or and broke into dry sobs.

The doctor had arrived, and Amory went over to the couch, where some
one handed him a sheet to put over the body. With a sudden hardness, he
raised one of the hands and let it fall back inertly. The brow was cold
but the face not expressionless. He looked at the shoe-laces--Dick had
tied them that morning. _He_ had tied them--and now he was this heavy
white mass. All that remained of the charm and personality of the Dick
Humbird he had known--oh, it was all so horrible and unaristocratic and
close to the earth. All tragedy has that strain of the grotesque
and squalid--so useless, futile... the way animals die.... Amory was
reminded of a cat that had lain horribly mangled in some alley of his
childhood.

"Some one go to Princeton with Ferrenby."

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

*****

CRESCENDO!

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

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

The next day was another whirl. They lunched in a gay party of six in a
private dining-room at the club, while Isabelle and Amory looked at each
other tenderly over the fried chicken and knew that their love was to be
eternal. They danced away the prom until five, and the stags cut in on
Isabelle with joyous abandon, which grew more and more enthusiastic as
the hour grew late, and their wines, stored