ndown-stairs.\n\nROSALIND: Heavens! you frighten me!\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Rosalind, you've been a very expensive proposition.\n\nROSALIND: (Resignedly) Yes.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: And you know your father hasn't what he once had.\n\nROSALIND: (Making a wry face) Oh, please don't talk about money.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: You can't do anything without it. This is our last year in\nthis house--and unless things change Cecelia won't have the advantages\nyou've had.\n\nROSALIND: (Impatiently) Well--what is it?\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: So I ask you to please mind me in several things I've put\ndown in my note-book. The first one is: don't disappear with young men.\nThere may be a time when it's valuable, but at present I want you on the\ndance-floor where I can find you. There are certain men I want to have\nyou meet and I don't like finding you in some corner of the conservatory\nexchanging silliness with any one--or listening to it.\n\nROSALIND: (Sarcastically) Yes, listening to it _is_ better.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: And don't waste a lot of time with the college set--little\nboys nineteen and twenty years old. I don't mind a prom or a football\ngame, but staying away from advantageous parties to eat in little cafes\ndown-town with Tom, Dick, and Harry--\n\nROSALIND: (Offering her code, which is, in its way, quite as high as her\nmother's) Mother, it's done--you can't run everything now the way you\ndid in the early nineties.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: (Paying no attention) There are several bachelor friends\nof your father's that I want you to meet to-night--youngish men.\n\nROSALIND: (Nodding wisely) About forty-five?\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: (Sharply) Why not?\n\nROSALIND: Oh, _quite_ all right--they know life and are so adorably\ntired looking (shakes her head)--but they _will_ dance.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: I haven't met Mr. Blaine--but I don't think you'll care\nfor him. He doesn't sound like a money-maker.\n\nROSALIND: Mother, I never _think_ about money.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: You never keep it long enough to think about it.\n\nROSALIND: (Sighs) Yes, I suppose some day I'll marry a ton of it--out of\nsheer boredom.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: (Referring to note-book) I had a wire from Hartford.\nDawson Ryder is coming up. Now there's a young man I like, and he's\nfloating in money. It seems to me that since you seem tired of Howard\nGillespie you might give Mr. Ryder some encouragement. This is the third\ntime he's been up in a month.\n\nROSALIND: How did you know I was tired of Howard Gillespie?\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: The poor boy looks so miserable every time he comes.\n\nROSALIND: That was one of those romantic, pre-battle affairs. They're\nall wrong.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: (Her say said) At any rate, make us proud of you to-night.\n\nROSALIND: Don't you think I'm beautiful?\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: You know you are.\n\n(From down-stairs is heard the moan of a violin being tuned, the roll of\na drum. MRS. CONNAGE turns quickly to her daughter.)\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Come!\n\nROSALIND: One minute!\n\n(Her mother leaves. ROSALIND goes to the glass where she gazes at\nherself with great satisfaction. She kisses her hand and touches her\nmirrored mouth with it. Then she turns out the lights and leaves the\nroom. Silence for a moment. A few chords from the piano, the discreet\npatter of faint drums, the rustle of new silk, all blend on the\nstaircase outside and drift in through the partly opened door. Bundled\nfigures pass in the lighted hall. The laughter heard below becomes\ndoubled and multiplied. Then some one comes in, closes the door, and\nswitches on the lights. It is CECELIA. She goes to the chiffonier,\nlooks in the drawers, hesitates--then to the desk whence she takes the\ncigarette-case and extracts one. She lights it and then, puffing and\nblowing, walks toward the mirror.)\n\nCECELIA: (In tremendously sophisticated accents) Oh, yes, coming out\nis _such_ a farce nowadays, you know. One really plays around so much\nbefore one is seventeen, that it's positively anticlimax. (Shaking hands\nwith a visionary middle-aged nobleman.) Yes, your grace--I b'lieve\nI've heard my sister speak of you. Have a puff--they're very good.\nThey're--they're Coronas. You don't smoke? What a pity! The king doesn't\nallow it, I suppose. Yes, I'll dance.\n\n(So she dances around the room to a tune from down-stairs, her arms\noutstretched to an imaginary partner, the cigarette waving in her hand.)\n\n *****\n\nSEVERAL HOURS LATER\n\nThe corner of a den down-stairs, filled by a very comfortable leather\nlounge. A small light is on each side above, and in the middle, over the\ncouch hangs a painting of a very old, very dignified gentleman, period\n1860. Outside the music is heard in a fox-trot.\n\nROSALIND is seated on the lounge and on her left is HOWARD GILLESPIE, a\nvapid youth of about twenty-four. He is obviously very unhappy, and she\nis quite bored.\n\nGILLESPIE: (Feebly) What do you mean I've changed. I feel the same\ntoward you.\n\nROSALIND: But you don't look the same to me.\n\nGILLESPIE: Three weeks ago you used to say that you liked me because I\nwas so blasé, so indifferent--I still am.\n\nROSALIND: But not about me. I used to like you because you had brown\neyes and thin legs.\n\nGILLESPIE: (Helplessly) They're still thin and brown. You're a vampire,\nthat's all.\n\nROSALIND: The only thing I know about vamping is what's on the piano\nscore. What confuses men is that I'm perfectly natural. I used to think\nyou were never jealous. Now you follow me with your eyes wherever I go.\n\nGILLESPIE: I love you.\n\nROSALIND: (Coldly) I know it.\n\nGILLESPIE: And you haven't kissed me for two weeks. I had an idea that\nafter a girl was kissed she was--was--won.\n\nROSALIND: Those days are over. I have to be won all over again every\ntime you see me.\n\nGILLESPIE: Are you serious?\n\nROSALIND: About as usual. There used to be two kinds of kisses: First\nwhen girls were kissed and deserted; second, when they were engaged. Now\nthere's a third kind, where the man is kissed and deserted. If Mr.\nJones of the nineties bragged he'd kissed a girl, every one knew he was\nthrough with her. If Mr. Jones of 1919 brags the same every one knows\nit's because he can't kiss her any more. Given a decent start any girl\ncan beat a man nowadays.\n\nGILLESPIE: Then why do you play with men?\n\nROSALIND: (Leaning forward confidentially) For that first moment, when\nhe's interested. There is a moment--Oh, just before the first kiss, a\nwhispered word--something that makes it worth while.\n\nGILLESPIE: And then?\n\nROSALIND: Then after that you make him talk about himself. Pretty soon\nhe thinks of nothing but being alone with you--he sulks, he won't fight,\nhe doesn't want to play--Victory!\n\n(Enter DAWSON RYDER, twenty-six, handsome, wealthy, faithful to his own,\na bore perhaps, but steady and sure of success.)\n\nRYDER: I believe this is my dance, Rosalind.\n\nROSALIND: Well, Dawson, so you recognize me. Now I know I haven't got\ntoo much paint on. Mr. Ryder, this is Mr. Gillespie.\n\n(They shake hands and GILLESPIE leaves, tremendously downcast.)\n\nRYDER: Your party is certainly a success.\n\nROSALIND: Is it--I haven't seen it lately. I'm weary--Do you mind\nsitting out a minute?\n\nRYDER: Mind--I'm delighted. You know I loathe this \"rushing\" idea. See a\ngirl yesterday, to-day, to-morrow.\n\nROSALIND: Dawson!\n\nRYDER: What?\n\nROSALIND: I wonder if you know you love me.\n\nRYDER: (Startled) What--Oh--you know you're remarkable!\n\nROSALIND: Because you know I'm an awful proposition. Any one who marries\nme will have his hands full. I'm mean--mighty mean.\n\nRYDER: Oh, I wouldn't say that.\n\nROSALIND: Oh, yes, I am--especially to the people nearest to me. (She\nrises.) Come, let's go. I've changed my mind and I want to dance. Mother\nis probably having a fit.\n\n(Exeunt. Enter ALEC and CECELIA.)\n\nCECELIA: Just my luck to get my own brother for an intermission.\n\nALEC: (Gloomily) I'll go if you want me to.\n\nCECELIA: Good heavens, no--with whom would I begin the next dance?\n(Sighs.) There's no color in a dance since the French officers went\nback.\n\nALEC: (Thoughtfully) I don't want Amory to fall in love with Rosalind.\n\nCECELIA: Why, I had an idea that that was just what you did want.\n\nALEC: I did, but since seeing these girls--I don't know. I'm awfully\nattached to Amory. He's sensitive and I don't want him to break his\nheart over somebody who doesn't care about him.\n\nCECELIA: He's very good looking.\n\nALEC: (Still thoughtfully) She won't marry him, but a girl doesn't have\nto marry a man to break his heart.\n\nCECELIA: What does it? I wish I knew the secret.\n\nALEC: Why, you cold-blooded little kitty. It's lucky for some that the\nLord gave you a pug nose.\n\n(Enter MRS. CONNAGE.)\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Where on earth is Rosalind?\n\nALEC: (Brilliantly) Of course you've come to the best people to find\nout. She'd naturally be with us.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Her father has marshalled eight bachelor millionaires to\nmeet her.\n\nALEC: You might form a squad and march through the halls.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: I'm perfectly serious--for all I know she may be at the\nCocoanut Grove with some football player on the night of her debut. You\nlook left and I'll--\n\nALEC: (Flippantly) Hadn't you better send the butler through the cellar?\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: (Perfectly serious) Oh, you don't think she'd be there?\n\nCECELIA: He's only joking, mother.\n\nALEC: Mother had a picture of her tapping a keg of beer with some high\nhurdler.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Let's look right away.\n\n(They go out. ROSALIND comes in with GILLESPIE.)\n\nGILLESPIE: Rosalind--Once more I ask you. Don't you care a blessed thing\nabout me?\n\n(AMORY walks in briskly.)\n\nAMORY: My dance.\n\nROSALIND: Mr. Gillespie, this is Mr. Blaine.\n\nGILLESPIE: I've met Mr. Blaine. From Lake Geneva, aren't you?\n\nAMORY: Yes.\n\nGILLESPIE: (Desperately) I've been there. It's in the--the Middle West,\nisn't it?\n\nAMORY: (Spicily) Approximately. But I always felt that I'd rather be\nprovincial hot-tamale than soup without seasoning.\n\nGILLESPIE: What!\n\nAMORY: Oh, no offense.\n\n(GILLESPIE bows and leaves.)\n\nROSALIND: He's too much _people_.\n\nAMORY: I was in love with a _people_ once.\n\nROSALIND: So?\n\nAMORY: Oh, yes--her name was Isabelle--nothing at all to her except what\nI read into her.\n\nROSALIND: What happened?\n\nAMORY: Finally I convinced her that she was smarter than I was--then she\nthrew me over. Said I was critical and impractical, you know.\n\nROSALIND: What do you mean impractical?\n\nAMORY: Oh--drive a car, but can't change a tire.\n\nROSALIND: What are you going to do?\n\nAMORY: Can't say--run for President, write--\n\nROSALIND: Greenwich Village?\n\nAMORY: Good heavens, no--I said write--not drink.\n\nROSALIND: I like business men. Clever men are usually so homely.\n\nAMORY: I feel as if I'd known you for ages.\n\nROSALIND: Oh, are you going to commence the \"pyramid\" story?\n\nAMORY: No--I was going to make it French. I was Louis XIV and you were\none of my--my--(Changing his tone.) Suppose--we fell in love.\n\nROSALIND: I've suggested pretending.\n\nAMORY: If we did it would be very big.\n\nROSALIND: Why?\n\nAMORY: Because selfish people are in a way terribly capable of great\nloves.\n\nROSALIND: (Turning her lips up) Pretend.\n\n(Very deliberately they kiss.)\n\nAMORY: I can't say sweet things. But you _are_ beautiful.\n\nROSALIND: Not that.\n\nAMORY: What then?\n\nROSALIND: (Sadly) Oh, nothing--only I want sentiment, real\nsentiment--and I never find it.\n\nAMORY: I never find anything else in the world--and I loathe it.\n\nROSALIND: It's so hard to find a male to gratify one's artistic taste.\n\n(Some one has opened a door and the music of a waltz surges into the\nroom. ROSALIND rises.)\n\nROSALIND: Listen! they're playing \"Kiss Me Again.\"\n\n(He looks at her.)\n\nAMORY: Well?\n\nROSALIND: Well?\n\nAMORY: (Softly--the battle lost) I love you.\n\nROSALIND: I love you--now.\n\n(They kiss.)\n\nAMORY: Oh, God, what have I done?\n\nROSALIND: Nothing. Oh, don't talk. Kiss me again.\n\nAMORY: I don't know why or how, but I love you--from the moment I saw\nyou.\n\nROSALIND: Me too--I--I--oh, to-night's to-night.\n\n(Her brother strolls in, starts and then in a loud voice says: \"Oh,\nexcuse me,\" and goes.)\n\nROSALIND: (Her lips scarcely stirring) Don't let me go--I don't care who\nknows what I do.\n\nAMORY: Say it!\n\nROSALIND: I love you--now. (They part.) Oh--I am very youthful, thank\nGod--and rather beautiful, thank God--and happy, thank God, thank\nGod--(She pauses and then, in an odd burst of prophecy, adds) Poor\nAmory!\n\n(He kisses her again.)\n\n *****\n\nKISMET\n\nWithin two weeks Amory and Rosalind were deeply and passionately in\nlove. The critical qualities which had spoiled for each of them a dozen\nromances were dulled by the great wave of emotion that washed over them.\n\n\"It may be an insane love-affair,\" she told her anxious mother, \"but\nit's not inane.\"\n\nThe wave swept Amory into an advertising agency early in March, where\nhe alternated between astonishing bursts of rather exceptional work and\nwild dreams of becoming suddenly rich and touring Italy with Rosalind.\n\nThey were together constantly, for lunch, for dinner, and nearly every\nevening--always in a sort of breathless hush, as if they feared that any\nminute the spell would break and drop them out of this paradise of rose\nand flame. But the spell became a trance, seemed to increase from day\nto day; they began to talk of marrying in July--in June. All life was\ntransmitted into terms of their love, all experience, all desires, all\nambitions, were nullified--their senses of humor crawled into corners to\nsleep; their former love-affairs seemed faintly laughable and scarcely\nregretted juvenalia.\n\nFor the second time in his life Amory had had a complete bouleversement\nand was hurrying into line with his generation.\n\n *****\n\nA LITTLE INTERLUDE\n\nAmory wandered slowly up the avenue and thought of the night as\ninevitably his--the pageantry and carnival of rich dusk and dim streets\n... it seemed that he had closed the book of fading harmonies at last\nand stepped into the sensuous vibrant walks of life. Everywhere these\ncountless lights, this promise of a night of streets and singing--he\nmoved in a half-dream through the crowd as if expecting to meet Rosalind\nhurrying toward him with eager feet from every corner.... How the\nunforgettable faces of dusk would blend to her, the myriad footsteps,\na thousand overtures, would blend to her footsteps; and there would be\nmore drunkenness than wine in the softness of her eyes on his. Even\nhis dreams now were faint violins drifting like summer sounds upon the\nsummer air.\n\nThe room was in darkness except for the faint glow of Tom's cigarette\nwhere he lounged by the open window. As the door shut behind him, Amory\nstood a moment with his back against it.\n\n\"Hello, Benvenuto Blaine. How went the advertising business to-day?\"\n\nAmory sprawled on a couch.\n\n\"I loathed it as usual!\" The momentary vision of the bustling agency was\ndisplaced quickly by another picture.\n\n\"My God! She's wonderful!\"\n\nTom sighed.\n\n\"I can't tell you,\" repeated Amory, \"just how wonderful she is. I don't\nwant you to know. I don't want any one to know.\"\n\nAnother sigh came from the window--quite a resigned sigh.\n\n\"She's life and hope and happiness, my whole world now.\"\n\nHe felt the quiver of a tear on his eyelid.\n\n\"Oh, _Golly_, Tom!\"\n\n *****\n\nBITTER SWEET\n\n\"Sit like we do,\" she whispered.\n\nHe sat in the big chair and held out his arms so that she could nestle\ninside them.\n\n\"I knew you'd come to-night,\" she said softly, \"like summer, just when I\nneeded you most... darling... darling...\"\n\nHis lips moved lazily over her face.\n\n\"You _taste_ so good,\" he sighed.\n\n\"How do you mean, lover?\"\n\n\"Oh, just sweet, just sweet...\" he held her closer.\n\n\"Amory,\" she whispered, \"when you're ready for me I'll marry you.\"\n\n\"We won't have much at first.\"\n\n\"Don't!\" she cried. \"It hurts when you reproach yourself for what you\ncan't give me. I've got your precious self--and that's enough for me.\"\n\n\"Tell me...\"\n\n\"You know, don't you? Oh, you know.\"\n\n\"Yes, but I want to hear you say it.\"\n\n\"I love you, Amory, with all my heart.\"\n\n\"Always, will you?\"\n\n\"All my life--Oh, Amory--\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I want to belong to you. I want your people to be my people. I want to\nhave your babies.\"\n\n\"But I haven't any people.\"\n\n\"Don't laugh at me, Amory. Just kiss me.\"\n\n\"I'll do what you want,\" he said.\n\n\"No, I'll do what _you_ want. We're _you_--not me. Oh, you're so much a\npart, so much all of me...\"\n\nHe closed his eyes.\n\n\"I'm so happy that I'm frightened. Wouldn't it be awful if this was--was\nthe high point?...\"\n\nShe looked at him dreamily.\n\n\"Beauty and love pass, I know.... Oh, there's sadness, too. I suppose\nall great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and\nthen the death of roses--\"\n\n\"Beauty means the agony of sacrifice and the end of agony....\"\n\n\"And, Amory, we're beautiful, I know. I'm sure God loves us--\"\n\n\"He loves you. You're his most precious possession.\"\n\n\"I'm not his, I'm yours. Amory, I belong to you. For the first time I\nregret all the other kisses; now I know how much a kiss can mean.\"\n\nThen they would smoke and he would tell her about his day at the\noffice--and where they might live. Sometimes, when he was particularly\nloquacious, she went to sleep in his arms, but he loved that\nRosalind--all Rosalinds--as he had never in the world loved any one\nelse. Intangibly fleeting, unrememberable hours.\n\n *****\n\nAQUATIC INCIDENT\n\nOne day Amory and Howard Gillespie meeting by accident down-town took\nlunch together, and Amory heard a story that delighted him. Gillespie\nafter several cocktails was in a talkative mood; he began by telling\nAmory that he was sure Rosalind was slightly eccentric.\n\nHe had gone with her on a swimming party up in Westchester County, and\nsome one mentioned that Annette Kellerman had been there one day on a\nvisit and had dived from the top of a rickety, thirty-foot summer-house.\nImmediately Rosalind insisted that Howard should climb up with her to\nsee what it looked like.\n\nA minute later, as he sat and dangled his feet on the edge, a form shot\nby him; Rosalind, her arms spread in a beautiful swan dive, had sailed\nthrough the air into the clear water.\n\n\"Of course _I_ had to go, after that--and I nearly killed myself. I\nthought I was pretty good to even try it. Nobody else in the party tried\nit. Well, afterward Rosalind had the nerve to ask me why I stooped over\nwhen I dove. 'It didn't make it any easier,' she said, 'it just took all\nthe courage out of it.' I ask you, what can a man do with a girl like\nthat? Unnecessary, I call it.\"\n\nGillespie failed to understand why Amory was smiling delightedly all\nthrough lunch. He thought perhaps he was one of these hollow optimists.\n\n *****\n\nFIVE WEEKS LATER\n\nAgain the library of the Connage house. ROSALIND is alone, sitting\non the lounge staring very moodily and unhappily at nothing. She has\nchanged perceptibly--she is a trifle thinner for one thing; the light in\nher eyes is not so bright; she looks easily a year older.\n\nHer mother comes in, muffled in an opera-cloak. She takes in ROSALIND\nwith a nervous glance.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Who is coming to-night?\n\n(ROSALIND fails to hear her, at least takes no notice.)\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Alec is coming up to take me to this Barrie play, \"Et tu,\nBrutus.\" (She perceives that she is talking to herself.) Rosalind! I\nasked you who is coming to-night?\n\nROSALIND: (Starting) Oh--what--oh--Amory--\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: (Sarcastically) You have so _many_ admirers lately that I\ncouldn't imagine _which_ one. (ROSALIND doesn't answer.) Dawson Ryder\nis more patient than I thought he'd be. You haven't given him an evening\nthis week.\n\nROSALIND: (With a very weary expression that is quite new to her face.)\nMother--please--\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Oh, _I_ won't interfere. You've already wasted over two\nmonths on a theoretical genius who hasn't a penny to his name, but _go_\nahead, waste your life on him. _I_ won't interfere.\n\nROSALIND: (As if repeating a tiresome lesson) You know he has a\nlittle income--and you know he's earning thirty-five dollars a week in\nadvertising--\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: And it wouldn't buy your clothes. (She pauses but ROSALIND\nmakes no reply.) I have your best interests at heart when I tell you not\nto take a step you'll spend your days regretting. It's not as if your\nfather could help you. Things have been hard for him lately and he's an\nold man. You'd be dependent absolutely on a dreamer, a nice, well-born\nboy, but a dreamer--merely _clever_. (She implies that this quality in\nitself is rather vicious.)\n\nROSALIND: For heaven's sake, mother--\n\n(A maid appears, announces Mr. Blaine who follows immediately. AMORY'S\nfriends have been telling him for ten days that he \"looks like the wrath\nof God,\" and he does. As a matter of fact he has not been able to eat a\nmouthful in the last thirty-six hours.)\n\nAMORY: Good evening, Mrs. Connage.\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: (Not unkindly) Good evening, Amory.\n\n(AMORY and ROSALIND exchange glances--and ALEC comes in. ALEC'S attitude\nthroughout has been neutral. He believes in his heart that the marriage\nwould make AMORY mediocre and ROSALIND miserable, but he feels a great\nsympathy for both of them.)\n\nALEC: Hi, Amory!\n\nAMORY: Hi, Alec! Tom said he'd meet you at the theatre.\n\nALEC: Yeah, just saw him. How's the advertising to-day? Write some\nbrilliant copy?\n\nAMORY: Oh, it's about the same. I got a raise--(Every one looks at him\nrather eagerly)--of two dollars a week. (General collapse.)\n\nMRS. CONNAGE: Come, Alec, I hear the car.\n\n(A good night, rather chilly in sections. After MRS. CONNAGE and ALEC\ngo out there is a pause. ROSALIND still stares moodily at the fireplace.\nAMORY goes to her and puts his arm around her.)\n\nAMORY: Darling girl.\n\n(They kiss. Another pause and then she seizes his hand, covers it with\nkisses and holds it to her breast.)\n\nROSALIND: (Sadly) I love your hands, more than anything. I see them\noften when you're away from me--so tired; I know every line of them.\nDear hands!\n\n(Their eyes meet for a second and then she begins to cry--a tearless\nsobbing.)\n\nAMORY: Rosalind!\n\nROSALIND: Oh, we're so darned pitiful!\n\nAMORY: Rosalind!\n\nROSALIND: Oh, I want to die!\n\nAMORY: Rosalind, another night of this and I'll go to pieces. You've\nbeen this way four days now. You've got to be more encouraging or I\ncan't work or eat or sleep. (He looks around helplessly as if searching\nfor new words to clothe an old, shopworn phrase.) We'll have to make a\nstart. I like having to make a start together. (His forced hopefulness\nfades as he sees her unresponsive.) What's the matter? (He gets up\nsuddenly and starts to pace the floor.) It's Dawson Ryder, that's what\nit is. He's been working on your nerves. You've been with him every\nafternoon for a week. People come and tell me they've seen you together,\nand I have to smile and nod and pretend it hasn't the slightest\nsignificance for me. And you won't tell me anything as it develops.\n\nROSALIND: Amory, if you don't sit down I'll scream.\n\nAMORY: (Sitting down suddenly beside her) Oh, Lord.\n\nROSALIND: (Taking his hand gently) You know I love you, don't you?\n\nAMORY: Yes.\n\nROSALIND: You know I'll always love you--\n\nAMORY: Don't talk that way; you frighten me. It sounds as if we weren't\ngoing to have each other. (She cries a little and rising from the couch\ngoes to the armchair.) I've felt all afternoon that things were worse.\nI nearly went wild down at the office--couldn't write a line. Tell me\neverything.\n\nROSALIND: There's nothing to tell, I say. I'm just nervous.\n\nAMORY: Rosalind, you're playing with the idea of marrying Dawson Ryder.\n\nROSALIND: (After a pause) He's been asking me to all day.\n\nAMORY: Well, he's got his nerve!\n\nROSALIND: (After another pause) I like him.\n\nAMORY: Don't say that. It hurts me.\n\nROSALIND: Don't be a silly idiot. You know you're the only man I've ever\nloved, ever will love.\n\nAMORY: (Quickly) Rosalind, let's get married--next week.\n\nROSALIND: We can't.\n\nAMORY: Why not?\n\nROSALIND: Oh, we can't. I'd be your squaw--in some horrible place.\n\nAMORY: We'll have two hundred and seventy-five dollars a month all told.\n\nROSALIND: Darling, I don't even do my own hair, usually.\n\nAMORY: I'll do it for you.\n\nROSALIND: (Between a laugh and a sob) Thanks.\n\nAMORY: Rosalind, you _can't_ be thinking of marrying some one else. Tell\nme! You leave me in the dark. I can help you fight it out if you'll only\ntell me.\n\nROSALIND: It's just--us. We're pitiful, that's all. The very qualities I\nlove you for are the ones that will always make you a failure.\n\nAMORY: (Grimly) Go on.\n\nROSALIND: Oh--it _is_ Dawson Ryder. He's so reliable, I almost feel that\nhe'd be a--a background.\n\nAMORY: You don't love him.\n\nROSALIND: I know, but I respect him, and he's a good man and a strong\none.\n\nAMORY: (Grudgingly) Yes--he's that.\n\nROSALIND: Well--here's one little thing. There was a little poor boy we\nmet in Rye Tuesday afternoon--and, oh, Dawson took him on his lap\nand talked to him and promised him an Indian suit--and next day he\nremembered and bought it--and, oh, it was so sweet and I couldn't help\nthinking he'd be so nice to--to our children--take care of them--and I\nwouldn't have to worry.\n\nAMORY: (In despair) Rosalind! Rosalind!\n\nROSALIND: (With a faint roguishness) Don't look so consciously\nsuffering.\n\nAMORY: What power we have of hurting each other!\n\nROSALIND: (Commencing to sob again) It's been so perfect--you and I. So\nlike a dream that I'd longed for and never thought I'd find. The first\nreal unselfishness I've ever felt in my life. And I can't see it fade\nout in a colorless atmosphere!\n\nAMORY: It won't--it won't!\n\nROSALIND: I'd rather keep it as a beautiful memory--tucked away in my\nheart.\n\nAMORY: Yes, women can do that--but not men. I'd remember always, not\nthe beauty of it while it lasted, but just the bitterness, the long\nbitterness.\n\nROSALIND: Don't!\n\nAMORY: All the years never to see you, never to kiss you, just a gate\nshut and barred--you don't dare be my wife.\n\nROSALIND: No--no--I'm taking the hardest course, the strongest course.\nMarrying you would be a failure and I never fail--if you don't stop\nwalking up and down I'll scream!\n\n(Again he sinks despairingly onto the lounge.)\n\nAMORY: Come over here and kiss me.\n\nROSALIND: No.\n\nAMORY: Don't you _want_ to kiss me?\n\nROSALIND: To-night I want you to love me calmly and coolly.\n\nAMORY: The beginning of the end.\n\nROSALIND: (With a burst of insight) Amory, you're young. I'm young.\nPeople excuse us now for our poses and vanities, for treating people\nlike Sancho and yet getting away with it. They excuse us now. But you've\ngot a lot of knocks coming to you--\n\nAMORY: And you're afraid to take them with me.\n\nROSALIND: No, not that. There was a poem I read somewhere--you'll say\nElla Wheeler Wilcox and laugh--but listen:\n\n \"For this is wisdom--to love and live,\n To take what fate or the gods may give,\n To ask no question, to make no prayer,\n To kiss the lips and caress the hair,\n Speed passion's ebb as we greet its flow,\n To have and to hold, and, in time--let go.\"\n\nAMORY: But we haven't had.\n\nROSALIND: Amory, I'm yours--you know it. There have been times in the\nlast month I'd have been completely yours if you'd said so. But I can't\nmarry you and ruin both our lives.\n\nAMORY: We've got to take our chance for happiness.\n\nROSALIND: Dawson says I'd learn to love him.\n\n(AMORY with his head sunk in his hands does not move. The life seems\nsuddenly gone out of him.)\n\nROSALIND: Lover! Lover! I can't do with you, and I can't imagine life\nwithout you.\n\nAMORY: Rosalind, we're on each other's nerves. It's just that we're both\nhigh-strung, and this week--\n\n(His voice is curiously old. She crosses to him and taking his face in\nher hands, kisses him.)\n\nROSALIND: I can't, Amory. I can't be shut away from the trees and\nflowers, cooped up in a little flat, waiting for you. You'd hate me in a\nnarrow atmosphere. I'd make you hate me.\n\n(Again she is blinded by sudden uncontrolled tears.)\n\nAMORY: Rosalind--\n\nROSALIND: Oh, darling, go--Don't make it harder! I can't stand it--\n\nAMORY: (His face drawn, his voice strained) Do you know what you're\nsaying? Do you mean forever?\n\n(There is a difference somehow in the quality of their suffering.)\n\nROSALIND: Can't you see--\n\nAMORY: I'm afraid I can't if you love me. You're afraid of taking two\nyears' knocks with me.\n\nROSALIND: I wouldn't be the Rosalind you love.\n\nAMORY: (A little hysterically) I can't give you up! I can't, that's all!\nI've got to have you!\n\nROSALIND: (A hard note in her voice) You're being a baby now.\n\nAMORY: (Wildly) I don't care! You're spoiling our lives!\n\nROSALIND: I'm doing the wise thing, the only thing.\n\nAMORY: Are you going to marry Dawson Ryder?\n\nROSALIND: Oh, don't ask me. You know I'm old in some ways--in\nothers--well, I'm just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty things\nand cheerfulness--and I dread responsibility. I don't want to think\nabout pots and kitchens and brooms. I want to worry whether my legs will\nget slick and brown when I swim in the summer.\n\nAMORY: And you love me.\n\nROSALIND: That's just why it has to end. Drifting hurts too much. We\ncan't have any more scenes like this.\n\n(She draws his ring from her finger and hands it to him. Their eyes\nblind again with tears.)\n\nAMORY: (His lips against her wet cheek) Don't! Keep it, please--oh,\ndon't break my heart!\n\n(She presses the ring softly into his hand.)\n\nROSALIND: (Brokenly) You'd better go.\n\nAMORY: Good-by--\n\n(She looks at him once more, with infinite longing, infinite sadness.)\n\nROSALIND: Don't ever forget me, Amory--\n\nAMORY: Good-by--\n\n(He goes to the door, fumbles for the knob, finds it--she sees him throw\nback his head--and he is gone. Gone--she half starts from the lounge and\nthen sinks forward on her face into the pillows.)\n\nROSALIND: Oh, God, I want to die! (After a moment she rises and with\nher eyes closed feels her way to the door. Then she turns and looks once\nmore at the room. Here they had sat and dreamed: that tray she had so\noften filled with matches for him; that shade that they had discreetly\nlowered one long Sunday afternoon. Misty-eyed she stands and remembers;\nshe speaks aloud.) Oh, Amory, what have I done to you?\n\n(And deep under the aching sadness that will pass in time, Rosalind\nfeels that she has lost something, she knows not what, she knows not\nwhy.)\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 2. Experiments in Convalescence\n\n\nThe Knickerbocker Bar, beamed upon by Maxfield Parrish's jovial,\ncolorful \"Old King Cole,\" was well crowded. Amory stopped in the\nentrance and looked at his wrist-watch; he wanted particularly to know\nthe time, for something in his mind that catalogued and classified liked\nto chip things off cleanly. Later it would satisfy him in a vague way to\nbe able to think \"that thing ended at exactly twenty minutes after eight\non Thursday, June 10, 1919.\" This was allowing for the walk from\nher house--a walk concerning which he had afterward not the faintest\nrecollection.\n\nHe was in rather grotesque condition: two days of worry and nervousness,\nof sleepless nights, of untouched meals, culminating in the emotional\ncrisis and Rosalind's abrupt decision--the strain of it had drugged the\nforeground of his mind into a merciful coma. As he fumbled clumsily with\nthe olives at the free-lunch table, a man approached and spoke to him,\nand the olives dropped from his nervous hands.\n\n\"Well, Amory...\"\n\nIt was some one he had known at Princeton; he had no idea of the name.\n\n\"Hello, old boy--\" he heard himself saying.\n\n\"Name's Jim Wilson--you've forgotten.\"\n\n\"Sure, you bet, Jim. I remember.\"\n\n\"Going to reunion?\"\n\n\"You know!\" Simultaneously he realized that he was not going to reunion.\n\n\"Get overseas?\"\n\nAmory nodded, his eyes staring oddly. Stepping back to let some one\npass, he knocked the dish of olives to a crash on the floor.\n\n\"Too bad,\" he muttered. \"Have a drink?\"\n\nWilson, ponderously diplomatic, reached over and slapped him on the\nback.\n\n\"You've had plenty, old boy.\"\n\nAmory eyed him dumbly until Wilson grew embarrassed under the scrutiny.\n\n\"Plenty, hell!\" said Amory finally. \"I haven't had a drink to-day.\"\n\nWilson looked incredulous.\n\n\"Have a drink or not?\" cried Amory rudely.\n\nTogether they sought the bar.\n\n\"Rye high.\"\n\n\"I'll just take a Bronx.\"\n\nWilson had another; Amory had several more. They decided to sit down.\nAt ten o'clock Wilson was displaced by Carling, class of '15. Amory, his\nhead spinning gorgeously, layer upon layer of soft satisfaction setting\nover the bruised spots of his spirit, was discoursing volubly on the\nwar.\n\n\"'S a mental was'e,\" he insisted with owl-like wisdom. \"Two years my\nlife spent inalleshual vacuity. Los' idealism, got be physcal anmal,\"\nhe shook his fist expressively at Old King Cole, \"got be Prussian 'bout\nev'thing, women 'specially. Use' be straight 'bout women college. Now\ndon'givadam.\" He expressed his lack of principle by sweeping a seltzer\nbottle with a broad gesture to noisy extinction on the floor, but this\ndid not interrupt his speech. \"Seek pleasure where find it for to-morrow\ndie. 'At's philos'phy for me now on.\"\n\nCarling yawned, but Amory, waxing brilliant, continued:\n\n\"Use' wonder 'bout things--people satisfied compromise, fif'y-fif'y\natt'tude on life. Now don' wonder, don' wonder--\" He became so emphatic\nin impressing on Carling the fact that he didn't wonder that he lost the\nthread of his discourse and concluded by announcing to the bar at large\nthat he was a \"physcal anmal.\"\n\n\"What are you celebrating, Amory?\"\n\nAmory leaned forward confidentially.\n\n\"Cel'brating blowmylife. Great moment blow my life. Can't tell you 'bout\nit--\"\n\nHe heard Carling addressing a remark to the bartender:\n\n\"Give him a bromo-seltzer.\"\n\nAmory shook his head indignantly.\n\n\"None that stuff!\"\n\n\"But listen, Amory, you're making yourself sick. You're white as a\nghost.\"\n\nAmory considered the question. He tried to look at himself in the mirror\nbut even by squinting up one eye could only see as far as the row of\nbottles behind the bar.\n\n\"Like som'n solid. We go get some--some salad.\"\n\nHe settled his coat with an attempt at nonchalance, but letting go of\nthe bar was too much for him, and he slumped against a chair.\n\n\"We'll go over to Shanley's,\" suggested Carling, offering an elbow.\n\nWith this assistance Amory managed to get his legs in motion enough to\npropel him across Forty-second Street.\n\nShanley's was very dim. He was conscious that he was talking in a loud\nvoice, very succinctly and convincingly, he thought, about a desire\nto crush people under his heel. He consumed three club sandwiches,\ndevouring each as though it were no larger than a chocolate-drop.\nThen Rosalind began popping into his mind again, and he found his lips\nforming her name over and over. Next he was sleepy, and he had a hazy,\nlistless sense of people in dress suits, probably waiters, gathering\naround the table....\n\n... He was in a room and Carling was saying something about a knot in\nhis shoe-lace.\n\n\"Nemmine,\" he managed to articulate drowsily. \"Sleep in 'em....\"\n\n *****\n\nSTILL ALCOHOLIC\n\nHe awoke laughing and his eyes lazily roamed his surroundings, evidently\na bedroom and bath in a good hotel. His head was whirring and picture\nafter picture was forming and blurring and melting before his eyes, but\nbeyond the desire to laugh he had no entirely conscious reaction. He\nreached for the 'phone beside his bed.\n\n\"Hello--what hotel is this--?\n\n\"Knickerbocker? All right, send up two rye high-balls--\"\n\nHe lay for a moment and wondered idly whether they'd send up a bottle\nor just two of those little glass containers. Then, with an effort, he\nstruggled out of bed and ambled into the bathroom.\n\nWhen he emerged, rubbing himself lazily with a towel, he found the bar\nboy with the drinks and had a sudden desire to kid him. On reflection he\ndecided that this would be undignified, so he waved him away.\n\nAs the new alcohol tumbled into his stomach and warmed him, the isolated\npictures began slowly to form a cinema reel of the day before. Again he\nsaw Rosalind curled weeping among the pillows, again he felt her tears\nagainst his cheek. Her words began ringing in his ears: \"Don't ever\nforget me, Amory--don't ever forget me--\"\n\n\"Hell!\" he faltered aloud, and then he choked and collapsed on the\nbed in a shaken spasm of grief. After a minute he opened his eyes and\nregarded the ceiling.\n\n\"Damned fool!\" he exclaimed in disgust, and with a voluminous sigh rose\nand approached the bottle. After another glass he gave way loosely\nto the luxury of tears. Purposely he called up into his mind little\nincidents of the vanished spring, phrased to himself emotions that would\nmake him react even more strongly to sorrow.\n\n\"We were so happy,\" he intoned dramatically, \"so very happy.\" Then he\ngave way again and knelt beside the bed, his head half-buried in the\npillow.\n\n\"My own girl--my own--Oh--\"\n\nHe clinched his teeth so that the tears streamed in a flood from his\neyes.\n\n\"Oh... my baby girl, all I had, all I wanted!... Oh, my girl, come back,\ncome back! I need you... need you... we're so pitiful ... just misery we\nbrought each other.... She'll be shut away from me.... I can't see her;\nI can't be her friend. It's got to be that way--it's got to be--\"\n\nAnd then again:\n\n\"We've been so happy, so very happy....\"\n\nHe rose to his feet and threw himself on the bed in an ecstasy of\nsentiment, and then lay exhausted while he realized slowly that he had\nbeen very drunk the night before, and that his head was spinning again\nwildly. He laughed, rose, and crossed again to Lethe....\n\nAt noon he ran into a crowd in the Biltmore bar, and the riot began\nagain. He had a vague recollection afterward of discussing French poetry\nwith a British officer who was introduced to him as \"Captain Corn, of\nhis Majesty's Foot,\" and he remembered attempting to recite \"Clair de\nLune\" at luncheon; then he slept in a big, soft chair until almost\nfive o'clock when another crowd found and woke him; there followed an\nalcoholic dressing of several temperaments for the ordeal of dinner.\nThey selected theatre tickets at Tyson's for a play that had a\nfour-drink programme--a play with two monotonous voices, with turbid,\ngloomy scenes, and lighting effects that were hard to follow when his\neyes behaved so amazingly. He imagined afterward that it must have been\n\"The Jest.\"...\n\n... Then the Cocoanut Grove, where Amory slept again on a little balcony\noutside. Out in Shanley's, Yonkers, he became almost logical, and by a\ncareful control of the number of high-balls he drank, grew quite lucid\nand garrulous. He found that the party consisted of five men, two of\nwhom he knew slightly; he became righteous about paying his share of the\nexpense and insisted in a loud voice on arranging everything then and\nthere to the amusement of the tables around him....\n\nSome one mentioned that a famous cabaret star was at the next table,\nso Amory rose and, approaching gallantly, introduced himself... this\ninvolved him in an argument, first with her escort and then with the\nheadwaiter--Amory's attitude being a lofty and exaggerated courtesy...\nhe consented, after being confronted with irrefutable logic, to being\nled back to his own table.\n\n\"Decided to commit suicide,\" he announced suddenly.\n\n\"When? Next year?\"\n\n\"Now. To-morrow morning. Going to take a room at the Commodore, get into\na hot bath and open a vein.\"\n\n\"He's getting morbid!\"\n\n\"You need another rye, old boy!\"\n\n\"We'll all talk it over to-morrow.\"\n\nBut Amory was not to be dissuaded, from argument at least.\n\n\"Did you ever get that way?\" he demanded confidentially fortaccio.\n\n\"Sure!\"\n\n\"Often?\"\n\n\"My chronic state.\"\n\nThis provoked discussion. One man said that he got so depressed\nsometimes that he seriously considered it. Another agreed that there was\nnothing to live for. \"Captain Corn,\" who had somehow rejoined the party,\nsaid that in his opinion it was when one's health was bad that one felt\nthat way most. Amory's suggestion was that they should each order a\nBronx, mix broken glass in it, and drink it off. To his relief no one\napplauded the idea, so having finished his high-ball, he balanced his\nchin in his hand and his elbow on the table--a most delicate, scarcely\nnoticeable sleeping position, he assured himself--and went into a deep\nstupor....\n\nHe was awakened by a woman clinging to him, a pretty woman, with brown,\ndisarranged hair and dark blue eyes.\n\n\"Take me home!\" she cried.\n\n\"Hello!\" said Amory, blinking.\n\n\"I like you,\" she announced tenderly.\n\n\"I like you too.\"\n\nHe noticed that there was a noisy man in the background and that one of\nhis party was arguing with him.\n\n\"Fella I was with's a damn fool,\" confided the blue-eyed woman. \"I hate\nhim. I want to go home with you.\"\n\n\"You drunk?\" queried Amory with intense wisdom.\n\nShe nodded coyly.\n\n\"Go home with him,\" he advised gravely. \"He brought you.\"\n\nAt this point the noisy man in the background broke away from his\ndetainers and approached.\n\n\"Say!\" he said fiercely. \"I brought this girl out here and you're\nbutting in!\"\n\nAmory regarded him coldly, while the girl clung to him closer.\n\n\"You let go that girl!\" cried the noisy man.\n\nAmory tried to make his eyes threatening.\n\n\"You go to hell!\" he directed finally, and turned his attention to the\ngirl.\n\n\"Love first sight,\" he suggested.\n\n\"I love you,\" she breathed and nestled close to him. She _did_ have\nbeautiful eyes.\n\nSome one leaned over and spoke in Amory's ear.\n\n\"That's just Margaret Diamond. She's drunk and this fellow here brought\nher. Better let her go.\"\n\n\"Let him take care of her, then!\" shouted Amory furiously. \"I'm no W. Y.\nC. A. worker, am I?--am I?\"\n\n\"Let her go!\"\n\n\"It's _her_ hanging on, damn it! Let her hang!\"\n\nThe crowd around the table thickened. For an instant a brawl threatened,\nbut a sleek waiter bent back Margaret Diamond's fingers until she\nreleased her hold on Amory, whereupon she slapped the waiter furiously\nin the face and flung her arms about her raging original escort.\n\n\"Oh, Lord!\" cried Amory.\n\n\"Let's go!\"\n\n\"Come on, the taxis are getting scarce!\"\n\n\"Check, waiter.\"\n\n\"C'mon, Amory. Your romance is over.\"\n\nAmory laughed.\n\n\"You don't know how true you spoke. No idea. 'At's the whole trouble.\"\n\n *****\n\nAMORY ON THE LABOR QUESTION\n\nTwo mornings later he knocked at the president's door at Bascome and\nBarlow's advertising agency.\n\n\"Come in!\"\n\nAmory entered unsteadily.\n\n\"'Morning, Mr. Barlow.\"\n\nMr. Barlow brought his glasses to the inspection and set his mouth\nslightly ajar that he might better listen.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Blaine. We haven't seen you for several days.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Amory. \"I'm quitting.\"\n\n\"Well--well--this is--\"\n\n\"I don't like it here.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. I thought our relations had been quite--ah--pleasant. You\nseemed to be a hard worker--a little inclined perhaps to write fancy\ncopy--\"\n\n\"I just got tired of it,\" interrupted Amory rudely. \"It didn't matter a\ndamn to me whether Harebell's flour was any better than any one else's.\nIn fact, I never ate any of it. So I got tired of telling people about\nit--oh, I know I've been drinking--\"\n\nMr. Barlow's face steeled by several ingots of expression.\n\n\"You asked for a position--\"\n\nAmory waved him to silence.\n\n\"And I think I was rottenly underpaid. Thirty-five dollars a week--less\nthan a good carpenter.\"\n\n\"You had just started. You'd never worked before,\" said Mr. Barlow\ncoolly.\n\n\"But it took about ten thousand dollars to educate me where I could\nwrite your darned stuff for you. Anyway, as far as length of service\ngoes, you've got stenographers here you've paid fifteen a week for five\nyears.\"\n\n\"I'm not going to argue with you, sir,\" said Mr. Barlow rising.\n\n\"Neither am I. I just wanted to tell you I'm quitting.\"\n\nThey stood for a moment looking at each other impassively and then Amory\nturned and left the office.\n\n *****\n\nA LITTLE LULL\n\nFour days after that he returned at last to the apartment. Tom was\nengaged on a book review for The New Democracy on the staff of which he\nwas employed. They regarded each other for a moment in silence.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Good Lord, Amory, where'd you get the black eye--and the jaw?\"\n\nAmory laughed.\n\n\"That's a mere nothing.\"\n\nHe peeled off his coat and bared his shoulders.\n\n\"Look here!\"\n\nTom emitted a low whistle.\n\n\"What hit you?\"\n\nAmory laughed again.\n\n\"Oh, a lot of people. I got beaten up. Fact.\" He slowly replaced his\nshirt. \"It was bound to come sooner or later and I wouldn't have missed\nit for anything.\"\n\n\"Who was it?\"\n\n\"Well, there were some waiters and a couple of sailors and a few stray\npedestrians, I guess. It's the strangest feeling. You ought to get\nbeaten up just for the experience of it. You fall down after a while and\neverybody sort of slashes in at you before you hit the ground--then they\nkick you.\"\n\nTom lighted a cigarette.\n\n\"I spent a day chasing you all over town, Amory. But you always kept a\nlittle ahead of me. I'd say you've been on some party.\"\n\nAmory tumbled into a chair and asked for a cigarette.\n\n\"You sober now?\" asked Tom quizzically.\n\n\"Pretty sober. Why?\"\n\n\"Well, Alec has left. His family had been after him to go home and live,\nso he--\"\n\nA spasm of pain shook Amory.\n\n\"Too bad.\"\n\n\"Yes, it is too bad. We'll have to get some one else if we're going to\nstay here. The rent's going up.\"\n\n\"Sure. Get anybody. I'll leave it to you, Tom.\"\n\nAmory walked into his bedroom. The first thing that met his glance was\na photograph of Rosalind that he had intended to have framed, propped\nup against a mirror on his dresser. He looked at it unmoved. After\nthe vivid mental pictures of her that were his portion at present, the\nportrait was curiously unreal. He went back into the study.\n\n\"Got a cardboard box?\"\n\n\"No,\" answered Tom, puzzled. \"Why should I have? Oh, yes--there may be\none in Alec's room.\"\n\nEventually Amory found what he was looking for and, returning to his\ndresser, opened a drawer full of letters, notes, part of a chain,\ntwo little handkerchiefs, and some snap-shots. As he transferred them\ncarefully to the box his mind wandered to some place in a book where\nthe hero, after preserving for a year a cake of his lost love's soap,\nfinally washed his hands with it. He laughed and began to hum \"After\nyou've gone\" ... ceased abruptly...\n\nThe string broke twice, and then he managed to secure it, dropped\nthe package into the bottom of his trunk, and having slammed the lid\nreturned to the study.\n\n\"Going out?\" Tom's voice held an undertone of anxiety.\n\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Couldn't say, old keed.\"\n\n\"Let's have dinner together.\"\n\n\"Sorry. I told Sukey Brett I'd eat with him.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"By-by.\"\n\nAmory crossed the street and had a high-ball; then he walked to\nWashington Square and found a top seat on a bus. He disembarked at\nForty-third Street and strolled to the Biltmore bar.\n\n\"Hi, Amory!\"\n\n\"What'll you have?\"\n\n\"Yo-ho! Waiter!\"\n\n *****\n\nTEMPERATURE NORMAL\n\nThe advent of prohibition with the \"thirsty-first\" put a sudden stop to\nthe submerging of Amory's sorrows, and when he awoke one morning to find\nthat the old bar-to-bar days were over, he had neither remorse for the\npast three weeks nor regret that their repetition was impossible. He had\ntaken the most violent, if the weakest, method to shield himself\nfrom the stabs of memory, and while it was not a course he would\nhave prescribed for others, he found in the end that it had done its\nbusiness: he was over the first flush of pain.\n\nDon't misunderstand! Amory had loved Rosalind as he would never love\nanother living person. She had taken the first flush of his youth and\nbrought from his unplumbed depths tenderness that had surprised\nhim, gentleness and unselfishness that he had never given to another\ncreature. He had later love-affairs, but of a different sort: in those\nhe went back to that, perhaps, more typical frame of mind, in which the\ngirl became the mirror of a mood in him. Rosalind had drawn out what was\nmore than passionate admiration; he had a deep, undying affection for\nRosalind.\n\nBut there had been, near the end, so much dramatic tragedy, culminating\nin the arabesque nightmare of his three weeks' spree, that he was\nemotionally worn out. The people and surroundings that he remembered as\nbeing cool or delicately artificial, seemed to promise him a refuge. He\nwrote a cynical story which featured his father's funeral and despatched\nit to a magazine, receiving in return a check for sixty dollars and a\nrequest for more of the same tone. This tickled his vanity, but inspired\nhim to no further effort.\n\nHe read enormously. He was puzzled and depressed by \"A Portrait of the\nArtist as a Young Man\"; intensely interested by \"Joan and Peter\" and\n\"The Undying Fire,\" and rather surprised by his discovery through a\ncritic named Mencken of several excellent American novels: \"Vandover\nand the Brute,\" \"The Damnation of Theron Ware,\" and \"Jennie Gerhardt.\"\nMackenzie, Chesterton, Galsworthy, Bennett, had sunk in his\nappreciation from sagacious, life-saturated geniuses to merely diverting\ncontemporaries. Shaw's aloof clarity and brilliant consistency and the\ngloriously intoxicated efforts of H. G. Wells to fit the key of romantic\nsymmetry into the elusive lock of truth, alone won his rapt attention.\n\nHe wanted to see Monsignor Darcy, to whom he had written when he landed,\nbut he had not heard from him; besides he knew that a visit to Monsignor\nwould entail the story of Rosalind, and the thought of repeating it\nturned him cold with horror.\n\nIn his search for cool people he remembered Mrs. Lawrence, a very\nintelligent, very dignified lady, a convert to the church, and a great\ndevotee of Monsignor's.\n\nHe called her on the 'phone one day. Yes, she remembered him perfectly;\nno, Monsignor wasn't in town, was in Boston she thought; he'd promised\nto come to dinner when he returned. Couldn't Amory take luncheon with\nher?\n\n\"I thought I'd better catch up, Mrs. Lawrence,\" he said rather\nambiguously when he arrived.\n\n\"Monsignor was here just last week,\" said Mrs. Lawrence regretfully. \"He\nwas very anxious to see you, but he'd left your address at home.\"\n\n\"Did he think I'd plunged into Bolshevism?\" asked Amory, interested.\n\n\"Oh, he's having a frightful time.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"About the Irish Republic. He thinks it lacks dignity.\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"He went to Boston when the Irish President arrived and he was greatly\ndistressed because the receiving committee, when they rode in an\nautomobile, _would_ put their arms around the President.\"\n\n\"I don't blame him.\"\n\n\"Well, what impressed you more than anything while you were in the army?\nYou look a great deal older.\"\n\n\"That's from another, more disastrous battle,\" he answered, smiling in\nspite of himself. \"But the army--let me see--well, I discovered that\nphysical courage depends to a great extent on the physical shape a man\nis in. I found that I was as brave as the next man--it used to worry me\nbefore.\"\n\n\"What else?\"\n\n\"Well, the idea that men can stand anything if they get used to it, and\nthe fact that I got a high mark in the psychological examination.\"\n\nMrs. Lawrence laughed. Amory was finding it a great relief to be in this\ncool house on Riverside Drive, away from more condensed New York and\nthe sense of people expelling great quantities of breath into a\nlittle space. Mrs. Lawrence reminded him vaguely of Beatrice, not\nin temperament, but in her perfect grace and dignity. The house, its\nfurnishings, the manner in which dinner was served, were in immense\ncontrast to what he had met in the great places on Long Island, where\nthe servants were so obtrusive that they had positively to be bumped\nout of the way, or even in the houses of more conservative \"Union Club\"\nfamilies. He wondered if this air of symmetrical restraint, this grace,\nwhich he felt was continental, was distilled through Mrs. Lawrence's New\nEngland ancestry or acquired in long residence in Italy and Spain.\n\nTwo glasses of sauterne at luncheon loosened his tongue, and he talked,\nwith what he felt was something of his old charm, of religion and\nliterature and the menacing phenomena of the social order. Mrs. Lawrence\nwas ostensibly pleased with him, and her interest was especially in his\nmind; he wanted people to like his mind again--after a while it might be\nsuch a nice place in which to live.\n\n\"Monsignor Darcy still thinks that you're his reincarnation, that your\nfaith will eventually clarify.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" he assented. \"I'm rather pagan at present. It's just that\nreligion doesn't seem to have the slightest bearing on life at my age.\"\n\nWhen he left her house he walked down Riverside Drive with a feeling\nof satisfaction. It was amusing to discuss again such subjects as this\nyoung poet, Stephen Vincent Benet, or the Irish Republic. Between\nthe rancid accusations of Edward Carson and Justice Cohalan he had\ncompletely tired of the Irish question; yet there had been a time when\nhis own Celtic traits were pillars of his personal philosophy.\n\nThere seemed suddenly to be much left in life, if only this revival\nof old interests did not mean that he was backing away from it\nagain--backing away from life itself.\n\n *****\n\nRESTLESSNESS\n\n\"I'm tres old and tres bored, Tom,\" said Amory one day, stretching\nhimself at ease in the comfortable window-seat. He always felt most\nnatural in a recumbent position.\n\n\"You used to be entertaining before you started to write,\" he continued.\n\"Now you save any idea that you think would do to print.\"\n\nExistence had settled back to an ambitionless normality. They had\ndecided that with economy they could still afford the apartment, which\nTom, with the domesticity of an elderly cat, had grown fond of. The old\nEnglish hunting prints on the wall were Tom's, and the large tapestry by\ncourtesy, a relic of decadent days in college, and the great profusion\nof orphaned candlesticks and the carved Louis XV chair in which no one\ncould sit more than a minute without acute spinal disorders--Tom\nclaimed that this was because one was sitting in the lap of Montespan's\nwraith--at any rate, it was Tom's furniture that decided them to stay.\n\nThey went out very little: to an occasional play, or to dinner at the\nRitz or the Princeton Club. With prohibition the great rendezvous had\nreceived their death wounds; no longer could one wander to the Biltmore\nbar at twelve or five and find congenial spirits, and both Tom and Amory\nhad outgrown the passion for dancing with mid-Western or New Jersey\ndebbies at the Club-de-Vingt (surnamed the \"Club de Gink\") or the Plaza\nRose Room--besides even that required several cocktails \"to come down to\nthe intellectual level of the women present,\" as Amory had once put it\nto a horrified matron.\n\nAmory had lately received several alarming letters from Mr. Barton--the\nLake Geneva house was too large to be easily rented; the best rent\nobtainable at present would serve this year to little more than pay for\nthe taxes and necessary improvements; in fact, the lawyer suggested\nthat the whole property was simply a white elephant on Amory's hands.\nNevertheless, even though it might not yield a cent for the next three\nyears, Amory decided with a vague sentimentality that for the present,\nat any rate, he would not sell the house.\n\nThis particular day on which he announced his ennui to Tom had been\nquite typical. He had risen at noon, lunched with Mrs. Lawrence, and\nthen ridden abstractedly homeward atop one of his beloved buses.\n\n\"Why shouldn't you be bored,\" yawned Tom. \"Isn't that the conventional\nframe of mind for the young man of your age and condition?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Amory speculatively, \"but I'm more than bored; I am\nrestless.\"\n\n\"Love and war did for you.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Amory considered, \"I'm not sure that the war itself had any\ngreat effect on either you or me--but it certainly ruined the old\nbackgrounds, sort of killed individualism out of our generation.\"\n\nTom looked up in surprise.\n\n\"Yes it did,\" insisted Amory. \"I'm not sure it didn't kill it out of the\nwhole world. Oh, Lord, what a pleasure it used to be to dream I might be\na really great dictator or writer or religious or political leader--and\nnow even a Leonardo da Vinci or Lorenzo de Medici couldn't be a real\nold-fashioned bolt in the world. Life is too huge and complex. The world\nis so overgrown that it can't lift its own fingers, and I was planning\nto be such an important finger--\"\n\n\"I don't agree with you,\" Tom interrupted. \"There never were men placed\nin such egotistic positions since--oh, since the French Revolution.\"\n\nAmory disagreed violently.\n\n\"You're mistaking this period when every nut is an individualist for\na period of individualism. Wilson has only been powerful when he has\nrepresented; he's had to compromise over and over again. Just as soon\nas Trotsky and Lenin take a definite, consistent stand they'll become\nmerely two-minute figures like Kerensky. Even Foch hasn't half\nthe significance of Stonewall Jackson. War used to be the most\nindividualistic pursuit of man, and yet the popular heroes of the war\nhad neither authority nor responsibility: Guynemer and Sergeant York.\nHow could a schoolboy make a hero of Pershing? A big man has no time\nreally to do anything but just sit and be big.\"\n\n\"Then you don't think there will be any more permanent world heroes?\"\n\n\"Yes--in history--not in life. Carlyle would have difficulty getting\nmaterial for a new chapter on 'The Hero as a Big Man.'\"\n\n\"Go on. I'm a good listener to-day.\"\n\n\"People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we\nno sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or\nphilosopher--a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than\nthe cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand\nprominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get\nsick of hearing the same name over and over.\"\n\n\"Then you blame it on the press?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. Look at you; you're on The New Democracy, considered the\nmost brilliant weekly in the country, read by the men who do things and\nall that. What's your business? Why, to be as clever, as interesting,\nand as brilliantly cynical as possible about every man, doctrine, book,\nor policy that is assigned you to deal with. The more strong lights, the\nmore spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money they\npay you, the more the people buy the issue. You, Tom d'Invilliers, a\nblighted Shelley, changing, shifting, clever, unscrupulous, represent\nthe critical consciousness of the race--Oh, don't protest, I know the\nstuff. I used to write book reviews in college; I considered it rare\nsport to refer to the latest honest, conscientious effort to propound a\ntheory or a remedy as a 'welcome addition to our light summer reading.'\nCome on now, admit it.\"\n\nTom laughed, and Amory continued triumphantly.\n\n\"We _want_ to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors,\nconstituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to\nbelieve in their statesmen, but they _can't_. Too many voices, too much\nscattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case\nof newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly\ngrasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can\nown a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of\ntired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to\nswallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys\nhis politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new\npolitical ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more\nconfusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their\ntempering, their distillation, the reaction against them--\"\n\nHe paused only to get his breath.\n\n\"And that is why I have sworn not to put pen to paper until my ideas\neither clarify or depart entirely; I have quite enough sins on my soul\nwithout putting dangerous, shallow epigrams into people's heads; I might\ncause a poor, inoffensive capitalist to have a vulgar liaison with\na bomb, or get some innocent little Bolshevik tangled up with a\nmachine-gun bullet--\"\n\nTom was growing restless under this lampooning of his connection with\nThe New Democracy.\n\n\"What's all this got to do with your being bored?\"\n\nAmory considered that it had much to do with it.\n\n\"How'll I fit in?\" he demanded. \"What am I for? To propagate the race?\nAccording to the American novels we are led to believe that the 'healthy\nAmerican boy' from nineteen to twenty-five is an entirely sexless\nanimal. As a matter of fact, the healthier he is the less that's true.\nThe only alternative to letting it get you is some violent interest.\nWell, the war is over; I believe too much in the responsibilities of\nauthorship to write just now; and business, well, business speaks for\nitself. It has no connection with anything in the world that I've\never been interested in, except a slim, utilitarian connection with\neconomics. What I'd see of it, lost in a clerkship, for the next and\nbest ten years of my life would have the intellectual content of an\nindustrial movie.\"\n\n\"Try fiction,\" suggested Tom.\n\n\"Trouble is I get distracted when I start to write stories--get afraid\nI'm doing it instead of living--get thinking maybe life is waiting for\nme in the Japanese gardens at the Ritz or at Atlantic City or on the\nlower East Side.\n\n\"Anyway,\" he continued, \"I haven't the vital urge. I wanted to be a\nregular human being but the girl couldn't see it that way.\"\n\n\"You'll find another.\"\n\n\"God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had\nbeen worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really\nworth having won't wait for anybody. If I thought there'd be another I'd\nlose my remaining faith in human nature. Maybe I'll play--but Rosalind\nwas the only girl in the wide world that could have held me.\"\n\n\"Well,\" yawned Tom, \"I've played confidant a good hour by the clock.\nStill, I'm glad to see you're beginning to have violent views again on\nsomething.\"\n\n\"I am,\" agreed Amory reluctantly. \"Yet when I see a happy family it\nmakes me sick at my stomach--\"\n\n\"Happy families try to make people feel that way,\" said Tom cynically.\n\n *****\n\nTOM THE CENSOR\n\nThere were days when Amory listened. These were when Tom, wreathed in\nsmoke, indulged in the slaughter of American literature. Words failed\nhim.\n\n\"Fifty thousand dollars a year,\" he would cry. \"My God! Look at them,\nlook at them--Edna Ferber, Gouverneur Morris, Fanny Hurst, Mary Roberts\nRinehart--not producing among 'em one story or novel that will last ten\nyears. This man Cobb--I don't tink he's either clever or amusing--and\nwhat's more, I don't think very many people do, except the editors. He's\njust groggy with advertising. And--oh Harold Bell Wright oh Zane Grey--\"\n\n\"They try.\"\n\n\"No, they don't even try. Some of them _can_ write, but they won't sit\ndown and do one honest novel. Most of them _can't_ write, I'll admit.\nI believe Rupert Hughes tries to give a real, comprehensive picture of\nAmerican life, but his style and perspective are barbarous. Ernest Poole\nand Dorothy Canfield try but they're hindered by their absolute lack\nof any sense of humor; but at least they crowd their work instead of\nspreading it thin. Every author ought to write every book as if he were\ngoing to be beheaded the day he finished it.\"\n\n\"Is that double entente?\"\n\n\"Don't slow me up! Now there's a few of 'em that seem to have some\ncultural background, some intelligence and a good deal of literary\nfelicity but they just simply won't write honestly; they'd all claim\nthere was no public for good stuff. Then why the devil is it that Wells,\nConrad, Galsworthy, Shaw, Bennett, and the rest depend on America for\nover half their sales?\"\n\n\"How does little Tommy like the poets?\"\n\nTom was overcome. He dropped his arms until they swung loosely beside\nthe chair and emitted faint grunts.\n\n\"I'm writing a satire on 'em now, calling it 'Boston Bards and Hearst\nReviewers.'\"\n\n\"Let's hear it,\" said Amory eagerly.\n\n\"I've only got the last few lines done.\"\n\n\"That's very modern. Let's hear 'em, if they're funny.\"\n\nTom produced a folded paper from his pocket and read aloud, pausing at\nintervals so that Amory could see that it was free verse:\n\n \"So\n Walter Arensberg,\n Alfred Kreymborg,\n Carl Sandburg,\n Louis Untermeyer,\n Eunice Tietjens,\n Clara Shanafelt,\n James Oppenheim,\n Maxwell Bodenheim,\n Richard Glaenzer,\n Scharmel Iris,\n Conrad Aiken,\n I place your names here\n So that you may live\n If only as names,\n Sinuous, mauve-colored names,\n In the Juvenalia\n Of my collected editions.\"\n\n\nAmory roared.\n\n\"You win the iron pansy. I'll buy you a meal on the arrogance of the\nlast two lines.\"\n\nAmory did not entirely agree with Tom's sweeping damnation of\nAmerican novelists and poets. He enjoyed both Vachel Lindsay and Booth\nTarkington, and admired the conscientious, if slender, artistry of Edgar\nLee Masters.\n\n\"What I hate is this idiotic drivel about 'I am God--I am man--I ride\nthe winds--I look through the smoke--I am the life sense.'\"\n\n\"It's ghastly!\"\n\n\"And I wish American novelists would give up trying to make business\nromantically interesting. Nobody wants to read about it, unless it's\ncrooked business. If it was an entertaining subject they'd buy the life\nof James J. Hill and not one of these long office tragedies that harp\nalong on the significance of smoke--\"\n\n\"And gloom,\" said Tom. \"That's another favorite, though I'll admit the\nRussians have the monopoly. Our specialty is stories about little girls\nwho break their spines and get adopted by grouchy old men because they\nsmile so much. You'd think we were a race of cheerful cripples and that\nthe common end of the Russian peasant was suicide--\"\n\n\"Six o'clock,\" said Amory, glancing at his wrist-watch. \"I'll buy you\na grea' big dinner on the strength of the Juvenalia of your collected\neditions.\"\n\n *****\n\nLOOKING BACKWARD\n\nJuly sweltered out with a last hot week, and Amory in another surge of\nunrest realized that it was just five months since he and Rosalind had\nmet. Yet it was already hard for him to visualize the heart-whole boy\nwho had stepped off the transport, passionately desiring the adventure\nof life. One night while the heat, overpowering and enervating, poured\ninto the windows of his room he struggled for several hours in a vague\neffort to immortalize the poignancy of that time.\n\n The February streets, wind-washed by night, blow full of strange\n half-intermittent damps, bearing on wasted walks in shining sight\n wet snow plashed into gleams under the lamps, like golden oil\n from some divine machine, in an hour of thaw and stars.\n\n Strange damps--full of the eyes of many men, crowded with life\n borne in upon a lull.... Oh, I was young, for I could turn\n again to you, most finite and most beautiful, and taste the stuff\n of half-remembered dreams, sweet and new on your mouth.\n\n ... There was a tanging in the midnight air--silence was dead and\n sound not yet awoken--Life cracked like ice!--one brilliant note\n and there, radiant and pale, you stood... and spring had broken.\n (The icicles were short upon the roofs and the changeling city\n swooned.)\n\n Our thoughts were frosty mist along the eaves; our two ghosts\n kissed, high on the long, mazed wires--eerie half-laughter echoes\n here and leaves only a fatuous sigh for young desires; regret has\n followed after things she loved, leaving the great husk.\n\n *****\n\nANOTHER ENDING\n\nIn mid-August came a letter from Monsignor Darcy, who had evidently just\nstumbled on his address:\n\n\nMY DEAR BOY:--\n\nYour last letter was quite enough to make me worry about you. It was\nnot a bit like yourself. Reading between the lines I should imagine that\nyour engagement to this girl is making you rather unhappy, and I see you\nhave lost all the feeling of romance that you had before the war. You\nmake a great mistake if you think you can be romantic without religion.\nSometimes I think that with both of us the secret of success, when we\nfind it, is the mystical element in us: something flows into us that\nenlarges our personalities, and when it ebbs out our personalities\nshrink; I should call your last two letters rather shrivelled. Beware of\nlosing yourself in the personality of another being, man or woman.\n\nHis Eminence Cardinal O'Neill and the Bishop of Boston are staying with\nme at present, so it is hard for me to get a moment to write, but I wish\nyou would come up here later if only for a week-end. I go to Washington\nthis week.\n\nWhat I shall do in the future is hanging in the balance. Absolutely\nbetween ourselves I should not be surprised to see the red hat of a\ncardinal descend upon my unworthy head within the next eight months. In\nany event, I should like to have a house in New York or Washington where\nyou could drop in for week-ends.\n\nAmory, I'm very glad we're both alive; this war could easily have been\nthe end of a brilliant family. But in regard to matrimony, you are now\nat the most dangerous period of your life. You might marry in haste and\nrepent at leisure, but I think you won't. From what you write me\nabout the present calamitous state of your finances, what you want is\nnaturally impossible. However, if I judge you by the means I usually\nchoose, I should say that there will be something of an emotional crisis\nwithin the next year.\n\nDo write me. I feel annoyingly out of date on you.\n\n With greatest affection,\n\n THAYER DARCY.\n\n\nWithin a week after the receipt of this letter their little household\nfell precipitously to pieces. The immediate cause was the serious and\nprobably chronic illness of Tom's mother. So they stored the furniture,\ngave instructions to sublet and shook hands gloomily in the Pennsylvania\nStation. Amory and Tom seemed always to be saying good-by.\n\nFeeling very much alone, Amory yielded to an impulse and set off\nsouthward, intending to join Monsignor in Washington. They missed\nconnections by two hours, and, deciding to spend a few days with an\nancient, remembered uncle, Amory journeyed up through the luxuriant\nfields of Maryland into Ramilly County. But instead of two days his stay\nlasted from mid-August nearly through September, for in Maryland he met\nEleanor.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 3. Young Irony\n\n\nFor years afterward when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still to\nhear the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills into the\nplaces beside his heart. The night when they rode up the slope and\nwatched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost a further part\nof him that nothing could restore; and when he lost it he lost also the\npower of regretting it. Eleanor was, say, the last time that evil crept\nclose to Amory under the mask of beauty, the last weird mystery that\nheld him with wild fascination and pounded his soul to flakes.\n\nWith her his imagination ran riot and that is why they rode to the\nhighest hill and watched an evil moon ride high, for they knew then that\nthey could see the devil in each other. But Eleanor--did Amory dream\nher? Afterward their ghosts played, yet both of them hoped from their\nsouls never to meet. Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes that drew\nhim or the mirror of himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of\nher mind? She will have no other adventure like Amory, and if she reads\nthis she will say:\n\n\"And Amory will have no other adventure like me.\"\n\nNor will she sigh, any more than he would sigh.\n\nEleanor tried to put it on paper once:\n\n \"The fading things we only know\n We'll have forgotten...\n Put away...\n Desires that melted with the snow,\n And dreams begotten\n This to-day:\n The sudden dawns we laughed to greet,\n That all could see, that none could share,\n Will be but dawns... and if we meet\n We shall not care.\n\n Dear... not one tear will rise for this...\n A little while hence\n No regret\n Will stir for a remembered kiss--\n Not even silence,\n When we've met,\n Will give old ghosts a waste to roam,\n Or stir the surface of the sea...\n If gray shapes drift beneath the foam\n We shall not see.\"\n\n\nThey quarrelled dangerously because Amory maintained that _sea_ and\n_see_ couldn't possibly be used as a rhyme. And then Eleanor had part of\nanother verse that she couldn't find a beginning for:\n\n \"... But wisdom passes... still the years\n Will feed us wisdom.... Age will go\n Back to the old--\n For all our tears\n We shall not know.\"\n\n\nEleanor hated Maryland passionately. She belonged to the oldest of the\nold families of Ramilly County and lived in a big, gloomy house with her\ngrandfather. She had been born and brought up in France.... I see I am\nstarting wrong. Let me begin again.\n\nAmory was bored, as he usually was in the country. He used to go for\nfar walks by himself--and wander along reciting \"Ulalume\" to the\ncorn-fields, and congratulating Poe for drinking himself to death in\nthat atmosphere of smiling complacency. One afternoon he had strolled\nfor several miles along a road that was new to him, and then through a\nwood on bad advice from a colored woman... losing himself entirely. A\npassing storm decided to break out, and to his great impatience the\nsky grew black as pitch and the rain began to splatter down through the\ntrees, become suddenly furtive and ghostly. Thunder rolled with menacing\ncrashes up the valley and scattered through the woods in intermittent\nbatteries. He stumbled blindly on, hunting for a way out, and finally,\nthrough webs of twisted branches, caught sight of a rift in the trees\nwhere the unbroken lightning showed open country. He rushed to the edge\nof the woods and then hesitated whether or not to cross the fields and\ntry to reach the shelter of the little house marked by a light far down\nthe valley. It was only half past five, but he could see scarcely ten\nsteps before him, except when the lightning made everything vivid and\ngrotesque for great sweeps around.\n\nSuddenly a strange sound fell on his ears. It was a song, in a low,\nhusky voice, a girl's voice, and whoever was singing was very close\nto him. A year before he might have laughed, or trembled; but in his\nrestless mood he only stood and listened while the words sank into his\nconsciousness:\n\n\n \"Les sanglots longs\n Des violons\n De l'automne\n Blessent mon coeur\n D'une langueur\n Monotone.\"\n\n\nThe lightning split the sky, but the song went on without a quaver. The\ngirl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed to come vaguely\nfrom a haystack about twenty feet in front of him.\n\nThen it ceased: ceased and began again in a weird chant that soared and\nhung and fell and blended with the rain:\n\n\n \"Tout suffocant\n Et bleme quand\n Sonne l'heure\n Je me souviens\n Des jours anciens\n Et je pleure....\"\n\n\n\"Who the devil is there in Ramilly County,\" muttered Amory aloud, \"who\nwould deliver Verlaine in an extemporaneous tune to a soaking haystack?\"\n\n\"Somebody's there!\" cried the voice unalarmed. \"Who are you?--Manfred,\nSt. Christopher, or Queen Victoria?\"\n\n\"I'm Don Juan!\" Amory shouted on impulse, raising his voice above the\nnoise of the rain and the wind.\n\nA delighted shriek came from the haystack.\n\n\"I know who you are--you're the blond boy that likes 'Ulalume'--I\nrecognize your voice.\"\n\n\"How do I get up?\" he cried from the foot of the haystack, whither he\nhad arrived, dripping wet. A head appeared over the edge--it was so dark\nthat Amory could just make out a patch of damp hair and two eyes that\ngleamed like a cat's.\n\n\"Run back!\" came the voice, \"and jump and I'll catch your hand--no, not\nthere--on the other side.\"\n\nHe followed directions and as he sprawled up the side, knee-deep in hay,\na small, white hand reached out, gripped his, and helped him onto the\ntop.\n\n\"Here you are, Juan,\" cried she of the damp hair. \"Do you mind if I drop\nthe Don?\"\n\n\"You've got a thumb like mine!\" he exclaimed.\n\n\"And you're holding my hand, which is dangerous without seeing my face.\"\nHe dropped it quickly.\n\nAs if in answer to his prayers came a flash of lightning and he looked\neagerly at her who stood beside him on the soggy haystack, ten feet\nabove the ground. But she had covered her face and he saw nothing but a\nslender figure, dark, damp, bobbed hair, and the small white hands with\nthe thumbs that bent back like his.\n\n\"Sit down,\" she suggested politely, as the dark closed in on them. \"If\nyou'll sit opposite me in this hollow you can have half of the raincoat,\nwhich I was using as a water-proof tent until you so rudely interrupted\nme.\"\n\n\"I was asked,\" Amory said joyfully; \"you asked me--you know you did.\"\n\n\"Don Juan always manages that,\" she said, laughing, \"but I shan't call\nyou that any more, because you've got reddish hair. Instead you can\nrecite 'Ulalume' and I'll be Psyche, your soul.\"\n\nAmory flushed, happily invisible under the curtain of wind and rain.\nThey were sitting opposite each other in a slight hollow in the hay with\nthe raincoat spread over most of them, and the rain doing for the rest.\nAmory was trying desperately to see Psyche, but the lightning refused to\nflash again, and he waited impatiently. Good Lord! supposing she wasn't\nbeautiful--supposing she was forty and pedantic--heavens! Suppose,\nonly suppose, she was mad. But he knew the last was unworthy. Here had\nProvidence sent a girl to amuse him just as it sent Benvenuto Cellini\nmen to murder, and he was wondering if she was mad, just because she\nexactly filled his mood.\n\n\"I'm not,\" she said.\n\n\"Not what?\"\n\n\"Not mad. I didn't think you were mad when I first saw you, so it isn't\nfair that you should think so of me.\"\n\n\"How on earth--\"\n\nAs long as they knew each other Eleanor and Amory could be \"on a\nsubject\" and stop talking with the definite thought of it in their\nheads, yet ten minutes later speak aloud and find that their minds had\nfollowed the same channels and led them each to a parallel idea, an idea\nthat others would have found absolutely unconnected with the first.\n\n\"Tell me,\" he demanded, leaning forward eagerly, \"how do you know about\n'Ulalume'--how did you know the color of my hair? What's your name? What\nwere you doing here? Tell me all at once!\"\n\nSuddenly the lightning flashed in with a leap of overreaching light and\nhe saw Eleanor, and looked for the first time into those eyes of hers.\nOh, she was magnificent--pale skin, the color of marble in starlight,\nslender brows, and eyes that glittered green as emeralds in the blinding\nglare. She was a witch, of perhaps nineteen, he judged, alert and dreamy\nand with the tell-tale white line over her upper lip that was a weakness\nand a delight. He sank back with a gasp against the wall of hay.\n\n\"Now you've seen me,\" she said calmly, \"and I suppose you're about to\nsay that my green eyes are burning into your brain.\"\n\n\"What color is your hair?\" he asked intently. \"It's bobbed, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes, it's bobbed. I don't know what color it is,\" she answered, musing,\n\"so many men have asked me. It's medium, I suppose--No one ever looks\nlong at my hair. I've got beautiful eyes, though, haven't I. I don't\ncare what you say, I have beautiful eyes.\"\n\n\"Answer my question, Madeline.\"\n\n\"Don't remember them all--besides my name isn't Madeline, it's Eleanor.\"\n\n\"I might have guessed it. You _look_ like Eleanor--you have that Eleanor\nlook. You know what I mean.\"\n\nThere was a silence as they listened to the rain.\n\n\"It's going down my neck, fellow lunatic,\" she offered finally.\n\n\"Answer my questions.\"\n\n\"Well--name of Savage, Eleanor; live in big old house mile down road;\nnearest living relation to be notified, grandfather--Ramilly Savage;\nheight, five feet four inches; number on watch-case, 3077 W; nose,\ndelicate aquiline; temperament, uncanny--\"\n\n\"And me,\" Amory interrupted, \"where did you see me?\"\n\n\"Oh, you're one of _those_ men,\" she answered haughtily, \"must lug\nold self into conversation. Well, my boy, I was behind a hedge sunning\nmyself one day last week, and along comes a man saying in a pleasant,\nconceited way of talking:\n\n\n \"'And now when the night was senescent'\n (says he)\n 'And the star dials pointed to morn\n At the end of the path a liquescent'\n (says he)\n 'And nebulous lustre was born.'\n\n\"So I poked my eyes up over the hedge, but you had started to run, for\nsome unknown reason, and so I saw but the back of your beautiful head.\n'Oh!' says I, 'there's a man for whom many of us might sigh,' and I\ncontinued in my best Irish--\"\n\n\"All right,\" Amory interrupted. \"Now go back to yourself.\"\n\n\"Well, I will. I'm one of those people who go through the world giving\nother people thrills, but getting few myself except those I read into\nmen on such nights as these. I have the social courage to go on the\nstage, but not the energy; I haven't the patience to write books; and I\nnever met a man I'd marry. However, I'm only eighteen.\"\n\nThe storm was dying down softly and only the wind kept up its ghostly\nsurge and made the stack lean and gravely settle from side to side.\nAmory was in a trance. He felt that every moment was precious. He had\nnever met a girl like this before--she would never seem quite the same\nagain. He didn't at all feel like a character in a play, the appropriate\nfeeling in an unconventional situation--instead, he had a sense of\ncoming home.\n\n\"I have just made a great decision,\" said Eleanor after another pause,\n\"and that is why I'm here, to answer another of your questions. I have\njust decided that I don't believe in immortality.\"\n\n\"Really! how banal!\"\n\n\"Frightfully so,\" she answered, \"but depressing with a stale, sickly\ndepression, nevertheless. I came out here to get wet--like a wet hen;\nwet hens always have great clarity of mind,\" she concluded.\n\n\"Go on,\" Amory said politely.\n\n\"Well--I'm not afraid of the dark, so I put on my slicker and rubber\nboots and came out. You see I was always afraid, before, to say I didn't\nbelieve in God--because the lightning might strike me--but here I am and\nit hasn't, of course, but the main point is that this time I wasn't any\nmore afraid of it than I had been when I was a Christian Scientist, like\nI was last year. So now I know I'm a materialist and I was fraternizing\nwith the hay when you came out and stood by the woods, scared to death.\"\n\n\"Why, you little wretch--\" cried Amory indignantly. \"Scared of what?\"\n\n\"_Yourself!_\" she shouted, and he jumped. She clapped her hands and\nlaughed. \"See--see! Conscience--kill it like me! Eleanor Savage,\nmateriologist--no jumping, no starting, come early--\"\n\n\"But I _have_ to have a soul,\" he objected. \"I can't be rational--and I\nwon't be molecular.\"\n\nShe leaned toward him, her burning eyes never leaving his own and\nwhispered with a sort of romantic finality:\n\n\"I thought so, Juan, I feared so--you're sentimental. You're not like\nme. I'm a romantic little materialist.\"\n\n\"I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is\nthat the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic\nperson has a desperate confidence that they won't.\" (This was an ancient\ndistinction of Amory's.)\n\n\"Epigrams. I'm going home,\" she said sadly. \"Let's get off the haystack\nand walk to the cross-roads.\"\n\nThey slowly descended from their perch. She would not let him help her\ndown and motioning him away arrived in a graceful lump in the soft mud\nwhere she sat for an instant, laughing at herself. Then she jumped to\nher feet and slipped her hand into his, and they tiptoed across the\nfields, jumping and swinging from dry spot to dry spot. A transcendent\ndelight seemed to sparkle in every pool of water, for the moon had risen\nand the storm had scurried away into western Maryland. When Eleanor's\narm touched his he felt his hands grow cold with deadly fear lest he\nshould lose the shadow brush with which his imagination was painting\nwonders of her. He watched her from the corners of his eyes as ever he\ndid when he walked with her--she was a feast and a folly and he wished\nit had been his destiny to sit forever on a haystack and see life\nthrough her green eyes. His paganism soared that night and when she\nfaded out like a gray ghost down the road, a deep singing came out\nof the fields and filled his way homeward. All night the summer moths\nflitted in and out of Amory's window; all night large looming sounds\nswayed in mystic revery through the silver grain--and he lay awake in\nthe clear darkness.\n\n *****\n\nSEPTEMBER\n\nAmory selected a blade of grass and nibbled at it scientifically.\n\n\"I never fall in love in August or September,\" he proffered.\n\n\"When then?\"\n\n\"Christmas or Easter. I'm a liturgist.\"\n\n\"Easter!\" She turned up her nose. \"Huh! Spring in corsets!\"\n\n\"Easter _would_ bore spring, wouldn't she? Easter has her hair braided,\nwears a tailored suit.\"\n\n\n \"Bind on thy sandals, oh, thou most fleet.\n Over the splendor and speed of thy feet--\"\n\n\nquoted Eleanor softly, and then added: \"I suppose Hallowe'en is a better\nday for autumn than Thanksgiving.\"\n\n\"Much better--and Christmas eve does very well for winter, but\nsummer...\"\n\n\"Summer has no day,\" she said. \"We can't possibly have a summer love. So\nmany people have tried that the name's become proverbial. Summer is\nonly the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the\nwarm balmy nights I dream of in April. It's a sad season of life without\ngrowth.... It has no day.\"\n\n\"Fourth of July,\" Amory suggested facetiously.\n\n\"Don't be funny!\" she said, raking him with her eyes.\n\n\"Well, what could fulfil the promise of spring?\"\n\nShe thought a moment.\n\n\"Oh, I suppose heaven would, if there was one,\" she said finally, \"a\nsort of pagan heaven--you ought to be a materialist,\" she continued\nirrelevantly.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because you look a good deal like the pictures of Rupert Brooke.\"\n\nTo some extent Amory tried to play Rupert Brooke as long as he knew\nEleanor. What he said, his attitude toward life, toward her, toward\nhimself, were all reflexes of the dead Englishman's literary moods.\nOften she sat in the grass, a lazy wind playing with her short hair,\nher voice husky as she ran up and down the scale from Grantchester to\nWaikiki. There was something most passionate in Eleanor's reading aloud.\nThey seemed nearer, not only mentally, but physically, when they read,\nthan when she was in his arms, and this was often, for they fell half\ninto love almost from the first. Yet was Amory capable of love now?\nHe could, as always, run through the emotions in a half hour, but even\nwhile they revelled in their imaginations, he knew that neither of them\ncould care as he had cared once before--I suppose that was why they\nturned to Brooke, and Swinburne, and Shelley. Their chance was to make\neverything fine and finished and rich and imaginative; they must bend\ntiny golden tentacles from his imagination to hers, that would take the\nplace of the great, deep love that was never so near, yet never so much\nof a dream.\n\nOne poem they read over and over; Swinburne's \"Triumph of Time,\" and\nfour lines of it rang in his memory afterward on warm nights when he saw\nthe fireflies among dusky tree trunks and heard the low drone of many\nfrogs. Then Eleanor seemed to come out of the night and stand by him,\nand he heard her throaty voice, with its tone of a fleecy-headed drum,\nrepeating:\n\n\n \"Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,\n To think of things that are well outworn;\n Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,\n The dream foregone and the deed foreborne?\"\n\n\nThey were formally introduced two days later, and his aunt told him her\nhistory. The Ramillys were two: old Mr. Ramilly and his granddaughter,\nEleanor. She had lived in France with a restless mother whom Amory\nimagined to have been very like his own, on whose death she had come to\nAmerica, to live in Maryland. She had gone to Baltimore first to stay\nwith a bachelor uncle, and there she insisted on being a debutante at\nthe age of seventeen. She had a wild winter and arrived in the\ncountry in March, having quarrelled frantically with all her Baltimore\nrelatives, and shocked them into fiery protest. A rather fast crowd\nhad come out, who drank cocktails in limousines and were promiscuously\ncondescending and patronizing toward older people, and Eleanor with an\nesprit that hinted strongly of the boulevards, led many innocents\nstill redolent of St. Timothy's and Farmington, into paths of Bohemian\nnaughtiness. When the story came to her uncle, a forgetful cavalier of\na more hypocritical era, there was a scene, from which Eleanor emerged,\nsubdued but rebellious and indignant, to seek haven with her grandfather\nwho hovered in the country on the near side of senility. That's as far\nas her story went; she told him the rest herself, but that was later.\n\nOften they swam and as Amory floated lazily in the water he shut his\nmind to all thoughts except those of hazy soap-bubble lands where the\nsun splattered through wind-drunk trees. How could any one possibly\nthink or worry, or do anything except splash and dive and loll there\non the edge of time while the flower months failed. Let the days move\nover--sadness and memory and pain recurred outside, and here, once more,\nbefore he went on to meet them he wanted to drift and be young.\n\nThere were days when Amory resented that life had changed from an even\nprogress along a road stretching ever in sight, with the scenery merging\nand blending, into a succession of quick, unrelated scenes--two years of\nsweat and blood, that sudden absurd instinct for paternity that Rosalind\nhad stirred; the half-sensual, half-neurotic quality of this autumn with\nEleanor. He felt that it would take all time, more than he could ever\nspare, to glue these strange cumbersome pictures into the scrap-book of\nhis life. It was all like a banquet where he sat for this half-hour of\nhis youth and tried to enjoy brilliant epicurean courses.\n\nDimly he promised himself a time where all should be welded together.\nFor months it seemed that he had alternated between being borne along a\nstream of love or fascination, or left in an eddy, and in the eddies\nhe had not desired to think, rather to be picked up on a wave's top and\nswept along again.\n\n\"The despairing, dying autumn and our love--how well they harmonize!\"\nsaid Eleanor sadly one day as they lay dripping by the water.\n\n\"The Indian summer of our hearts--\" he ceased.\n\n\"Tell me,\" she said finally, \"was she light or dark?\"\n\n\"Light.\"\n\n\"Was she more beautiful than I am?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Amory shortly.\n\nOne night they walked while the moon rose and poured a great burden of\nglory over the garden until it seemed fairyland with Amory and Eleanor,\ndim phantasmal shapes, expressing eternal beauty in curious elfin love\nmoods. Then they turned out of the moonlight into the trellised darkness\nof a vine-hung pagoda, where there were scents so plaintive as to be\nnearly musical.\n\n\"Light a match,\" she whispered. \"I want to see you.\"\n\nScratch! Flare!\n\nThe night and the scarred trees were like scenery in a play, and to be\nthere with Eleanor, shadowy and unreal, seemed somehow oddly familiar.\nAmory thought how it was only the past that ever seemed strange and\nunbelievable. The match went out.\n\n\"It's black as pitch.\"\n\n\"We're just voices now,\" murmured Eleanor, \"little lonesome voices.\nLight another.\"\n\n\"That was my last match.\"\n\nSuddenly he caught her in his arms.\n\n\"You _are_ mine--you know you're mine!\" he cried wildly... the moonlight\ntwisted in through the vines and listened... the fireflies hung upon\ntheir whispers as if to win his glance from the glory of their eyes.\n\n *****\n\nTHE END OF SUMMER\n\n\"No wind is stirring in the grass; not one wind stirs... the water\nin the hidden pools, as glass, fronts the full moon and so inters\nthe golden token in its icy mass,\" chanted Eleanor to the trees that\nskeletoned the body of the night. \"Isn't it ghostly here? If you can\nhold your horse's feet up, let's cut through the woods and find the\nhidden pools.\"\n\n\"It's after one, and you'll get the devil,\" he objected, \"and I don't\nknow enough about horses to put one away in the pitch dark.\"\n\n\"Shut up, you old fool,\" she whispered irrelevantly, and, leaning over,\nshe patted him lazily with her riding-crop. \"You can leave your old plug\nin our stable and I'll send him over to-morrow.\"\n\n\"But my uncle has got to drive me to the station with this old plug at\nseven o'clock.\"\n\n\"Don't be a spoil-sport--remember, you have a tendency toward wavering\nthat prevents you from being the entire light of my life.\"\n\nAmory drew his horse up close beside, and, leaning toward her, grasped\nher hand.\n\n\"Say I am--_quick_, or I'll pull you over and make you ride behind me.\"\n\nShe looked up and smiled and shook her head excitedly.\n\n\"Oh, do!--or rather, don't! Why are all the exciting things so\nuncomfortable, like fighting and exploring and ski-ing in Canada? By\nthe way, we're going to ride up Harper's Hill. I think that comes in our\nprogramme about five o'clock.\"\n\n\"You little devil,\" Amory growled. \"You're going to make me stay up all\nnight and sleep in the train like an immigrant all day to-morrow, going\nback to New York.\"\n\n\"Hush! some one's coming along the road--let's go! Whoo-ee-oop!\" And\nwith a shout that probably gave the belated traveller a series of\nshivers, she turned her horse into the woods and Amory followed slowly,\nas he had followed her all day for three weeks.\n\nThe summer was over, but he had spent the days in watching Eleanor, a\ngraceful, facile Manfred, build herself intellectual and imaginative\npyramids while she revelled in the artificialities of the temperamental\nteens and they wrote poetry at the dinner-table.\n\n\n When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he\n pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever\n know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death:\n\n \"Thru Time I'll save my love!\" he said... yet Beauty\n vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead...\n\n --Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair:\n\n \"Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his\n sonnet there\"... So all my words, however true, might sing\n you to a thousandth June, and no one ever _know_ that you were\n Beauty for an afternoon.\n\n\nSo he wrote one day, when he pondered how coldly we thought of the \"Dark\nLady of the Sonnets,\" and how little we remembered her as the great man\nwanted her remembered. For what Shakespeare _must_ have desired, to have\nbeen able to write with such divine despair, was that the lady should\nlive... and now we have no real interest in her.... The irony of it is\nthat if he had cared _more_ for the poem than for the lady the sonnet\nwould be only obvious, imitative rhetoric and no one would ever have\nread it after twenty years....\n\nThis was the last night Amory ever saw Eleanor. He was leaving in the\nmorning and they had agreed to take a long farewell trot by the cold\nmoonlight. She wanted to talk, she said--perhaps the last time in her\nlife that she could be rational (she meant pose with comfort). So they\nhad turned into the woods and rode for half an hour with scarcely\na word, except when she whispered \"Damn!\" at a bothersome\nbranch--whispered it as no other girl was ever able to whisper it. Then\nthey started up Harper's Hill, walking their tired horses.\n\n\"Good Lord! It's quiet here!\" whispered Eleanor; \"much more lonesome\nthan the woods.\"\n\n\"I hate woods,\" Amory said, shuddering. \"Any kind of foliage or\nunderbrush at night. Out here it's so broad and easy on the spirit.\"\n\n\"The long slope of a long hill.\"\n\n\"And the cold moon rolling moonlight down it.\"\n\n\"And thee and me, last and most important.\"\n\nIt was quiet that night--the straight road they followed up to the edge\nof the cliff knew few footsteps at any time. Only an occasional negro\ncabin, silver-gray in the rock-ribbed moonlight, broke the long line of\nbare ground; behind lay the black edge of the woods like a dark frosting\non white cake, and ahead the sharp, high horizon. It was much colder--so\ncold that it settled on them and drove all the warm nights from their\nminds.\n\n\"The end of summer,\" said Eleanor softly. \"Listen to the beat of our\nhorses' hoofs--'tump-tump-tump-a-tump.' Have you ever been feverish\nand had all noises divide into 'tump-tump-tump' until you could swear\neternity was divisible into so many tumps? That's the way I feel--old\nhorses go tump-tump.... I guess that's the only thing that separates\nhorses and clocks from us. Human beings can't go 'tump-tump-tump'\nwithout going crazy.\"\n\nThe breeze freshened and Eleanor pulled her cape around her and\nshivered.\n\n\"Are you very cold?\" asked Amory.\n\n\"No, I'm thinking about myself--my black old inside self, the real one,\nwith the fundamental honesty that keeps me from being absolutely wicked\nby making me realize my own sins.\"\n\nThey were riding up close by the cliff and Amory gazed over. Where the\nfall met the ground a hundred feet below, a black stream made a sharp\nline, broken by tiny glints in the swift water.\n\n\"Rotten, rotten old world,\" broke out Eleanor suddenly, \"and the\nwretchedest thing of all is me--oh, _why_ am I a girl? Why am I not a\nstupid--? Look at you; you're stupider than I am, not much, but some,\nand you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else,\nand you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of\nsentiment, and you can do anything and be justified--and here am I with\nthe brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future\nmatrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but\nnow what's in store for me--I have to marry, that goes without saying.\nWho? I'm too bright for most men, and yet I have to descend to their\nlevel and let them patronize my intellect in order to get their\nattention. Every year that I don't marry I've got less chance for a\nfirst-class man. At the best I can have my choice from one or two cities\nand, of course, I have to marry into a dinner-coat.\n\n\"Listen,\" she leaned close again, \"I like clever men and good-looking\nmen, and, of course, no one cares more for personality than I do. Oh,\njust one person in fifty has any glimmer of what sex is. I'm hipped on\nFreud and all that, but it's rotten that every bit of _real_ love in\nthe world is ninety-nine per cent passion and one little soupcon of\njealousy.\" She finished as suddenly as she began.\n\n\"Of course, you're right,\" Amory agreed. \"It's a rather unpleasant\noverpowering force that's part of the machinery under everything. It's\nlike an actor that lets you see his mechanics! Wait a minute till I\nthink this out....\"\n\nHe paused and tried to get a metaphor. They had turned the cliff and\nwere riding along the road about fifty feet to the left.\n\n\"You see every one's got to have some cloak to throw around it. The\nmediocre intellects, Plato's second class, use the remnants of romantic\nchivalry diluted with Victorian sentiment--and we who consider ourselves\nthe intellectuals cover it up by pretending that it's another side of\nus, has nothing to do with our shining brains; we pretend that the fact\nthat we realize it is really absolving us from being a prey to it. But\nthe truth is that sex is right in the middle of our purest abstractions,\nso close that it obscures vision.... I can kiss you now and will. ...\"\nHe leaned toward her in his saddle, but she drew away.\n\n\"I can't--I can't kiss you now--I'm more sensitive.\"\n\n\"You're more stupid then,\" he declared rather impatiently. \"Intellect is\nno protection from sex any more than convention is...\"\n\n\"What is?\" she fired up. \"The Catholic Church or the maxims of\nConfucius?\"\n\nAmory looked up, rather taken aback.\n\n\"That's your panacea, isn't it?\" she cried. \"Oh, you're just an old\nhypocrite, too. Thousands of scowling priests keeping the degenerate\nItalians and illiterate Irish repentant with gabble-gabble about the\nsixth and ninth commandments. It's just all cloaks, sentiment and\nspiritual rouge and panaceas. I'll tell you there is no God, not even\na definite abstract goodness; so it's all got to be worked out for the\nindividual by the individual here in high white foreheads like mine, and\nyou're too much the prig to admit it.\" She let go her reins and shook\nher little fists at the stars.\n\n\"If there's a God let him strike me--strike me!\"\n\n\"Talking about God again after the manner of atheists,\" Amory said\nsharply. His materialism, always a thin cloak, was torn to shreds by\nEleanor's blasphemy.... She knew it and it angered him that she knew it.\n\n\"And like most intellectuals who don't find faith convenient,\" he\ncontinued coldly, \"like Napoleon and Oscar Wilde and the rest of your\ntype, you'll yell loudly for a priest on your death-bed.\"\n\nEleanor drew her horse up sharply and he reined in beside her.\n\n\"Will I?\" she said in a queer voice that scared him. \"Will I? Watch!\n_I'm going over the cliff!_\" And before he could interfere she had\nturned and was riding breakneck for the end of the plateau.\n\nHe wheeled and started after her, his body like ice, his nerves in a\nvast clangor. There was no chance of stopping her. The moon was under a\ncloud and her horse would step blindly over. Then some ten feet from\nthe edge of the cliff she gave a sudden shriek and flung herself\nsideways--plunged from her horse and, rolling over twice, landed in\na pile of brush five feet from the edge. The horse went over with a\nfrantic whinny. In a minute he was by Eleanor's side and saw that her\neyes were open.\n\n\"Eleanor!\" he cried.\n\nShe did not answer, but her lips moved and her eyes filled with sudden\ntears.\n\n\"Eleanor, are you hurt?\"\n\n\"No; I don't think so,\" she said faintly, and then began weeping.\n\n\"My horse dead?\"\n\n\"Good God--Yes!\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she wailed. \"I thought I was going over. I didn't know--\"\n\nHe helped her gently to her feet and boosted her onto his saddle. So\nthey started homeward; Amory walking and she bent forward on the pommel,\nsobbing bitterly.\n\n\"I've got a crazy streak,\" she faltered, \"twice before I've done things\nlike that. When I was eleven mother went--went mad--stark raving crazy.\nWe were in Vienna--\"\n\nAll the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amory's love\nwaned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kiss\ngood night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretched\nto meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating\neach other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in\nEleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn\nabout the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and\nthere were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silences\nbetween... but naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turned\nhomeward and let new lights come in with the sun.\n\n *****\n\nA POEM THAT ELEANOR SENT AMORY SEVERAL YEARS LATER\n\n\n \"Here, Earth-born, over the lilt of the water,\n Lisping its music and bearing a burden of light,\n Bosoming day as a laughing and radiant daughter...\n Here we may whisper unheard, unafraid of the night.\n Walking alone... was it splendor, or what, we were bound with,\n Deep in the time when summer lets down her hair?\n Shadows we loved and the patterns they covered the ground with\n Tapestries, mystical, faint in the breathless air.\n\n That was the day... and the night for another story,\n Pale as a dream and shadowed with pencilled trees--\n Ghosts of the stars came by who had sought for glory,\n Whispered to us of peace in the plaintive breeze,\n Whispered of old dead faiths that the day had shattered,\n Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon;\n That was the urge that we knew and the language that mattered\n That was the debt that we paid to the usurer June.\n\n Here, deepest of dreams, by the waters that bring not\n Anything back of the past that we need not know,\n What if the light is but sun and the little streams sing not,\n We are together, it seems... I have loved you so...\n What did the last night hold, with the summer over,\n Drawing us back to the home in the changing glade?\n _What leered out of the dark in the ghostly clover?_\n God!... till you stirred in your sleep... and were wild\n afraid...\n\n Well... we have passed... we are chronicle now to the eerie.\n Curious metal from meteors that failed in the sky;\n Earth-born the tireless is stretched by the water, quite weary,\n Close to this ununderstandable changeling that's I...\n Fear is an echo we traced to Security's daughter;\n Now we are faces and voices... and less, too soon,\n Whispering half-love over the lilt of the water...\n Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon.\"\n\n\n *****\n\nA POEM AMORY SENT TO ELEANOR AND WHICH HE CALLED \"SUMMER STORM\"\n\n \"Faint winds, and a song fading and leaves falling,\n Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter...\n And the rain and over the fields a voice calling...\n\n Our gray blown cloud scurries and lifts above,\n Slides on the sun and flutters there to waft her\n Sisters on. The shadow of a dove\n Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings;\n And down the valley through the crying trees\n The body of the darker storm flies; brings\n With its new air the breath of sunken seas\n And slender tenuous thunder...\n But I wait...\n Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain--\n Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate,\n Happier winds that pile her hair;\n Again\n They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air\n Upon me, winds that I know, and storm.\n\n There was a summer every rain was rare;\n There was a season every wind was warm....\n And now you pass me in the mist... your hair\n Rain-blown about you, damp lips curved once more\n In that wild irony, that gay despair\n That made you old when we have met before;\n Wraith-like you drift on out before the rain,\n Across the fields, blown with the stemless flowers,\n With your old hopes, dead leaves and loves again--\n Dim as a dream and wan with all old hours\n (Whispers will creep into the growing dark...\n Tumult will die over the trees)\n Now night\n Tears from her wetted breast the splattered blouse\n Of day, glides down the dreaming hills, tear-bright,\n To cover with her hair the eerie green...\n Love for the dusk... Love for the glistening after;\n Quiet the trees to their last tops... serene...\n\n Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter...\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 4. The Supercilious Sacrifice\n\n\nAtlantic City. Amory paced the board walk at day's end, lulled by the\neverlasting surge of changing waves, smelling the half-mournful odor of\nthe salt breeze. The sea, he thought, had treasured its memories deeper\nthan the faithless land. It seemed still to whisper of Norse galleys\nploughing the water world under raven-figured flags, of the British\ndreadnoughts, gray bulwarks of civilization steaming up through the fog\nof one dark July into the North Sea.\n\n\"Well--Amory Blaine!\"\n\nAmory looked down into the street below. A low racing car had drawn to a\nstop and a familiar cheerful face protruded from the driver's seat.\n\n\"Come on down, goopher!\" cried Alec.\n\nAmory called a greeting and descending a flight of wooden steps\napproached the car. He and Alec had been meeting intermittently, but the\nbarrier of Rosalind lay always between them. He was sorry for this; he\nhated to lose Alec.\n\n\"Mr. Blaine, this is Miss Waterson, Miss Wayne, and Mr. Tully.\"\n\n\"How d'y do?\"\n\n\"Amory,\" said Alec exuberantly, \"if you'll jump in we'll take you to\nsome secluded nook and give you a wee jolt of Bourbon.\"\n\nAmory considered.\n\n\"That's an idea.\"\n\n\"Step in--move over, Jill, and Amory will smile very handsomely at you.\"\n\nAmory squeezed into the back seat beside a gaudy, vermilion-lipped\nblonde.\n\n\"Hello, Doug Fairbanks,\" she said flippantly. \"Walking for exercise or\nhunting for company?\"\n\n\"I was counting the waves,\" replied Amory gravely. \"I'm going in for\nstatistics.\"\n\n\"Don't kid me, Doug.\"\n\nWhen they reached an unfrequented side street Alec stopped the car among\ndeep shadows.\n\n\"What you doing down here these cold days, Amory?\" he demanded, as he\nproduced a quart of Bourbon from under the fur rug.\n\nAmory avoided the question. Indeed, he had had no definite reason for\ncoming to the coast.\n\n\"Do you remember that party of ours, sophomore year?\" he asked instead.\n\n\"Do I? When we slept in the pavilions up in Asbury Park--\"\n\n\"Lord, Alec! It's hard to think that Jesse and Dick and Kerry are all\nthree dead.\"\n\nAlec shivered.\n\n\"Don't talk about it. These dreary fall days depress me enough.\"\n\nJill seemed to agree.\n\n\"Doug here is sorta gloomy anyways,\" she commented. \"Tell him to drink\ndeep--it's good and scarce these days.\"\n\n\"What I really want to ask you, Amory, is where you are--\"\n\n\"Why, New York, I suppose--\"\n\n\"I mean to-night, because if you haven't got a room yet you'd better\nhelp me out.\"\n\n\"Glad to.\"\n\n\"You see, Tully and I have two rooms with bath between at the Ranier,\nand he's got to go back to New York. I don't want to have to move.\nQuestion is, will you occupy one of the rooms?\"\n\nAmory was willing, if he could get in right away.\n\n\"You'll find the key in the office; the rooms are in my name.\"\n\nDeclining further locomotion or further stimulation, Amory left the car\nand sauntered back along the board walk to the hotel.\n\nHe was in an eddy again, a deep, lethargic gulf, without desire to work\nor write, love or dissipate. For the first time in his life he rather\nlonged for death to roll over his generation, obliterating their petty\nfevers and struggles and exultations. His youth seemed never so vanished\nas now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit and\nthat riotous, joyful party of four years before. Things that had been\nthe merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense of\nbeauty around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they left\nwere filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion.\n\n\"To hold a man a woman has to appeal to the worst in him.\" This sentence\nwas the thesis of most of his bad nights, of which he felt this was to\nbe one. His mind had already started to play variations on the subject.\nTireless passion, fierce jealousy, longing to possess and crush--these\nalone were left of all his love for Rosalind; these remained to him as\npayment for the loss of his youth--bitter calomel under the thin sugar\nof love's exaltation.\n\nIn his room he undressed and wrapping himself in blankets to keep out\nthe chill October air drowsed in an armchair by the open window.\n\nHe remembered a poem he had read months before:\n\n\n \"Oh staunch old heart who toiled so long for me,\n I waste my years sailing along the sea--\"\n\nYet he had no sense of waste, no sense of the present hope that waste\nimplied. He felt that life had rejected him.\n\n\"Rosalind! Rosalind!\" He poured the words softly into the half-darkness\nuntil she seemed to permeate the room; the wet salt breeze filled\nhis hair with moisture, the rim of a moon seared the sky and made the\ncurtains dim and ghostly. He fell asleep.\n\nWhen he awoke it was very late and quiet. The blanket had slipped partly\noff his shoulders and he touched his skin to find it damp and cold.\n\nThen he became aware of a tense whispering not ten feet away.\n\nHe became rigid.\n\n\"Don't make a sound!\" It was Alec's voice. \"Jill--do you hear me?\"\n\n\"Yes--\" breathed very low, very frightened. They were in the bathroom.\n\nThen his ears caught a louder sound from somewhere along the corridor\noutside. It was a mumbling of men's voices and a repeated muffled\nrapping. Amory threw off the blankets and moved close to the bathroom\ndoor.\n\n\"My God!\" came the girl's voice again. \"You'll have to let them in.\"\n\n\"Sh!\"\n\nSuddenly a steady, insistent knocking began at Amory's hall door\nand simultaneously out of the bathroom came Alec, followed by the\nvermilion-lipped girl. They were both clad in pajamas.\n\n\"Amory!\" an anxious whisper.\n\n\"What's the trouble?\"\n\n\"It's house detectives. My God, Amory--they're just looking for a\ntest-case--\"\n\n\"Well, better let them in.\"\n\n\"You don't understand. They can get me under the Mann Act.\"\n\nThe girl followed him slowly, a rather miserable, pathetic figure in the\ndarkness.\n\nAmory tried to plan quickly.\n\n\"You make a racket and let them in your room,\" he suggested anxiously,\n\"and I'll get her out by this door.\"\n\n\"They're here too, though. They'll watch this door.\"\n\n\"Can't you give a wrong name?\"\n\n\"No chance. I registered under my own name; besides, they'd trail the\nauto license number.\"\n\n\"Say you're married.\"\n\n\"Jill says one of the house detectives knows her.\"\n\nThe girl had stolen to the bed and tumbled upon it; lay there listening\nwretchedly to the knocking which had grown gradually to a pounding. Then\ncame a man's voice, angry and imperative:\n\n\"Open up or we'll break the door in!\"\n\nIn the silence when this voice ceased Amory realized that there were\nother things in the room besides people... over and around the figure\ncrouched on the bed there hung an aura, gossamer as a moonbeam, tainted\nas stale, weak wine, yet a horror, diffusively brooding already over\nthe three of them... and over by the window among the stirring curtains\nstood something else, featureless and indistinguishable, yet strangely\nfamiliar.... Simultaneously two great cases presented themselves side by\nside to Amory; all that took place in his mind, then, occupied in actual\ntime less than ten seconds.\n\nThe first fact that flashed radiantly on his comprehension was the great\nimpersonality of sacrifice--he perceived that what we call love and\nhate, reward and punishment, had no more to do with it than the date\nof the month. He quickly recapitulated the story of a sacrifice he had\nheard of in college: a man had cheated in an examination; his roommate\nin a gust of sentiment had taken the entire blame--due to the shame\nof it the innocent one's entire future seemed shrouded in regret and\nfailure, capped by the ingratitude of the real culprit. He had finally\ntaken his own life--years afterward the facts had come out. At the time\nthe story had both puzzled and worried Amory. Now he realized the truth;\nthat sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective\noffice, it was like an inheritance of power--to certain people at\ncertain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but\na responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentum\nmight drag him down to ruin--the passing of the emotional wave that made\nit possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an\nisland of despair.\n\n... Amory knew that afterward Alec would secretly hate him for having\ndone so much for him....\n\n... All this was flung before Amory like an opened scroll, while\nulterior to him and speculating upon him were those two breathless,\nlistening forces: the gossamer aura that hung over and about the girl\nand that familiar thing by the window.\n\nSacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrifice\nshould be eternally supercilious.\n\n_Weep not for me but for thy children._\n\nThat--thought Amory--would be somehow the way God would talk to me.\n\nAmory felt a sudden surge of joy and then like a face in a\nmotion-picture the aura over the bed faded out; the dynamic shadow\nby the window, that was as near as he could name it, remained for the\nfraction of a moment and then the breeze seemed to lift it swiftly out\nof the room. He clinched his hands in quick ecstatic excitement... the\nten seconds were up....\n\n\"Do what I say, Alec--do what I say. Do you understand?\"\n\nAlec looked at him dumbly--his face a tableau of anguish.\n\n\"You have a family,\" continued Amory slowly. \"You have a family and it's\nimportant that you should get out of this. Do you hear me?\" He repeated\nclearly what he had said. \"Do you hear me?\"\n\n\"I hear you.\" The voice was curiously strained, the eyes never for a\nsecond left Amory's.\n\n\"Alec, you're going to lie down here. If any one comes in you act drunk.\nYou do what I say--if you don't I'll probably kill you.\"\n\nThere was another moment while they stared at each other. Then Amory\nwent briskly to the bureau and, taking his pocket-book, beckoned\nperemptorily to the girl. He heard one word from Alec that sounded like\n\"penitentiary,\" then he and Jill were in the bathroom with the door\nbolted behind them.\n\n\"You're here with me,\" he said sternly. \"You've been with me all\nevening.\"\n\nShe nodded, gave a little half cry.\n\nIn a second he had the door of the other room open and three men\nentered. There was an immediate flood of electric light and he stood\nthere blinking.\n\n\"You've been playing a little too dangerous a game, young man!\"\n\nAmory laughed.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\nThe leader of the trio nodded authoritatively at a burly man in a check\nsuit.\n\n\"All right, Olson.\"\n\n\"I got you, Mr. O'May,\" said Olson, nodding. The other two took a\ncurious glance at their quarry and then withdrew, closing the door\nangrily behind them.\n\nThe burly man regarded Amory contemptuously.\n\n\"Didn't you ever hear of the Mann Act? Coming down here with her,\" he\nindicated the girl with his thumb, \"with a New York license on your\ncar--to a hotel like _this_.\" He shook his head implying that he had\nstruggled over Amory but now gave him up.\n\n\"Well,\" said Amory rather impatiently, \"what do you want us to do?\"\n\n\"Get dressed, quick--and tell your friend not to make such a racket.\"\nJill was sobbing noisily on the bed, but at these words she subsided\nsulkily and, gathering up her clothes, retired to the bathroom. As Amory\nslipped into Alec's B. V. D.'s he found that his attitude toward the\nsituation was agreeably humorous. The aggrieved virtue of the burly man\nmade him want to laugh.\n\n\"Anybody else here?\" demanded Olson, trying to look keen and\nferret-like.\n\n\"Fellow who had the rooms,\" said Amory carelessly. \"He's drunk as an\nowl, though. Been in there asleep since six o'clock.\"\n\n\"I'll take a look at him presently.\"\n\n\"How did you find out?\" asked Amory curiously.\n\n\"Night clerk saw you go up-stairs with this woman.\"\n\nAmory nodded; Jill reappeared from the bathroom, completely if rather\nuntidily arrayed.\n\n\"Now then,\" began Olson, producing a note-book, \"I want your real\nnames--no damn John Smith or Mary Brown.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" said Amory quietly. \"Just drop that big-bully stuff. We\nmerely got caught, that's all.\"\n\nOlson glared at him.\n\n\"Name?\" he snapped.\n\nAmory gave his name and New York address.\n\n\"And the lady?\"\n\n\"Miss Jill--\"\n\n\"Say,\" cried Olson indignantly, \"just ease up on the nursery rhymes.\nWhat's your name? Sarah Murphy? Minnie Jackson?\"\n\n\"Oh, my God!\" cried the girl cupping her tear-stained face in her hands.\n\"I don't want my mother to know. I don't want my mother to know.\"\n\n\"Come on now!\"\n\n\"Shut up!\" cried Amory at Olson.\n\nAn instant's pause.\n\n\"Stella Robbins,\" she faltered finally. \"General Delivery, Rugway, New\nHampshire.\"\n\nOlson snapped his note-book shut and looked at them very ponderously.\n\n\"By rights the hotel could turn the evidence over to the police and\nyou'd go to penitentiary, you would, for bringin' a girl from one State\nto 'nother f'r immoral purp'ses--\" He paused to let the majesty of his\nwords sink in. \"But--the hotel is going to let you off.\"\n\n\"It doesn't want to get in the papers,\" cried Jill fiercely. \"Let us\noff! Huh!\"\n\nA great lightness surrounded Amory. He realized that he was safe and\nonly then did he appreciate the full enormity of what he might have\nincurred.\n\n\"However,\" continued Olson, \"there's a protective association among the\nhotels. There's been too much of this stuff, and we got a 'rangement\nwith the newspapers so that you get a little free publicity. Not the\nname of the hotel, but just a line sayin' that you had a little trouble\nin 'lantic City. See?\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"You're gettin' off light--damn light--but--\"\n\n\"Come on,\" said Amory briskly. \"Let's get out of here. We don't need a\nvaledictory.\"\n\nOlson walked through the bathroom and took a cursory glance at Alec's\nstill form. Then he extinguished the lights and motioned them to follow\nhim. As they walked into the elevator Amory considered a piece of\nbravado--yielded finally. He reached out and tapped Olson on the arm.\n\n\"Would you mind taking off your hat? There's a lady in the elevator.\"\n\nOlson's hat came off slowly. There was a rather embarrassing two minutes\nunder the lights of the lobby while the night clerk and a few belated\nguests stared at them curiously; the loudly dressed girl with bent head,\nthe handsome young man with his chin several points aloft; the inference\nwas quite obvious. Then the chill outdoors--where the salt air was\nfresher and keener still with the first hints of morning.\n\n\"You can get one of those taxis and beat it,\" said Olson, pointing to\nthe blurred outline of two machines whose drivers were presumably asleep\ninside.\n\n\"Good-by,\" said Olson. He reached in his pocket suggestively, but Amory\nsnorted, and, taking the girl's arm, turned away.\n\n\"Where did you tell the driver to go?\" she asked as they whirled along\nthe dim street.\n\n\"The station.\"\n\n\"If that guy writes my mother--\"\n\n\"He won't. Nobody'll ever know about this--except our friends and\nenemies.\"\n\nDawn was breaking over the sea.\n\n\"It's getting blue,\" she said.\n\n\"It does very well,\" agreed Amory critically, and then as an\nafter-thought: \"It's almost breakfast-time--do you want something to\neat?\"\n\n\"Food--\" she said with a cheerful laugh. \"Food is what queered the\nparty. We ordered a big supper to be sent up to the room about two\no'clock. Alec didn't give the waiter a tip, so I guess the little\nbastard snitched.\"\n\nJill's low spirits seemed to have gone faster than the scattering night.\n\"Let me tell you,\" she said emphatically, \"when you want to stage that\nsorta party stay away from liquor, and when you want to get tight stay\naway from bedrooms.\"\n\n\"I'll remember.\"\n\nHe tapped suddenly at the glass and they drew up at the door of an\nall-night restaurant.\n\n\"Is Alec a great friend of yours?\" asked Jill as they perched themselves\non high stools inside, and set their elbows on the dingy counter.\n\n\"He used to be. He probably won't want to be any more--and never\nunderstand why.\"\n\n\"It was sorta crazy you takin' all that blame. Is he pretty important?\nKinda more important than you are?\"\n\nAmory laughed.\n\n\"That remains to be seen,\" he answered. \"That's the question.\"\n\n *****\n\nTHE COLLAPSE OF SEVERAL PILLARS\n\nTwo days later back in New York Amory found in a newspaper what he\nhad been searching for--a dozen lines which announced to whom it might\nconcern that Mr. Amory Blaine, who \"gave his address\" as, etc., had been\nrequested to leave his hotel in Atlantic City because of entertaining in\nhis room a lady _not_ his wife.\n\nThen he started, and his fingers trembled, for directly above was a\nlonger paragraph of which the first words were:\n\n\"Mr. and Mrs. Leland R. Connage are announcing the engagement of their\ndaughter, Rosalind, to Mr. J. Dawson Ryder, of Hartford, Connecticut--\"\n\nHe dropped the paper and lay down on his bed with a frightened, sinking\nsensation in the pit of his stomach. She was gone, definitely, finally\ngone. Until now he had half unconsciously cherished the hope deep in his\nheart that some day she would need him and send for him, cry that it had\nbeen a mistake, that her heart ached only for the pain she had caused\nhim. Never again could he find even the sombre luxury of wanting\nher--not this Rosalind, harder, older--nor any beaten, broken woman that\nhis imagination brought to the door of his forties--Amory had wanted her\nyouth, the fresh radiance of her mind and body, the stuff that she was\nselling now once and for all. So far as he was concerned, young Rosalind\nwas dead.\n\nA day later came a crisp, terse letter from Mr. Barton in Chicago, which\ninformed him that as three more street-car companies had gone into\nthe hands of receivers he could expect for the present no further\nremittances. Last of all, on a dazed Sunday night, a telegram told him\nof Monsignor Darcy's sudden death in Philadelphia five days before.\n\nHe knew then what it was that he had perceived among the curtains of the\nroom in Atlantic City.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 5. The Egotist Becomes a Personage\n\n\n \"A fathom deep in sleep I lie\n With old desires, restrained before,\n To clamor lifeward with a cry,\n As dark flies out the greying door;\n And so in quest of creeds to share\n I seek assertive day again...\n But old monotony is there:\n Endless avenues of rain.\n\n Oh, might I rise again! Might I\n Throw off the heat of that old wine,\n See the new morning mass the sky\n With fairy towers, line on line;\n Find each mirage in the high air\n A symbol, not a dream again...\n But old monotony is there:\n Endless avenues of rain.\"\n\n\nUnder the glass portcullis of a theatre Amory stood, watching the first\ngreat drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on the\nsidewalk. The air became gray and opalescent; a solitary light suddenly\noutlined a window over the way; then another light; then a hundred more\ndanced and glimmered into vision. Under his feet a thick, iron-studded\nskylight turned yellow; in the street the lamps of the taxi-cabs sent\nout glistening sheens along the already black pavement. The unwelcome\nNovember rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it\nwith that ancient fence, the night.\n\nThe silence of the theatre behind him ended with a curious snapping\nsound, followed by the heavy roaring of a rising crowd and the\ninterlaced clatter of many voices. The matinee was over.\n\nHe stood aside, edged a little into the rain to let the throng pass. A\nsmall boy rushed out, sniffed in the damp, fresh air and turned up the\ncollar of his coat; came three or four couples in a great hurry; came\na further scattering of people whose eyes as they emerged glanced\ninvariably, first at the wet street, then at the rain-filled air,\nfinally at the dismal sky; last a dense, strolling mass that depressed\nhim with its heavy odor compounded of the tobacco smell of the men and\nthe fetid sensuousness of stale powder on women. After the thick crowd\ncame another scattering; a stray half-dozen; a man on crutches; finally\nthe rattling bang of folding seats inside announced that the ushers were\nat work.\n\nNew York seemed not so much awakening as turning over in its bed. Pallid\nmen rushed by, pinching together their coat-collars; a great swarm of\ntired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieks\nof strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marching\npolicemen passed, already miraculously protected by oilskin capes.\n\nThe rain gave Amory a feeling of detachment, and the numerous unpleasant\naspects of city life without money occurred to him in threatening\nprocession. There was the ghastly, stinking crush of the subway--the car\ncards thrusting themselves at one, leering out like dull bores who grab\nyour arm with another story; the querulous worry as to whether some one\nisn't leaning on you; a man deciding not to give his seat to a woman,\nhating her for it; the woman hating him for not doing it; at worst a\nsqualid phantasmagoria of breath, and old cloth on human bodies and the\nsmells of the food men ate--at best just people--too hot or too cold,\ntired, worried.\n\nHe pictured the rooms where these people lived--where the patterns of\nthe blistered wall-papers were heavy reiterated sunflowers on green and\nyellow backgrounds, where there were tin bathtubs and gloomy hallways\nand verdureless, unnamable spaces in back of the buildings; where even\nlove dressed as seduction--a sordid murder around the corner, illicit\nmotherhood in the flat above. And always there was the economical\nstuffiness of indoor winter, and the long summers, nightmares of\nperspiration between sticky enveloping walls... dirty restaurants where\ncareless, tired people helped themselves to sugar with their own used\ncoffee-spoons, leaving hard brown deposits in the bowl.\n\nIt was not so bad where there were only men or else only women; it was\nwhen they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten. It was some\nshame that women gave off at having men see them tired and poor--it\nwas some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor. It was\ndirtier than any battle-field he had seen, harder to contemplate than\nany actual hardship moulded of mire and sweat and danger, it was an\natmosphere wherein birth and marriage and death were loathsome, secret\nthings.\n\nHe remembered one day in the subway when a delivery boy had brought in a\ngreat funeral wreath of fresh flowers, how the smell of it had suddenly\ncleared the air and given every one in the car a momentary glow.\n\n\"I detest poor people,\" thought Amory suddenly. \"I hate them for being\npoor. Poverty may have been beautiful once, but it's rotten now. It's\nthe ugliest thing in the world. It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt\nand rich than it is to be innocent and poor.\" He seemed to see again a\nfigure whose significance had once impressed him--a well-dressed young\nman gazing from a club window on Fifth Avenue and saying something to\nhis companion with a look of utter disgust. Probably, thought Amory,\nwhat he said was: \"My God! Aren't people horrible!\"\n\nNever before in his life had Amory considered poor people. He thought\ncynically how completely he was lacking in all human sympathy. O. Henry\nhad found in these people romance, pathos, love, hate--Amory saw only\ncoarseness, physical filth, and stupidity. He made no self-accusations:\nnever any more did he reproach himself for feelings that were\nnatural and sincere. He accepted all his reactions as a part of him,\nunchangeable, unmoral. This problem of poverty transformed, magnified,\nattached to some grander, more dignified attitude might some day even be\nhis problem; at present it roused only his profound distaste.\n\nHe walked over to Fifth Avenue, dodging the blind, black menace of\numbrellas, and standing in front of Delmonico's hailed an auto-bus.\nButtoning his coat closely around him he climbed to the roof, where he\nrode in solitary state through the thin, persistent rain, stung\ninto alertness by the cool moisture perpetually reborn on his cheek.\nSomewhere in his mind a conversation began, rather resumed its place\nin his attention. It was composed not of two voices, but of one, which\nacted alike as questioner and answerer:\n\nQuestion.--Well--what's the situation?\n\nAnswer.--That I have about twenty-four dollars to my name.\n\nQ.--You have the Lake Geneva estate.\n\nA.--But I intend to keep it.\n\nQ.--Can you live?\n\nA.--I can't imagine not being able to. People make money in books and\nI've found that I can always do the things that people do in books.\nReally they are the only things I can do.\n\nQ.--Be definite.\n\nA.--I don't know what I'll do--nor have I much curiosity. To-morrow I'm\ngoing to leave New York for good. It's a bad town unless you're on top\nof it.\n\nQ.--Do you want a lot of money?\n\nA.--No. I am merely afraid of being poor.\n\nQ.--Very afraid?\n\nA.--Just passively afraid.\n\nQ.--Where are you drifting?\n\nA.--Don't ask _me!_\n\nQ.--Don't you care?\n\nA.--Rather. I don't want to commit moral suicide.\n\nQ.--Have you no interests left?\n\nA.--None. I've no more virtue to lose. Just as a cooling pot gives\noff heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories of\nvirtue. That's what's called ingenuousness.\n\nQ.--An interesting idea.\n\nA.--That's why a \"good man going wrong\" attracts people. They stand\naround and literally _warm themselves_ at the calories of virtue he\ngives off. Sarah makes an unsophisticated remark and the faces simper in\ndelight--\"How _innocent_ the poor child is!\" They're warming themselves\nat her virtue. But Sarah sees the simper and never makes that remark\nagain. Only she feels a little colder after that.\n\nQ.--All your calories gone?\n\nA.--All of them. I'm beginning to warm myself at other people's virtue.\n\nQ.--Are you corrupt?\n\nA.--I think so. I'm not sure. I'm not sure about good and evil at all\nany more.\n\nQ.--Is that a bad sign in itself?\n\nA.--Not necessarily.\n\nQ.--What would be the test of corruption?\n\nA.--Becoming really insincere--calling myself \"not such a bad fellow,\"\nthinking I regretted my lost youth when I only envy the delights of\nlosing it. Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists\nthink they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they\nate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over\nagain. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood--she wants to\nrepeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the\npleasure of losing it again.\n\nQ.--Where are you drifting?\n\nThis dialogue merged grotesquely into his mind's most familiar state--a\ngrotesque blending of desires, worries, exterior impressions and\nphysical reactions.\n\nOne Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street--or One Hundred and Thirty-seventh\nStreet.... Two and three look alike--no, not much. Seat damp... are\nclothes absorbing wetness from seat, or seat absorbing dryness from\nclothes?... Sitting on wet substance gave appendicitis, so Froggy\nParker's mother said. Well, he'd had it--I'll sue the steamboat company,\nBeatrice said, and my uncle has a quarter interest--did Beatrice go to\nheaven?... probably not--He represented Beatrice's immortality, also\nlove-affairs of numerous dead men who surely had never thought of\nhim... if it wasn't appendicitis, influenza maybe. What? One Hundred\nand Twentieth Street? That must have been One Hundred and Twelfth back\nthere. One O Two instead of One Two Seven. Rosalind not like Beatrice,\nEleanor like Beatrice, only wilder and brainier. Apartments along here\nexpensive--probably hundred and fifty a month--maybe two hundred. Uncle\nhad only paid hundred a month for whole great big house in Minneapolis.\nQuestion--were the stairs on the left or right as you came in? Anyway,\nin 12 Univee they were straight back and to the left. What a dirty\nriver--want to go down there and see if it's dirty--French rivers all\nbrown or black, so were Southern rivers. Twenty-four dollars meant four\nhundred and eighty doughnuts. He could live on it three months and sleep\nin the park. Wonder where Jill was--Jill Bayne, Fayne, Sayne--what the\ndevil--neck hurts, darned uncomfortable seat. No desire to sleep with\nJill, what could Alec see in her? Alec had a coarse taste in women. Own\ntaste the best; Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were all-American.\nEleanor would pitch, probably southpaw. Rosalind was outfield, wonderful\nhitter, Clara first base, maybe. Wonder what Humbird's body looked like\nnow. If he himself hadn't been bayonet instructor he'd have gone up\nto line three months sooner, probably been killed. Where's the darned\nbell--\n\nThe street numbers of Riverside Drive were obscured by the mist and\ndripping trees from anything but the swiftest scrutiny, but Amory had\nfinally caught sight of one--One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street. He\ngot off and with no distinct destination followed a winding, descending\nsidewalk and came out facing the river, in particular a long pier and\na partitioned litter of shipyards for miniature craft: small launches,\ncanoes, rowboats, and catboats. He turned northward and followed the\nshore, jumped a small wire fence and found himself in a great disorderly\nyard adjoining a dock. The hulls of many boats in various stages of\nrepair were around him; he smelled sawdust and paint and the scarcely\ndistinguishable fiat odor of the Hudson. A man approached through the\nheavy gloom.\n\n\"Hello,\" said Amory.\n\n\"Got a pass?\"\n\n\"No. Is this private?\"\n\n\"This is the Hudson River Sporting and Yacht Club.\"\n\n\"Oh! I didn't know. I'm just resting.\"\n\n\"Well--\" began the man dubiously.\n\n\"I'll go if you want me to.\"\n\nThe man made non-committal noises in his throat and passed on. Amory\nseated himself on an overturned boat and leaned forward thoughtfully\nuntil his chin rested in his hand.\n\n\"Misfortune is liable to make me a damn bad man,\" he said slowly.\n\n *****\n\nIN THE DROOPING HOURS\n\nWhile the rain drizzled on Amory looked futilely back at the stream of\nhis life, all its glitterings and dirty shallows. To begin with, he was\nstill afraid--not physically afraid any more, but afraid of people and\nprejudice and misery and monotony. Yet, deep in his bitter heart, he\nwondered if he was after all worse than this man or the next. He knew\nthat he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his own\nweakness was just the result of circumstances and environment; that\noften when he raged at himself as an egotist something would whisper\ningratiatingly: \"No. Genius!\" That was one manifestation of fear, that\nvoice which whispered that he could not be both great and good, that\ngenius was the exact combination of those inexplicable grooves and\ntwists in his mind, that any discipline would curb it to mediocrity.\nProbably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own\npersonality--he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days\nafter he would swell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word\nlike a third-rate musician or a first-class actor. He was ashamed of the\nfact that very simple and honest people usually distrusted him; that\nhe had been cruel, often, to those who had sunk their personalities in\nhim--several girls, and a man here and there through college, that he\nhad been an evil influence on; people who had followed him here and\nthere into mental adventures from which he alone rebounded unscathed.\n\nUsually, on nights like this, for there had been many lately, he could\nescape from this consuming introspection by thinking of children and the\ninfinite possibilities of children--he leaned and listened and he heard\na startled baby awake in a house across the street and lend a tiny\nwhimper to the still night. Quick as a flash he turned away, wondering\nwith a touch of panic whether something in the brooding despair of his\nmood had made a darkness in its tiny soul. He shivered. What if some\nday the balance was overturned, and he became a thing that frightened\nchildren and crept into rooms in the dark, approached dim communion with\nthose phantoms who whispered shadowy secrets to the mad of that dark\ncontinent upon the moon....\n\n *****\n\nAmory smiled a bit.\n\n\"You're too much wrapped up in yourself,\" he heard some one say. And\nagain--\n\n\"Get out and do some real work--\"\n\n\"Stop worrying--\"\n\nHe fancied a possible future comment of his own.\n\n\"Yes--I was perhaps an egotist in youth, but I soon found it made me\nmorbid to think too much about myself.\"\n\n *****\n\nSuddenly he felt an overwhelming desire to let himself go to the\ndevil--not to go violently as a gentleman should, but to sink safely\nand sensuously out of sight. He pictured himself in an adobe house in\nMexico, half-reclining on a rug-covered couch, his slender, artistic\nfingers closed on a cigarette while he listened to guitars strumming\nmelancholy undertones to an age-old dirge of Castile and an\nolive-skinned, carmine-lipped girl caressed his hair. Here he might live\na strange litany, delivered from right and wrong and from the hound of\nheaven and from every God (except the exotic Mexican one who was pretty\nslack himself and rather addicted to Oriental scents)--delivered from\nsuccess and hope and poverty into that long chute of indulgence which\nled, after all, only to the artificial lake of death.\n\nThere were so many places where one might deteriorate pleasantly: Port\nSaid, Shanghai, parts of Turkestan, Constantinople, the South Seas--all\nlands of sad, haunting music and many odors, where lust could be a mode\nand expression of life, where the shades of night skies and sunsets\nwould seem to reflect only moods of passion: the colors of lips and\npoppies.\n\n *****\n\nSTILL WEEDING\n\nOnce he had been miraculously able to scent evil as a horse detects a\nbroken bridge at night, but the man with the queer feet in Phoebe's\nroom had diminished to the aura over Jill. His instinct perceived the\nfetidness of poverty, but no longer ferreted out the deeper evils in\npride and sensuality.\n\nThere were no more wise men; there were no more heroes; Burne Holiday\nwas sunk from sight as though he had never lived; Monsignor was dead.\nAmory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listened\neagerly to people who pretended to know, who knew nothing. The mystical\nreveries of saints that had once filled him with awe in the still hours\nof night, now vaguely repelled him. The Byrons and Brookes who had\ndefied life from mountain tops were in the end but flaneurs and poseurs,\nat best mistaking the shadow of courage for the substance of wisdom.\nThe pageantry of his disillusion took shape in a world-old procession\nof Prophets, Athenians, Martyrs, Saints, Scientists, Don Juans, Jesuits,\nPuritans, Fausts, Poets, Pacifists; like costumed alumni at a college\nreunion they streamed before him as their dreams, personalities, and\ncreeds had in turn thrown colored lights on his soul; each had tried to\nexpress the glory of life and the tremendous significance of man; each\nhad boasted of synchronizing what had gone before into his own rickety\ngeneralities; each had depended after all on the set stage and the\nconvention of the theatre, which is that man in his hunger for faith\nwill feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food.\n\nWomen--of whom he had expected so much; whose beauty he had hoped to\ntransmute into modes of art; whose unfathomable instincts, marvellously\nincoherent and inarticulate, he had thought to perpetuate in terms of\nexperience--had become merely consecrations to their own posterity.\nIsabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were all removed by their\nvery beauty, around which men had swarmed, from the possibility of\ncontributing anything but a sick heart and a page of puzzled words to\nwrite.\n\nAmory based his loss of faith in help from others on several sweeping\nsyllogisms. Granted that his generation, however bruised and decimated\nfrom this Victorian war, were the heirs of progress. Waving aside petty\ndifferences of conclusions which, although they might occasionally\ncause the deaths of several millions of young men, might be explained\naway--supposing that after all Bernard Shaw and Bernhardi, Bonar Law\nand Bethmann-Hollweg were mutual heirs of progress if only in agreeing\nagainst the ducking of witches--waiving the antitheses and approaching\nindividually these men who seemed to be the leaders, he was repelled by\nthe discrepancies and contradictions in the men themselves.\n\nThere was, for example, Thornton Hancock, respected by half the\nintellectual world as an authority on life, a man who had verified and\nbelieved the code he lived by, an educator of educators, an adviser to\nPresidents--yet Amory knew that this man had, in his heart, leaned on\nthe priest of another religion.\n\nAnd Monsignor, upon whom a cardinal rested, had moments of strange and\nhorrible insecurity--inexplicable in a religion that explained even\ndisbelief in terms of its own faith: if you doubted the devil it was the\ndevil that made you doubt him. Amory had seen Monsignor go to the houses\nof stolid philistines, read popular novels furiously, saturate himself\nin routine, to escape from that horror.\n\nAnd this priest, a little wiser, somewhat purer, had been, Amory knew,\nnot essentially older than he.\n\nAmory was alone--he had escaped from a small enclosure into a great\nlabyrinth. He was where Goethe was when he began \"Faust\"; he was where\nConrad was when he wrote \"Almayer's Folly.\"\n\nAmory said to himself that there were essentially two sorts of people\nwho through natural clarity or disillusion left the enclosure and\nsought the labyrinth. There were men like Wells and Plato, who had,\nhalf unconsciously, a strange, hidden orthodoxy, who would accept\nfor themselves only what could be accepted for all men--incurable\nromanticists who never, for all their efforts, could enter the labyrinth\nas stark souls; there were on the other hand sword-like pioneering\npersonalities, Samuel Butler, Renan, Voltaire, who progressed much\nslower, yet eventually much further, not in the direct pessimistic line\nof speculative philosophy but concerned in the eternal attempt to attach\na positive value to life....\n\nAmory stopped. He began for the first time in his life to have a strong\ndistrust of all generalities and epigrams. They were too easy, too\ndangerous to the public mind. Yet all thought usually reached the\npublic after thirty years in some such form: Benson and Chesterton had\npopularized Huysmans and Newman; Shaw had sugar-coated Nietzsche and\nIbsen and Schopenhauer. The man in the street heard the conclusions\nof dead genius through some one else's clever paradoxes and didactic\nepigrams.\n\nLife was a damned muddle... a football game with every one off-side and\nthe referee gotten rid of--every one claiming the referee would have\nbeen on his side....\n\nProgress was a labyrinth... people plunging blindly in and then rushing\nwildly back, shouting that they had found it... the invisible king--the\nelan vital--the principle of evolution... writing a book, starting a\nwar, founding a school....\n\nAmory, even had he not been a selfish man, would have started all\ninquiries with himself. He was his own best example--sitting in the\nrain, a human creature of sex and pride, foiled by chance and his own\ntemperament of the balm of love and children, preserved to help in\nbuilding up the living consciousness of the race.\n\nIn self-reproach and loneliness and disillusion he came to the entrance\nof the labyrinth.\n\n *****\n\nAnother dawn flung itself across the river, a belated taxi hurried along\nthe street, its lamps still shining like burning eyes in a face white\nfrom a night's carouse. A melancholy siren sounded far down the river.\n\n *****\n\nMONSIGNOR\n\nAmory kept thinking how Monsignor would have enjoyed his own funeral.\nIt was magnificently Catholic and liturgical. Bishop O'Neill sang solemn\nhigh mass and the cardinal gave the final absolutions. Thornton Hancock,\nMrs. Lawrence, the British and Italian ambassadors, the papal delegate,\nand a host of friends and priests were there--yet the inexorable shears\nhad cut through all these threads that Monsignor had gathered into his\nhands. To Amory it was a haunting grief to see him lying in his coffin,\nwith closed hands upon his purple vestments. His face had not changed,\nand, as he never knew he was dying, it showed no pain or fear. It was\nAmory's dear old friend, his and the others'--for the church was full\nof people with daft, staring faces, the most exalted seeming the most\nstricken.\n\nThe cardinal, like an archangel in cope and mitre, sprinkled the holy\nwater; the organ broke into sound; the choir began to sing the Requiem\nEternam.\n\nAll these people grieved because they had to some extent depended upon\nMonsignor. Their grief was more than sentiment for the \"crack in his\nvoice or a certain break in his walk,\" as Wells put it. These people\nhad leaned on Monsignor's faith, his way of finding cheer, of making\nreligion a thing of lights and shadows, making all light and shadow\nmerely aspects of God. People felt safe when he was near.\n\nOf Amory's attempted sacrifice had been born merely the full realization\nof his disillusion, but of Monsignor's funeral was born the romantic\nelf who was to enter the labyrinth with him. He found something that he\nwanted, had always wanted and always would want--not to be admired, as\nhe had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but to\nbe necessary to people, to be indispensable; he remembered the sense of\nsecurity he had found in Burne.\n\nLife opened up in one of its amazing bursts of radiance and Amory\nsuddenly and permanently rejected an old epigram that had been playing\nlistlessly in his mind: \"Very few things matter and nothing matters very\nmuch.\"\n\nOn the contrary, Amory felt an immense desire to give people a sense of\nsecurity.\n\n *****\n\nTHE BIG MAN WITH GOGGLES\n\nOn the day that Amory started on his walk to Princeton the sky was a\ncolorless vault, cool, high and barren of the threat of rain. It was a\ngray day, that least fleshly of all weathers; a day of dreams and far\nhopes and clear visions. It was a day easily associated with those\nabstract truths and purities that dissolve in the sunshine or fade out\nin mocking laughter by the light of the moon. The trees and clouds\nwere carved in classical severity; the sounds of the countryside had\nharmonized to a monotone, metallic as a trumpet, breathless as the\nGrecian urn.\n\nThe day had put Amory in such a contemplative mood that he caused much\nannoyance to several motorists who were forced to slow up considerably\nor else run him down. So engrossed in his thoughts was he that he was\nscarcely surprised at that strange phenomenon--cordiality manifested\nwithin fifty miles of Manhattan--when a passing car slowed down\nbeside him and a voice hailed him. He looked up and saw a magnificent\nLocomobile in which sat two middle-aged men, one of them small and\nanxious looking, apparently an artificial growth on the other who was\nlarge and begoggled and imposing.\n\n\"Do you want a lift?\" asked the apparently artificial growth, glancing\nfrom the corner of his eye at the imposing man as if for some habitual,\nsilent corroboration.\n\n\"You bet I do. Thanks.\"\n\nThe chauffeur swung open the door, and, climbing in, Amory settled\nhimself in the middle of the back seat. He took in his companions\ncuriously. The chief characteristic of the big man seemed to be a\ngreat confidence in himself set off against a tremendous boredom with\neverything around him. That part of his face which protruded under the\ngoggles was what is generally termed \"strong\"; rolls of not undignified\nfat had collected near his chin; somewhere above was a wide thin\nmouth and the rough model for a Roman nose, and, below, his shoulders\ncollapsed without a struggle into the powerful bulk of his chest and\nbelly. He was excellently and quietly dressed. Amory noticed that he\nwas inclined to stare straight at the back of the chauffeur's head as if\nspeculating steadily but hopelessly some baffling hirsute problem.\n\nThe smaller man was remarkable only for his complete submersion in the\npersonality of the other. He was of that lower secretarial type who\nat forty have engraved upon their business cards: \"Assistant to the\nPresident,\" and without a sigh consecrate the rest of their lives to\nsecond-hand mannerisms.\n\n\"Going far?\" asked the smaller man in a pleasant disinterested way.\n\n\"Quite a stretch.\"\n\n\"Hiking for exercise?\"\n\n\"No,\" responded Amory succinctly, \"I'm walking because I can't afford to\nride.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nThen again:\n\n\"Are you looking for work? Because there's lots of work,\" he continued\nrather testily. \"All this talk of lack of work. The West is especially\nshort of labor.\" He expressed the West with a sweeping, lateral gesture.\nAmory nodded politely.\n\n\"Have you a trade?\"\n\nNo--Amory had no trade.\n\n\"Clerk, eh?\"\n\nNo--Amory was not a clerk.\n\n\"Whatever your line is,\" said the little man, seeming to agree wisely\nwith something Amory had said, \"now is the time of opportunity and\nbusiness openings.\" He glanced again toward the big man, as a lawyer\ngrilling a witness glances involuntarily at the jury.\n\nAmory decided that he must say something and for the life of him could\nthink of only one thing to say.\n\n\"Of course I want a great lot of money--\"\n\nThe little man laughed mirthlessly but conscientiously.\n\n\"That's what every one wants nowadays, but they don't want to work for\nit.\"\n\n\"A very natural, healthy desire. Almost all normal people want to be\nrich without great effort--except the financiers in problem plays, who\nwant to 'crash their way through.' Don't you want easy money?\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" said the secretary indignantly.\n\n\"But,\" continued Amory disregarding him, \"being very poor at present I\nam contemplating socialism as possibly my forte.\"\n\nBoth men glanced at him curiously.\n\n\"These bomb throwers--\" The little man ceased as words lurched\nponderously from the big man's chest.\n\n\"If I thought you were a bomb thrower I'd run you over to the Newark\njail. That's what I think of Socialists.\"\n\nAmory laughed.\n\n\"What are you,\" asked the big man, \"one of these parlor Bolsheviks,\none of these idealists? I must say I fail to see the difference.\nThe idealists loaf around and write the stuff that stirs up the poor\nimmigrants.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Amory, \"if being an idealist is both safe and lucrative, I\nmight try it.\"\n\n\"What's your difficulty? Lost your job?\"\n\n\"Not exactly, but--well, call it that.\"\n\n\"What was it?\"\n\n\"Writing copy for an advertising agency.\"\n\n\"Lots of money in advertising.\"\n\nAmory smiled discreetly.\n\n\"Oh, I'll admit there's money in it eventually. Talent doesn't starve\nany more. Even art gets enough to eat these days. Artists draw your\nmagazine covers, write your advertisements, hash out rag-time for\nyour theatres. By the great commercializing of printing you've found a\nharmless, polite occupation for every genius who might have carved his\nown niche. But beware the artist who's an intellectual also. The artist\nwho doesn't fit--the Rousseau, the Tolstoi, the Samuel Butler, the Amory\nBlaine--\"\n\n\"Who's he?\" demanded the little man suspiciously.\n\n\"Well,\" said Amory, \"he's a--he's an intellectual personage not very\nwell known at present.\"\n\nThe little man laughed his conscientious laugh, and stopped rather\nsuddenly as Amory's burning eyes turned on him.\n\n\"What are you laughing at?\"\n\n\"These _intellectual_ people--\"\n\n\"Do you know what it means?\"\n\nThe little man's eyes twitched nervously.\n\n\"Why, it _usually_ means--\"\n\n\"It _always_ means brainy and well-educated,\" interrupted Amory. \"It\nmeans having an active knowledge of the race's experience.\" Amory\ndecided to be very rude. He turned to the big man. \"The young man,\" he\nindicated the secretary with his thumb, and said young man as one\nsays bell-boy, with no implication of youth, \"has the usual muddled\nconnotation of all popular words.\"\n\n\"You object to the fact that capital controls printing?\" said the big\nman, fixing him with his goggles.\n\n\"Yes--and I object to doing their mental work for them. It seemed to\nme that the root of all the business I saw around me consisted in\noverworking and underpaying a bunch of dubs who submitted to it.\"\n\n\"Here now,\" said the big man, \"you'll have to admit that the laboring\nman is certainly highly paid--five and six hour days--it's ridiculous.\nYou can't buy an honest day's work from a man in the trades-unions.\"\n\n\"You've brought it on yourselves,\" insisted Amory. \"You people never\nmake concessions until they're wrung out of you.\"\n\n\"What people?\"\n\n\"Your class; the class I belonged to until recently; those who by\ninheritance or industry or brains or dishonesty have become the moneyed\nclass.\"\n\n\"Do you imagine that if that road-mender over there had the money he'd\nbe any more willing to give it up?\"\n\n\"No, but what's that got to do with it?\"\n\nThe older man considered.\n\n\"No, I'll admit it hasn't. It rather sounds as if it had though.\"\n\n\"In fact,\" continued Amory, \"he'd be worse. The lower classes are\nnarrower, less pleasant and personally more selfish--certainly more\nstupid. But all that has nothing to do with the question.\"\n\n\"Just exactly what is the question?\"\n\nHere Amory had to pause to consider exactly what the question was.\n\n *****\n\nAMORY COINS A PHRASE\n\n\"When life gets hold of a brainy man of fair education,\" began Amory\nslowly, \"that is, when he marries he becomes, nine times out of ten, a\nconservative as far as existing social conditions are concerned. He may\nbe unselfish, kind-hearted, even just in his own way, but his first job\nis to provide and to hold fast. His wife shoos him on, from ten thousand\na year to twenty thousand a year, on and on, in an enclosed treadmill\nthat hasn't any windows. He's done! Life's got him! He's no help! He's a\nspiritually married man.\"\n\nAmory paused and decided that it wasn't such a bad phrase.\n\n\"Some men,\" he continued, \"escape the grip. Maybe their wives have no\nsocial ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerous\nbook' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I did\nand were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can't\nbribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers,\nscientists, statesmen who aren't just popular grab-bags for a half-dozen\nwomen and children.\"\n\n\"He's the natural radical?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Amory. \"He may vary from the disillusioned critic like old\nThornton Hancock, all the way to Trotsky. Now this spiritually unmarried\nman hasn't direct power, for unfortunately the spiritually married man,\nas a by-product of his money chase, has garnered in the great newspaper,\nthe popular magazine, the influential weekly--so that Mrs. Newspaper,\nMrs. Magazine, Mrs. Weekly can have a better limousine than those oil\npeople across the street or those cement people 'round the corner.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"It makes wealthy men the keepers of the world's intellectual conscience\nand, of course, a man who has money under one set of social institutions\nquite naturally can't risk his family's happiness by letting the clamor\nfor another appear in his newspaper.\"\n\n\"But it appears,\" said the big man.\n\n\"Where?--in the discredited mediums. Rotten cheap-papered weeklies.\"\n\n\"All right--go on.\"\n\n\"Well, my first point is that through a mixture of conditions of which\nthe family is the first, there are these two sorts of brains. One sort\ntakes human nature as it finds it, uses its timidity, its weakness, and\nits strength for its own ends. Opposed is the man who, being spiritually\nunmarried, continually seeks for new systems that will control or\ncounteract human nature. His problem is harder. It is not life that's\ncomplicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life. That is his\nstruggle. He is a part of progress--the spiritually married man is not.\"\n\nThe big man produced three big cigars, and proffered them on his huge\npalm. The little man took one, Amory shook his head and reached for a\ncigarette.\n\n\"Go on talking,\" said the big man. \"I've been wanting to hear one of you\nfellows.\"\n\n *****\n\nGOING FASTER\n\n\"Modern life,\" began Amory again, \"changes no longer century by century,\nbut year by year, ten times faster than it ever has before--populations\ndoubling, civilizations unified more closely with other civilizations,\neconomic interdependence, racial questions, and--we're _dawdling_\nalong. My idea is that we've got to go very much faster.\" He slightly\nemphasized the last words and the chauffeur unconsciously increased the\nspeed of the car. Amory and the big man laughed; the little man laughed,\ntoo, after a pause.\n\n\"Every child,\" said Amory, \"should have an equal start. If his father\ncan endow him with a good physique and his mother with some common sense\nin his early education, that should be his heritage. If the father can't\ngive him a good physique, if the mother has spent in chasing men the\nyears in which she should have been preparing herself to educate her\nchildren, so much the worse for the child. He shouldn't be artificially\nbolstered up with money, sent to these horrible tutoring schools,\ndragged through college... Every boy ought to have an equal start.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said the big man, his goggles indicating neither approval\nnor objection.\n\n\"Next I'd have a fair trial of government ownership of all industries.\"\n\n\"That's been proven a failure.\"\n\n\"No--it merely failed. If we had government ownership we'd have the\nbest analytical business minds in the government working for something\nbesides themselves. We'd have Mackays instead of Burlesons; we'd have\nMorgans in the Treasury Department; we'd have Hills running interstate\ncommerce. We'd have the best lawyers in the Senate.\"\n\n\"They wouldn't give their best efforts for nothing. McAdoo--\"\n\n\"No,\" said Amory, shaking his head. \"Money isn't the only stimulus that\nbrings out the best that's in a man, even in America.\"\n\n\"You said a while ago that it was.\"\n\n\"It is, right now. But if it were made illegal to have more than a\ncertain amount the best men would all flock for the one other reward\nwhich attracts humanity--honor.\"\n\nThe big man made a sound that was very like _boo_.\n\n\"That's the silliest thing you've said yet.\"\n\n\"No, it isn't silly. It's quite plausible. If you'd gone to college\nyou'd have been struck by the fact that the men there would work twice\nas hard for any one of a hundred petty honors as those other men did who\nwere earning their way through.\"\n\n\"Kids--child's play!\" scoffed his antagonist.\n\n\"Not by a darned sight--unless we're all children. Did you ever see\na grown man when he's trying for a secret society--or a rising family\nwhose name is up at some club? They'll jump when they hear the sound of\nthe word. The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in\nfront of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long\nthat we've forgotten there's any other way. We've made a world where\nthat's necessary. Let me tell you\"--Amory became emphatic--\"if there\nwere ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered a\ngreen ribbon for five hours' work a day and a blue ribbon for ten hours'\nwork a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon.\nThat competitive instinct only wants a badge. If the size of their house\nis the badge they'll sweat their heads off for that. If it's only a\nblue ribbon, I damn near believe they'll work just as hard. They have in\nother ages.\"\n\n\"I don't agree with you.\"\n\n\"I know it,\" said Amory nodding sadly. \"It doesn't matter any more\nthough. I think these people are going to come and take what they want\npretty soon.\"\n\nA fierce hiss came from the little man.\n\n\"_Machine-guns!_\"\n\n\"Ah, but you've taught them their use.\"\n\nThe big man shook his head.\n\n\"In this country there are enough property owners not to permit that\nsort of thing.\"\n\nAmory wished he knew the statistics of property owners and non-property\nowners; he decided to change the subject.\n\nBut the big man was aroused.\n\n\"When you talk of 'taking things away,' you're on dangerous ground.\"\n\n\"How can they get it without taking it? For years people have been\nstalled off with promises. Socialism may not be progress, but the threat\nof the red flag is certainly the inspiring force of all reform. You've\ngot to be sensational to get attention.\"\n\n\"Russia is your example of a beneficent violence, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Quite possibly,\" admitted Amory. \"Of course, it's overflowing just as\nthe French Revolution did, but I've no doubt that it's really a great\nexperiment and well worth while.\"\n\n\"Don't you believe in moderation?\"\n\n\"You won't listen to the moderates, and it's almost too late. The truth\nis that the public has done one of those startling and amazing things\nthat they do about once in a hundred years. They've seized an idea.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs\nare essentially the same.\"\n\n *****\n\nTHE LITTLE MAN GETS HIS\n\n\"If you took all the money in the world,\" said the little man with much\nprofundity, \"and divided it up in equ--\"\n\n\"Oh, shut up!\" said Amory briskly and, paying no attention to the little\nman's enraged stare, he went on with his argument.\n\n\"The human stomach--\" he began; but the big man interrupted rather\nimpatiently.\n\n\"I'm letting you talk, you know,\" he said, \"but please avoid stomachs.\nI've been feeling mine all day. Anyway, I don't agree with one-half\nyou've said. Government ownership is the basis of your whole argument,\nand it's invariably a beehive of corruption. Men won't work for blue\nribbons, that's all rot.\"\n\nWhen he ceased the little man spoke up with a determined nod, as if\nresolved this time to have his say out.\n\n\"There are certain things which are human nature,\" he asserted with an\nowl-like look, \"which always have been and always will be, which can't\nbe changed.\"\n\nAmory looked from the small man to the big man helplessly.\n\n\"Listen to that! _That's_ what makes me discouraged with progress.\n_Listen_ to that! I can name offhand over one hundred natural phenomena\nthat have been changed by the will of man--a hundred instincts in man\nthat have been wiped out or are now held in check by civilization. What\nthis man here just said has been for thousands of years the last refuge\nof the associated mutton-heads of the world. It negates the efforts of\nevery scientist, statesman, moralist, reformer, doctor, and philosopher\nthat ever gave his life to humanity's service. It's a flat impeachment\nof all that's worth while in human nature. Every person over twenty-five\nyears old who makes that statement in cold blood ought to be deprived of\nthe franchise.\"\n\nThe little man leaned back against the seat, his face purple with rage.\nAmory continued, addressing his remarks to the big man.\n\n\"These quarter-educated, stale-minded men such as your friend here, who\n_think_ they think, every question that comes up, you'll find his\ntype in the usual ghastly muddle. One minute it's 'the brutality and\ninhumanity of these Prussians'--the next it's 'we ought to exterminate\nthe whole German people.' They always believe that 'things are in a bad\nway now,' but they 'haven't any faith in these idealists.' One minute\nthey call Wilson 'just a dreamer, not practical'--a year later they rail\nat him for making his dreams realities. They haven't clear logical ideas\non one single subject except a sturdy, stolid opposition to all change.\nThey don't think uneducated people should be highly paid, but they won't\nsee that if they don't pay the uneducated people their children are\ngoing to be uneducated too, and we're going round and round in a circle.\nThat--is the great middle class!\"\n\nThe big man with a broad grin on his face leaned over and smiled at the\nlittle man.\n\n\"You're catching it pretty heavy, Garvin; how do you feel?\"\n\nThe little man made an attempt to smile and act as if the whole matter\nwere so ridiculous as to be beneath notice. But Amory was not through.\n\n\"The theory that people are fit to govern themselves rests on this man.\nIf he can be educated to think clearly, concisely, and logically,\nfreed of his habit of taking refuge in platitudes and prejudices and\nsentimentalisms, then I'm a militant Socialist. If he can't, then I\ndon't think it matters much what happens to man or his systems, now or\nhereafter.\"\n\n\"I am both interested and amused,\" said the big man. \"You are very\nyoung.\"\n\n\"Which may only mean that I have neither been corrupted nor made timid\nby contemporary experience. I possess the most valuable experience, the\nexperience of the race, for in spite of going to college I've managed to\npick up a good education.\"\n\n\"You talk glibly.\"\n\n\"It's not all rubbish,\" cried Amory passionately. \"This is the first\ntime in my life I've argued Socialism. It's the only panacea I know. I'm\nrestless. My whole generation is restless. I'm sick of a system where\nthe richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where\nthe artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button\nmanufacturer. Even if I had no talents I'd not be content to work ten\nyears, condemned either to celibacy or a furtive indulgence, to give\nsome man's son an automobile.\"\n\n\"But, if you're not sure--\"\n\n\"That doesn't matter,\" exclaimed Amory. \"My position couldn't be worse.\nA social revolution might land me on top. Of course I'm selfish. It\nseems to me I've been a fish out of water in too many outworn systems.\nI was probably one of the two dozen men in my class at college who got\na decent education; still they'd let any well-tutored flathead play\nfootball and _I_ was ineligible, because some silly old men thought we\nshould _all_ profit by conic sections. I loathed the army. I loathed\nbusiness. I'm in love with change and I've killed my conscience--\"\n\n\"So you'll go along crying that we must go faster.\"\n\n\"That, at least, is true,\" Amory insisted. \"Reform won't catch up to\nthe needs of civilization unless it's made to. A laissez-faire policy is\nlike spoiling a child by saying he'll turn out all right in the end. He\nwill--if he's made to.\"\n\n\"But you don't believe all this Socialist patter you talk.\"\n\n\"I don't know. Until I talked to you I hadn't thought seriously about\nit. I wasn't sure of half of what I said.\"\n\n\"You puzzle me,\" said the big man, \"but you're all alike. They say\nBernard Shaw, in spite of his doctrines, is the most exacting of all\ndramatists about his royalties. To the last farthing.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Amory, \"I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile\nmind in a restless generation--with every reason to throw my mind and\npen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were\nall blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and\nmy sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace\nold cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various\ntimes, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't a\nseeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game.\"\n\nFor a minute neither spoke and then the big man asked:\n\n\"What was your university?\"\n\n\"Princeton.\"\n\nThe big man became suddenly interested; the expression of his goggles\naltered slightly.\n\n\"I sent my son to Princeton.\"\n\n\"Did you?\"\n\n\"Perhaps you knew him. His name was Jesse Ferrenby. He was killed last\nyear in France.\"\n\n\"I knew him very well. In fact, he was one of my particular friends.\"\n\n\"He was--a--quite a fine boy. We were very close.\"\n\nAmory began to perceive a resemblance between the father and the\ndead son and he told himself that there had been all along a sense of\nfamiliarity. Jesse Ferrenby, the man who in college had borne off the\ncrown that he had aspired to. It was all so far away. What little boys\nthey had been, working for blue ribbons--\n\nThe car slowed up at the entrance to a great estate, ringed around by a\nhuge hedge and a tall iron fence.\n\n\"Won't you come in for lunch?\"\n\nAmory shook his head.\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Ferrenby, but I've got to get on.\"\n\nThe big man held out his hand. Amory saw that the fact that he had known\nJesse more than outweighed any disfavor he had created by his opinions.\nWhat ghosts were people with which to work! Even the little man insisted\non shaking hands.\n\n\"Good-by!\" shouted Mr. Ferrenby, as the car turned the corner and\nstarted up the drive. \"Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories.\"\n\n\"Same to you, sir,\" cried Amory, smiling and waving his hand.\n\n *****\n\n\"OUT OF THE FIRE, OUT OF THE LITTLE ROOM\"\n\nEight hours from Princeton Amory sat down by the Jersey roadside and\nlooked at the frost-bitten country. Nature as a rather coarse phenomenon\ncomposed largely of flowers that, when closely inspected, appeared\nmoth-eaten, and of ants that endlessly traversed blades of grass, was\nalways disillusioning; nature represented by skies and waters and far\nhorizons was more likable. Frost and the promise of winter thrilled him\nnow, made him think of a wild battle between St. Regis and Groton,\nages ago, seven years ago--and of an autumn day in France twelve months\nbefore when he had lain in tall grass, his platoon flattened down close\naround him, waiting to tap the shoulders of a Lewis gunner. He saw the\ntwo pictures together with somewhat the same primitive exaltation--two\ngames he had played, differing in quality of acerbity, linked in a way\nthat differed them from Rosalind or the subject of labyrinths which\nwere, after all, the business of life.\n\n\"I am selfish,\" he thought.\n\n\"This is not a quality that will change when I 'see human suffering' or\n'lose my parents' or 'help others.'\n\n\"This selfishness is not only part of me. It is the most living part.\n\n\"It is by somehow transcending rather than by avoiding that selfishness\nthat I can bring poise and balance into my life.\n\n\"There is no virtue of unselfishness that I cannot use. I can make\nsacrifices, be charitable, give to a friend, endure for a friend, lay\ndown my life for a friend--all because these things may be the best\npossible expression of myself; yet I have not one drop of the milk of\nhuman kindness.\"\n\nThe problem of evil had solidified for Amory into the problem of sex. He\nwas beginning to identify evil with the strong phallic worship in Brooke\nand the early Wells. Inseparably linked with evil was beauty--beauty,\nstill a constant rising tumult; soft in Eleanor's voice, in an old song\nat night, rioting deliriously through life like superimposed waterfalls,\nhalf rhythm, half darkness. Amory knew that every time he had reached\ntoward it longingly it had leered out at him with the grotesque face of\nevil. Beauty of great art, beauty of all joy, most of all the beauty of\nwomen.\n\nAfter all, it had too many associations with license and indulgence.\nWeak things were often beautiful, weak things were never good. And in\nthis new loneness of his that had been selected for what greatness he\nmight achieve, beauty must be relative or, itself a harmony, it would\nmake only a discord.\n\nIn a sense this gradual renunciation of beauty was the second step after\nhis disillusion had been made complete. He felt that he was leaving\nbehind him his chance of being a certain type of artist. It seemed so\nmuch more important to be a certain sort of man.\n\nHis mind turned a corner suddenly and he found himself thinking of the\nCatholic Church. The idea was strong in him that there was a certain\nintrinsic lack in those to whom orthodox religion was necessary, and\nreligion to Amory meant the Church of Rome. Quite conceivably it was an\nempty ritual but it was seemingly the only assimilative, traditionary\nbulwark against the decay of morals. Until the great mobs could be\neducated into a moral sense some one must cry: \"Thou shalt not!\" Yet\nany acceptance was, for the present, impossible. He wanted time and\nthe absence of ulterior pressure. He wanted to keep the tree without\nornaments, realize fully the direction and momentum of this new start.\n\n *****\n\nThe afternoon waned from the purging good of three o'clock to the golden\nbeauty of four. Afterward he walked through the dull ache of a setting\nsun when even the clouds seemed bleeding and at twilight he came to a\ngraveyard. There was a dusky, dreamy smell of flowers and the ghost of a\nnew moon in the sky and shadows everywhere. On an impulse he considered\ntrying to open the door of a rusty iron vault built into the side of\na hill; a vault washed clean and covered with late-blooming, weepy\nwatery-blue flowers that might have grown from dead eyes, sticky to the\ntouch with a sickening odor.\n\nAmory wanted to feel \"William Dayfield, 1864.\"\n\nHe wondered that graves ever made people consider life in vain. Somehow\nhe could find nothing hopeless in having lived. All the broken columns\nand clasped hands and doves and angels meant romances. He fancied that\nin a hundred years he would like having young people speculate as to\nwhether his eyes were brown or blue, and he hoped quite passionately\nthat his grave would have about it an air of many, many years ago. It\nseemed strange that out of a row of Union soldiers two or three made\nhim think of dead loves and dead lovers, when they were exactly like the\nrest, even to the yellowish moss.\n\n *****\n\nLong after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible,\nwith here and there a late-burning light--and suddenly out of the clear\ndarkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit\nof the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the\nmuddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes\nand half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new\ngeneration, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through\na revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that\ndirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated\nmore than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success;\ngrown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man\nshaken....\n\nAmory, sorry for them, was still not sorry for himself--art, politics,\nreligion, whatever his medium should be, he knew he was safe now, free\nfrom all hysteria--he could accept what was acceptable, roam, grow,\nrebel, sleep deep through many nights....\n\nThere was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot;\nthere was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth--yet\nthe waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility\nand a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized\ndreams. But--oh, Rosalind! Rosalind!...\n\n\"It's all a poor substitute at best,\" he said sadly.\n\nAnd he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had\ndetermined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the\npersonalities he had passed....\n\nHe stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.\n\n\"I know myself,\" he cried, \"but that is all.\""