rl. I like sunshine and pretty things
and cheerfulness--and I dread responsibility. I don't want to think
about pots and kitchens and brooms. I want to worry whether my legs will
get slick and brown when I swim in the summer.

AMORY: And you love me.

ROSALIND: That's just why it has to end. Drifting hurts too much. We
can't have any more scenes like this.

(She draws his ring from her finger and hands it to him. Their eyes
blind again with tears.)

AMORY: (His lips against her wet cheek) Don't! Keep it, please--oh,
don't break my heart!

(She presses the ring softly into his hand.)

ROSALIND: (Brokenly) You'd better go.

AMORY: Good-by--

(She looks at him once more, with infinite longing, infinite sadness.)

ROSALIND: Don't ever forget me, Amory--

AMORY: Good-by--

(He goes to the door, fumbles for the knob, finds it--she sees him throw
back his head--and he is gone. Gone--she half starts from the lounge and
then sinks forward on her face into the pillows.)

ROSALIND: Oh, God, I want to die! (After a moment she rises and with
her eyes closed feels her way to the door. Then she turns and looks once
more at the room. Here they had sat and dreamed: that tray she had so
often filled with matches for him; that shade that they had discreetly
lowered one long Sunday afternoon. Misty-eyed she stands and remembers;
she speaks aloud.) Oh, Amory, what have I done to you?

(And deep under the aching sadness that will pass in time, Rosalind
feels that she has lost something, she knows not what, she knows not
why.)

CHAPTER 2. Experiments in Convalescence

The Knickerbocker Bar, beamed upon by Maxfield Parrish's jovial,
colorful "Old King Cole," was well crowded. Amory stopped in the
entrance and looked at his wrist-watch; he wanted particularly to know
the time, for something in his mind that catalogued and classified liked
to chip things off cleanly. Later it would satisfy him in a vague way to
be able to think "that thing ended at exactly twenty minutes after eight
on Thursday, June 10, 1919." This was allowing for the walk from
her house--a walk concerning which he had afterward not the faintest
recollection.

He was in rather grotesque condition: two days of worry and nervousness,
of sleepless nights, of untouched meals, culminating in the emotional
crisis and Rosalind's abrupt decision--the strain of it had drugged the
foreground of his mind into a merciful coma. As he fumbled clumsily with
the ol