being an Irish patriot--he suspected that being Irish was being somewhat
common--but Monsignor assured him that Ireland was a romantic lost cause
and Irish people quite charming, and that it should, by all means,
be one of his principal biasses.

After a crowded hour which included several more cigarettes, and during
which Monsignor learned, to his surprise but not to his horror, that
Amory had not been brought up a Catholic, he announced that he had
another guest. This turned out to be the Honorable Thornton Hancock,
of Boston, ex-minister to The Hague, author of an erudite history of the
Middle Ages and the last of a distinguished, patriotic, and brilliant
family.

"He comes here for a rest," said Monsignor confidentially, treating Amory
as a contemporary. "I act as an escape from the weariness of agnosticism,
and I think I'm the only man who knows how his staid old mind is really
at sea and longs for a sturdy spar like the Church to cling to."

Their first luncheon was one of the memorable events of Amory's early
life. He was quite radiant and gave off a peculiar brightness and charm.
Monsignor called out the best that he had thought by question and
suggestion, and Amory talked with an ingenious brilliance of a thousand
impulses and desires and repulsions and faiths and fears. He and
Monsignor held the floor, and the older man, with his less receptive,
less accepting, yet certainly not colder mentality, seemed content to
listen and bask in the mellow sunshine that played between these two.
Monsignor gave the effect of sunlight to many people; Amory gave it in
his youth and, to some extent, when he was very much older, but never
again was it quite so mutually spontaneous.