He was
changed as completely as Amory Blaine could ever be changed. Amory plus
Beatrice plus two years in Minneapolis--these had been his ingredients
when he entered St. Regis'. But the Minneapolis years were not a thick
enough overlay to conceal the "Amory plus Beatrice" from the ferreting
eyes of a boarding-school, so St. Regis' had very painfully drilled
Beatrice out of him, and begun to lay down new and more conventional
planking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory were
unconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himself
changed. Those qualities for which he had suffered, his moodiness,
his tendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool,
were now taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star
quarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the St. Regis Tattler:
it puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating the very
vanities that had not long ago been contemptible weaknesses.
After the football season he slumped into dreamy content. The night
of the pre-holiday dance he slipped away and went early to bed for the
pleasure of hearing the violin music cross the grass and come surging in
at his window.
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