felt most
natural in a recumbent position.

"You used to be entertaining before you started to write," he continued.
"Now you save any idea that you think would do to print."

Existence had settled back to an ambitionless normality. They had
decided that with economy they could still afford the apartment, which
Tom, with the domesticity of an elderly cat, had grown fond of. The old
English hunting prints on the wall were Tom's, and the large tapestry by
courtesy, a relic of decadent days in college, and the great profusion
of orphaned candlesticks and the carved Louis XV chair in which no one
could sit more than a minute without acute spinal disorders--Tom
claimed that this was because one was sitting in the lap of Montespan's
wraith--at any rate, it was Tom's furniture that decided them to stay.

They went out very little: to an occasional play, or to dinner at the
Ritz or the Princeton Club. With prohibition the great rendezvous had
received their death wounds; no longer could one wander to the Biltmore
bar at twelve or five and find congenial spirits, and both Tom and Amory
had outgrown the passion for dancing with mid-Western or New Jersey
debbies at the Club-de-Vingt (surnamed the "Club de Gink") or the Plaza
Rose Room--besides even that required several cocktails "to come down to
the intellectual level of the women present," as Amory had once put it
to a horrified matron.

Amory had lately received several alarming letters from Mr. Barton--the
Lake Geneva house was too large to be easily rented; the best rent
obtainable at present would serve this year to little more than pay for
the taxes and necessary improvements; in fact, the lawyer suggested
that the whole property was simply a white elephant on Amory's hands.
Nevertheless, even though it might not yield a cent for the next three
years, Amory decided with a vague sentimentality that for the present,
at any rate, he would not sell the house.

This particular day on which he announced his ennui to Tom had been
quite typical. He had risen at noon, lunched with Mrs. Lawrence, and
then ridden abstractedly homeward atop one of his beloved buses.

"Why shouldn't you be bored," yawned Tom. "Isn't that the conventional
frame of mind for the young man of your age and condition?"

"Yes," said Amory speculatively, "but I'm more than bored; I am
restless."

"Love and war did for you."

"Well," Amory considered, "I'm not sure that the war itself had any
great ef