wonderful visions." She pressed the palms of her hands into her
eyes. "I saw bronze rivers lapping marble shores, and great birds

that soared through the air, parti-colored birds with iridescent
plumage. I heard strange music and the flare of barbaric

trumpets what?"
Amory had snickered.

"What, Amory?"
"I said go on, Beatrice."

"That was allit merely recurred and recurred gardens that
flaunted coloring against which this would be quite dull, moons

that whirled and swayed, paler than winter moons, more golden
than harvest moons"

"Are you quite well now, Beatrice?"
"Quite wellas well as I will ever be. I am not understood, Amory.

I know that can't express it to you, Amory, butI am not
understood."

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

"Poor Beatrice poor Beatrice."
"Tell me about you, Amory. Did you have two horrible years?"

Amory considered lying, and then decided against it.
"No, Beatrice. I enjoyed them. I adapted myself to the

bourgeoisie. I became conventional." He surprised himself by
saying that, and he pictured how Froggy would have gaped.

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

Beatrice showed some alarm.
"But you're only fifteen."

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

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

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

"Yes?"
"To St. Regis's in Connecticut."

Amory felt a quick excitement.
"It's being arranged," continued Beatrice. "It's better that you

should go away. I'd have preferred you to have gone to Eton, and
then to Christ Church, Oxford, but it seems impracticable nowand

for the present we'll let the university question take care of
itself."

"What are you going to do, Beatrice?"
"Heaven knows. It seems my fate to fret away my years in this

country. Not for a second do I regret being Americanindeed, I
think that a regret typical of very vulgar people, and I feel

sure we are the great coming nationyet"and she sighed"I feel my
life should have drowsed away close to an older, mellower

civilization, a land of greens and autumnal browns"
Amory did not answer, so his mother continued:

"My regret is that you haven't been abroad, but still, as you are
a man, it's better that you should grow up here under the

snarling eagleis that the right term?"
Amory agreed that it was. She would not have appreciated the

Japanese invasion.
"When do I go to school?"

"Next month. You'll have to start East a little early to take
your examinations. After that you'll have a free week, so I want

you to go up the Hudson and pay a visit."
"To who?"

"To Monsignor Darcy, Amory. He wants to see you. He went to
Harrow and then to Yalebecame a Catholic. I want him to talk to

youI feel he can be such a help" She stroked his auburn hair
gently. "Dear Amory, dear Amory"

"Dear Beatrice"
So early in September Amory, provided with "six suits summer

underwear, six suits winter underwear, one sweater or T shirt,
one jersey, one overcoat, winter, etc.," set out for New England,

the land of schools.
There were Andover and Exeter with their memories of New England

deadlarge, college-like democracies; St. Mark's, Groton, St.
Regis'recruited from Boston and the Knickerbocker families of New

York; St. Paul's, with its great rinks; Pomfret and St. George's,
prosperous and well-dressed; Taft and Hotchkiss, which prepared

the wealth of the Middle West for social success at Yale;
Pawling, Westminster, Choate, Kent, and a hundred others; all

milling out their well-set-up, conventional, impressive type,
year after year; their mentalstimulus the college entrance

exams; their vague purpose set forth in a hundred circulars as
"To impart a Thorough Mental, Moral, and Physical Training as a

Christian Gentleman, to fit the boy for meeting the problems of
his day and generation, and to give a solid foundation in the

Arts and Sciences."
At St. Regis' Amory stayed three days and took his exams with a

scoffing confidence, then doubling back to New York to pay his
tutelary visit. The metropolis, barely glimpsed, made little

impression on him, except for the sense of cleanliness he drew
from the tall white buildings seen from a Hudson River steamboat

in the early morning. Indeed, his mind was so crowded with dreams
of athleticprowess at school that he considered this visit only

as a rather tiresome prelude to the great adventure. This,
however, it did not prove to be.

Monsignor Darcy's house was an ancient, rambling structure set on
a hill overlooking the river, and there lived its owner, between

his trips to all parts of the Roman-Catholic world, rather like
an exiled Stuart king waiting to be called to the rule of his

land. Monsignor was forty-four then, and bustlinga trifle too
stout for symmetry, with hair the color of spun gold, and a

brilliant, enveloping personality. When he came into a room clad
in his full purple regalia from thatch to toe, he resembled a

Turner sunset, and attracted both admiration and attention. He
had written two novels: one of them violently anti-Catholic, just

before his conversion, and five years later another, in which he
had attempted to turn all his clever jibes against Catholics into

even cleverer innuendoes against Episcopalians. He was intensely
ritualistic, startlingly dramatic, loved the idea of God enough

to be a celibate, and rather liked his neighbor.
Children adored him because he was like a child; youth revelled

in his company because he was still a youth, and couldn't be
shocked. In the proper land and century he might have been a

Richelieuat present he was a very moral, very religious (if not
particularly pious) clergyman, making a great mystery about

pulling rusty wires, and appreciating life to the fullest, if not
entirely enjoying it.

He and Amory took to each other at first sight the jovial,
impressive prelate who could dazzle an embassy ball, and the

green-eyed, intent youth, in his first long trousers, accepted in
their own minds a relation of father and son within a half-hour's

conversation.
"My dear boy, I've been waiting to see you for years. Take a big

chair and we'll have a chat."
"I've just come from school St. Regis's, you know."

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

and mathematics"
Amory nodded vehemently.

"Hate 'em all. Like English and history."
"Of course. You'll hate school for a while, too, but I'm glad

you're going to St. Regis's."
"Why?"