cetonian; maybe the freshmen _do_ think you're important--"

"You don't understand--"

"Yes, I do," she interrupted. "I _do_, because you're always talking
about yourself and I used to like it; now I don't."

"Have I to-night?"

"That's just the point," insisted Isabelle. "You got all upset to-night.
You just sat and watched my eyes. Besides, I have to think all the time
I'm talking to you--you're so critical."

"I make you think, do I?" Amory repeated with a touch of vanity.

"You're a nervous strain"--this emphatically--"and when you analyze
every little emotion and instinct I just don't have 'em."

"I know." Amory admitted her point and shook his head helplessly.

"Let's go." She stood up.

He rose abstractedly and they walked to the foot of the stairs.

"What train can I get?"

"There's one about 9:11 if you really must go."

"Yes, I've got to go, really. Good night."

"Good night."

They were at the head of the stairs, and as Amory turned into his room
he thought he caught just the faintest cloud of discontent in her face.
He lay awake in the darkness and wondered how much he cared--how much
of his sudden unhappiness was hurt vanity--whether he was, after all,
temperamentally unfitted for romance.

When he awoke, it was with a glad flood of consciousness. The early wind
stirred the chintz curtains at the windows and he was idly puzzled not
to be in his room at Princeton with his school football picture over
the bureau and the Triangle Club on the wall opposite. Then the
grandfather's clock in the hall outside struck eight, and the memory
of the night before came to him. He was out of bed, dressing, like the
wind; he must get out of the house before he saw Isabelle. What had
seemed a melancholy happening, now seemed a tiresome anticlimax. He was
dressed at half past, so he sat down by the window; felt that the sinews
of his heart were twisted somewhat more than he had thought. What an
ironic mockery the morning seemed!--bright and sunny, and full of the
smell of the garden; hearing Mrs. Borge's voice in the sun-parlor below,
he wondered where was Isabelle.

There was a knock at the door.

"The car will be around at ten minutes of nine, sir."

He returned to his contemplation of the outdoors, and began repeating
over and over, mechanically, a verse from Browning, which he had once
quoted to Isabelle in a letter:

"Each life unfulfilled, you see,
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy;