an year, seemed to Amory a perfect
type of aristocrat. He was slender but well-built--black curly hair,
straight features, and rather a dark skin. Everything he said sounded
intangibly appropriate. He possessed infinite courage, an averagely good
mind, and a sense of honor with a clear charm and _noblesse oblige_
that varied it from righteousness. He could dissipate without going to
pieces, and even his most bohemian adventures never seemed "running it
out." People dressed like him, tried to talk as he did.... Amory decided
that he probably held the world back, but he wouldn't have changed him.
...

He differed from the healthy type that was essentially middle class--he
never seemed to perspire. Some people couldn't be familiar with a
chauffeur without having it returned; Humbird could have lunched at
Sherry's with a colored man, yet people would have somehow known that
it was all right. He was not a snob, though he knew only half his class.
His friends ranged from the highest to the lowest, but it was impossible
to "cultivate" him. Servants worshipped him, and treated him like a god.
He seemed the eternal example of what the upper class tries to be.

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

Amory had felt a curious sinking sensation.

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

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

"Beaches of Lukanon before the sealers came."

It was still a music, though, infinitely sorrowful.

Ten o'clock found them penniless. They had suppered greatly on their
last eleven cents and, singing, strolled up through the casinos and
lighted arches on the boardwalk, stopping to listen approvingly to all
band concerts. In one place Kerry took up a col