We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired--been happy."

But his life would not be unfulfilled. He took a sombre satisfaction in
thinking that perhaps all along she had been nothing except what he had
read into her; that this was her high point, that no one else would ever
make her think. Yet that was what she had objected to in him; and Amory
was suddenly tired of thinking, thinking!

"Damn her!" he said bitterly, "she's spoiled my year!"

*****

THE SUPERMAN GROWS CARELESS

On a dusty day in September Amory arrived in Princeton and joined the
sweltering crowd of conditioned men who thronged the streets. It seemed
a stupid way to commence his upper-class years, to spend four hours a
morning in the stuffy room of a tutoring school, imbibing the infinite
boredom of conic sections. Mr. Rooney, pander to the dull, conducted the
class and smoked innumerable Pall Malls as he drew diagrams and worked
equations from six in the morning until midnight.

"Now, Langueduc, if I used that formula, where would my A point be?"

Langueduc lazily shifts his six-foot-three of football material and
tries to concentrate.

"Oh--ah--I'm damned if I know, Mr. Rooney."

"Oh, why of course, of course you can't _use_ that formula. _That's_
what I wanted you to say."

"Why, sure, of course."

"Do you see why?"

"You bet--I suppose so."

"If you don't see, tell me. I'm here to show you."

"Well, Mr. Rooney, if you don't mind, I wish you'd go over that again."

"Gladly. Now here's 'A'..."

The room was a study in stupidity--two huge stands for paper, Mr. Rooney
in his shirt-sleeves in front of them, and slouched around on chairs,
a dozen men: Fred Sloane, the pitcher, who absolutely _had_ to get
eligible; "Slim" Langueduc, who would beat Yale this fall, if only he
could master a poor fifty per cent; McDowell, gay young sophomore, who
thought it was quite a sporting thing to be tutoring here with all these
prominent athletes.

"Those poor birds who haven't a cent to tutor, and have to study during
the term are the ones I pity," he announced to Amory one day, with a
flaccid camaraderie in the droop of the cigarette from his pale lips. "I
should think it would be such a bore, there's so much else to do in New
York during the term. I suppose they don't know what they miss, anyhow."
There was such an air of "you and I" about Mr. McDowell that Amory very
nearly pushed him out of the ope