BOOK TWO: The Education of a Personage
1. THE DEBUTANTE
2. EXPERIMENTS IN CONVALESCENCE
3. YOUNG IRONY
4. THE SUPERCILIOUS SACRIFICE
5. THE EGOTIST BECOMES A PERSONAGE



BOOK ONE

The Romantic Egotist

CHAPTER 1

Amory, Son of Beatrice


Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray
inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual,
inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the
Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two
elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of
feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice
O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his
height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial
moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many
years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an unassertive
figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually