see you. He went to Harrow and
then to Yale--became a Catholic. I want him to talk to you--I feel he
can be such a help--" She stroked his auburn hair gently. "Dear Amory,
dear Amory--"

"Dear Beatrice--"

*****

So early in September Amory, provided with "six suits summer underwear,
six suits winter underwear, one sweater or T shirt, one jersey, one
overcoat, winter, etc.," set out for New England, the land of schools.

There were Andover and Exeter with their memories of New England
dead--large, college-like democracies; St. Mark's, Groton, St.
Regis'--recruited from Boston and the Knickerbocker families of New
York; St. Paul's, with its great rinks; Pomfret and St. George's,
prosperous and well-dressed; Taft and Hotchkiss, which prepared
the wealth of the Middle West for social success at Yale; Pawling,
Westminster, Choate, Kent, and a hundred others; all milling out their
well-set-up, conventional, impressive type, year after year; their
mental stimulus the college entrance exams; their vague purpose set
forth in a hundred circulars as "To impart a Thorough Mental, Moral, and
Physical Training as a Christian Gentleman, to fit the boy for meeting
the problems of his day and generation, and to give a solid foundation
in the Arts and Sciences."

At St. Regis' Amory stayed three days and took his exams with a scoffing
confidence, then doubling back to New York to pay his tutelary visit.
The metropolis, barely glimpsed, made little impression on him, except
for the sense of cleanliness he drew from the tall white buildings seen
from a Hudson River steamboat in the early morning. Indeed, his mind was
so crowded with dreams of athletic prowess at school that he considered
this visit only as a rather tiresome prelude to the great adventure.
This, however, it did not prove to be.

Monsignor Darcy's house was an ancient, rambling structure set on a hill
overlooking the river, and there lived its owner, between his trips to
all parts of the Roman-Catholic world, rather like an exiled Stuart king
waiting to be called to the rule of his land. Monsignor was forty-four
then, and bustling--a trifle too stout for symmetry, with hair the color
of spun gold, and a brilliant, enveloping personality. When he came into
a room clad in his full purple regalia from thatch to toe, he resembled
a Turner sunset, and attracted both admiration and attention. He had
written two novels: one of them violently anti-Catholic, just b