"
"Oh! I didn't know. I'm just resting."
"Well--" began the man dubiously.
"I'll go if you want me to."
The man made non-committal noises in his throat and passed on. Amory
seated himself on an overturned boat and leaned forward thoughtfully
until his chin rested in his hand.
"Misfortune is liable to make me a damn bad man," he said slowly.
* * * *
IN THE DROOPING HOURS
While the rain drizzled on Amory looked futilely back at the stream of
his life, all its glitterings and dirty shallows. To begin with, he was
still afraid--not physically afraid any more, but afraid of people and
prejudice and misery and monotony. Yet, deep in his bitter heart,
he wondered if he was after all worse than this man or the next. He
knew that he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his
own weakness was just the result of circumstances and environment; that
often when he raged at himself as an egotist something would whisper
ingratiatingly: "No. Genius!" That was one manifestation of fear,
that voice which whispered that he could not be both great and good,
that genius was the exact combination of those inexplicable grooves and
twists in his mind, that any discipline would curb it to mediocrity.
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