d, usually aroused the
jealous suspicions of the next borrower.

*****

All through the summer months Amory and Frog Parker went each week to
the Stock Company. Afterward they would stroll home in the balmy air of
August night, dreaming along Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues, through the
gay crowd. Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a
boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him
and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of
expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts of
fourteen.

Always, after he was in bed, there were voices--indefinite, fading,
enchanting--just outside his window, and before he fell asleep he would
dream one of his favorite waking dreams, the one about becoming a great
half-back, or the one about the Japanese invasion, when he was rewarded
by being made the youngest general in the world. It was always
the becoming he dreamed of, never the being. This, too, was quite
characteristic of Amory.

*****

CODE OF THE YOUNG EGOTIST

Before he was summoned back to Lake Geneva, he had appeared, shy but
inwardly glowing, in his first long trousers, set off by a purple
accordion tie and a "Belmont" collar with the edges unassailably
meeting, purple socks, and handkerchief with a purple border peeping
from his breast pocket. But more than that, he had formulated his first
philosophy, a code to live by, which, as near as it can be named, was a
sort of aristocratic egotism.

He had realized that his best interests were bound up with those of a
certain variant, changing person, whose label, in order that his past
might always be identified with him, was Amory Blaine. Amory marked
himself a fortunate youth, capable of infinite expansion for good or
evil. He did not consider himself a "strong char'c'ter," but relied on
his facility (learn things sorta quick) and his superior mentality (read
a lotta deep books). He was proud of the fact that he could never
become a mechanical or scientific genius. From no other heights was he
debarred.

Physically.--Amory thought that he was exceedingly handsome. He was. He
fancied himself an athlete of possibilities and a supple dancer.

Socially.--Here his condition was, perhaps, most dangerous. He granted
himself personality, charm, magnetism, poise, the power of dominating
all contemporary males, the gift of fascinating all women.

Mentally.--Complete, unques