nd despatched
it to a magazine, receiving in return a check for sixty dollars and a
request for more of the same tone. This tickled his vanity, but inspired
him to no further effort.

He read enormously. He was puzzled and depressed by "A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man"; intensely interested by "Joan and Peter" and
"The Undying Fire," and rather surprised by his discovery through a
critic named Mencken of several excellent American novels: "Vandover
and the Brute," "The Damnation of Theron Ware," and "Jennie Gerhardt."
Mackenzie, Chesterton, Galsworthy, Bennett, had sunk in his
appreciation from sagacious, life-saturated geniuses to merely diverting
contemporaries. Shaw's aloof clarity and brilliant consistency and the
gloriously intoxicated efforts of H. G. Wells to fit the key of romantic
symmetry into the elusive lock of truth, alone won his rapt attention.

He wanted to see Monsignor Darcy, to whom he had written when he landed,
but he had not heard from him; besides he knew that a visit to Monsignor
would entail the story of Rosalind, and the thought of repeating it
turned him cold with horror.

In his search for cool people he remembered Mrs. Lawrence, a very
intelligent, very dignified lady, a convert to the church, and a great
devotee of Monsignor's.

He called her on the 'phone one day. Yes, she remembered him perfectly;
no, Monsignor wasn't in town, was in Boston she thought; he'd promised
to come to dinner when he returned. Couldn't Amory take luncheon with
her?

"I thought I'd better catch up, Mrs. Lawrence," he said rather
ambiguously when he arrived.

"Monsignor was here just last week," said Mrs. Lawrence regretfully. "He
was very anxious to see you, but he'd left your address at home."

"Did he think I'd plunged into Bolshevism?" asked Amory, interested.

"Oh, he's having a frightful time."

"Why?"

"About the Irish Republic. He thinks it lacks dignity."

"So?"

"He went to Boston when the Irish President arrived and he was greatly
distressed because the receiving committee, when they rode in an
automobile, _would_ put their arms around the President."

"I don't blame him."

"Well, what impressed you more than anything while you were in the army?
You look a great deal older."

"That's from another, more disastrous battle," he answered, smiling in
spite of himself. "But the army--let me see--well, I discovered that
physical courage depends to a great extent on the physical shape