afraid of him as a highbrow. Kerry, who saw through his poetic patter
to the solid, almost respectable depths within, was immensely amused and
would have him recite poetry by the hour, while he lay with closed eyes
on Amory's sofa and listened:

"Asleep or waking is it? for her neck
Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck
Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;
Soft and stung softly--fairer for a fleck . . ."

"That's good," Kerry would say softly. "It pleases the elder Holiday.
That's a great poet, I guess." Tom, delighted at an audience, would
ramble through the "Poems and Ballades" until Kerry and Amory knew them
almost as well as he.

Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the
big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the
artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willows.
May came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered the
campus at all hours through starlight and rain.

* * * *

A DAMP SYMBOLIC INTERLUDE

The night mist fell. From the moon it rolled, clustered about the spires
and towers, and then settled below them, so that the dreaming peaks
were still in lofty aspiration toward the sky. Figures that dotted the
day like ants now brushed along as shadowy ghosts, in and out of the
foreground. The Gothic halls and cloisters were infinitely more