wait until another day. The stag line is a most homogeneous mass of men. It fairly sways with a single soul. A dark-haired beauty dances by and there is a half-gasping sound as the ripple surges forward and some one sleeker than the rest darts out and cuts in. Then when the six-foot girl (brought by Kaye in your class, and to whom he has been trying to introduce you all evening) gallops by, the line surges back and the groups face about and become intent on far corners of the hall, for Kaye, anxious and perspiring, appears elbowing through the crowd in search of familiar faces.
“I say, old man, I’ve got an awfully nice——”
“Sorry, Kaye, but I’m set for this one. I’ve got to cut in on a fella.”
“Well, the next one?”
“What—ah—er—I swear I’ve got to go cut in—look me up when she’s got a dance free.”
It delighted Amory when Isabelle suggested that they leave for a while and drive around in her car. For a delicious hour that passed too soon they glided the silent roads about Princeton and talked from the surface of their hearts in shy excitement. Amory felt strangely ingenuous and made no attempt to kiss her.
Next day they rode up through the Jersey country, had luncheon in New York, and in the afternoon went to see a problem play at which Isabelle wept all through the second act, rather to Amory’s embarrassment—though it filled him with tenderness to watch her. He was tempted to lean over and kiss away her tears, and she slipped her hand into his under cover of darkness to be pressed softly.
Then at six they arrived at the Borgés’ summer place on Long Island, and Amory rushed up-stairs to change into a dinner coat. As he put in his studs he realized that he was enjoying life as he would probably never enjoy it again. Everything was hallowed by the haze of his own youth. He had arrived, abreast of the best in his generation at Princeton. He was in love and his love was returned. Turning on all the lights, he looked at himself in the mirror, trying to find in his own face the qualities that made him see clearer than the great crowd of people, that made him decide firmly, and able to influence and follow his own will. There was little in his life now that he would have changed…. Oxford might have been a bigger field.
Silently he admired himself. How conveniently well he looked, and how well a dinner coat became him. He stepped into the hall and then waited at the top of the stairs, for he heard footsteps coming. It was Isabelle, and from the top of her shining hair to her little golden slippers she had never seemed so beautiful.
“Isabelle!” he cried, half involuntarily, and held out his arms. As in the story-books, she ran into them, and on that half-minute, as their lips first touched, rested the high point of vanity, the crest of his young egotism.
Chapter 3.
The Egotist Considers
“Ouch ! Let me go!”
He dropped his arms to his sides.
“What’s the matter?”
“Your shirt stud—it hurt me—look!” She was looking down at her neck, where a little blue spot about the size of a pea marred its pallor.
“Oh, Isabelle,” he reproached himself, “I’m a goopher. Really, I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have held you so close.”
She looked up impatiently.
“Oh, Amory, of course you couldn’t help it, and it didn’t hurt much; but what are we going to do about it?”
“Do about it?” he asked. “Oh—that spot; it’ll disappear in a second.”
“It isn’t,” she said, after a moment of concentrated gazing, “it’s still there—and it looks like Old Nick—oh, Amory, what’ll we do! It’s just the height of your shoulder.”
“Massage it,” he suggested, repressing the faintest inclination to laugh.
She rubbed it delicately with the tips of her fingers, and then a tear gathered in the corner of her eye, and slid down her cheek.
“Oh, Amory,” she said despairingly, lifting up a most pathetic face, “I’ll just make my whole neck flame if I rub it. What’ll I do?”
A quotation sailed into his head and he couldn’t resist repeating it aloud.
“All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this little hand.”
She looked up and the sparkle of the tear in her eye was like ice.
“You’re not very sympathetic.”
Amory mistook her meaning.
“Isabelle, darling, I think it’ll——”
“Don’t touch me!” she cried. “Haven’t I enough on my mind and you stand there and laugh!”
Then he slipped again.
“Well, it is funny, Isabelle, and we were talking the other day about a sense of humor being——”
She was looking at him with something that was not a smile, rather the faint, mirthless echo of a smile, in the corners of her mouth.
“Oh, shut up!” she cried suddenly, and fled down the hallway toward her room. Amory stood there, covered with remorseful confusion.
“Damn!”
When Isabelle reappeared she had thrown a light wrap about her shoulders, and they descended the stairs in a silence that endured through dinner.
“Isabelle,” he began rather testily, as they arranged themselves in the car, bound for a dance at the Greenwich Country Club, “you’re angry, and I’ll be, too, in a minute. Let’s kiss and make up.”
Isabelle considered glumly.
“I hate to be laughed at,” she said finally.
“I won’t laugh any more. I’m not laughing now, am I?”
“You did.”
“Oh, don’t be so darned feminine.”
Her lips curled slightly.
“I’ll be anything I want.”
Amory kept his temper with difficulty. He became aware that he had not an ounce of real affection for Isabelle, but her coldness piqued him. He wanted to kiss her, kiss her a lot, because then he knew he could leave in the morning and not care. On the contrary, if he didn’t kiss her, it would worry him…. It would interfere vaguely with his idea of himself as a conqueror. It wasn’t dignified to come off second best, pleading, with a doughty warrior like Isabelle.
Perhaps she suspected this. At any rate, Amory watched the night that should have been the consummation of romance glide by with great moths overhead and the heavy fragrance of roadside gardens, but without those broken words, those little sighs….
Afterward they suppered on ginger ale and devil’s food in the pantry, and Amory announced a decision.
“I’m leaving early in the morning.”
“Why?”
