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“It is an ancient tradition that all boys are obsessed with the idea of being grown. This is because they occasionally give voice to their impatience with the restraints of youth, while those great stretches of time when they are more than content to be boys find expression in action and not in words. Sometimes Basil wanted to be just a little bit older, but no more.”

Hubert was 15,a somewhat shallow boy save for two or three felicities which he possessed to an extraordinary degree.But one excellence suggests the presence of others,& young ladies never failed to respond to his most casual fancy,enduring his fickleness of heart & never convinced that his fundamental indifference might not be overcome.They were dazzled by his flashing self-confidence,by his cherubic ingenuousness,

It was a puzzling face. Her long eyelashes lay softly against her pale cheeks, almost touching them, as if to conceal the infinite boredom in her eyes, but when she smiled, her expression was illumined by a fiery and lovely friendliness, as if she were saying, “Go on; I’m listening. I’m fascinated. I’ve been waiting — oh, ages — for just this moment with you.”

Outside his window the autumn dusk was split with shafts of lights from passing cars.In these cars were great football players & lovely débutantes, mysterious adventuresses & international spies — rich,gay,glamorous people moving toward brilliant encounters in New York,at fashionable dances & secret cafés,or on roof gardens under the autumn moon.He sighed;perhaps he could blend in these more romantic things later

It was a frosty gold October day, tinged with the blue smoke of Indian summer, weather that set him dreaming of future splendors, triumphant descents upon cities, romantic contacts with mysterious and scarcely mortal girls. In his room he floated off into an ambulatory dream in which he walked up and down repeating to himself tag ends of phrases...

Every year for three years he had taken his vacation during the last two weeks in April, perhaps because it was then that he felt the most need for remembering. It was in April that what was destined to be the best part of his life had come to a culmination under a romantic moonlight. It was sacred to him — for what he had thought of as an initiation and a beginning had turned out to be the end.

What surprised him most about making love was that it seemed to have no element of wild passion-regret,desire,despair-but a delirious promise of such happiness in the world,in living,as he had never known.1st love-this was only 1st love!What must love itself in its fullness,perfection be.He didn’t know that what he was experiencing then,that unreal,undesirous medley of ecstasy&peace,would be unrecapturable forever

What is everyone doing there?she whispered. It looks as though something gorgeous was going on, but what it is I can’t quite tell
Everyone there is making love,said Val quietly.
Is that it?She looked for a long time,with a strange expression in her eyes.Then I want to go home to America,she said.There is too much love here. I want to go home tomorrow
You are afraid of being in love then?
She shook her head.

Americans. Val’s mother had taught him to look down on Americans, but she hadn’t succeeded in making him dislike them. American men noticed you, even if you were seventeen. He liked Americans. Although he was thoroughly Russian he wasn’t immaculately so — the exact proportion, like that of a celebrated soap, was about ninety-nine and three-quarters per cent.

The Russians, of course, were gay people on the Continent in the gala days before the war. Of the three races that used Southern France for a pleasure ground they were easily the most adept at the grand manner. The English were too practical, and the Americans, though they spent freely, had no tradition of romantic conduct. But the Russians — there was a people as gallant as the Latins, and rich besides!

All the time in the world — his life and hers. But for an instant as he kissed her he knew that though he search through eternity he could never recapture those lost April hours. He might press her close now till the muscles knotted on his arms — she was something desirable and rare that he had fought for and made his own — but never again an intangible whisper in the dusk, or on the breeze of night. . . .

He was indifferent to popular opinion.Nor,when he had seen that it was no use,that he did not possess in himself the power to move fundamentally or to hold Judy,did he bear any malice toward her.He loved her,& he would love her until the day he was too old for loving—but he could not have her.So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong,just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness

May at last. Dexter walked the streets at night when the darkness was damp as rain,wondering that so soon,with so little done,so much of ecstasy had gone from him.May one year back had been marked by Judy’s poignant, unforgivable, yet forgiven turbulence — it had been one of those rare times when he fancied she had grown to care for him.That old penny’s worth of happiness he had spent for this bushel of content

If you run your hand along Samuel’s jaw you'd feel a lump.He admits he's never been sure which fist left it there,but he wouldn't lose it for anything.He says there's no cad like an old cad,& that sometimes just before making a decision,it's a great help to stroke his chin.They call it a nervous characteristic,but it's not that.It's so he can feel again the gorgeous clarity, the lightning sanity of those four fists

“Samuel didn't sleep much that night. He knew that for the first time in his business career he had made a dismal, miserable failure. But some instinct in him, stronger than will, deeper than training, had forced him to do what would probably end his ambitions and his happiness. But it was done and it never occurred to him that he could have acted otherwise.”

His mind was that exquisite tabula rasa that a university education sometimes leaves, but he had both energy and influence, so he used his former ability as a dodging half-back in twisting through Wall Street crowds as runner for a bank.

His diversion was—women. There were half a dozen: two or three débutantes, an actress (in a minor way), a grass-widow, and one sentimental little brunette who was married

At present no one I know has the slightest desire to hit Samuel Meredith;possibly this is because a man over fifty is liable to be rather severely cracked at the impact of a hostile fist,but,I am inclined to think that all his hitable qualities have quite vanished.But it is certain that at various times in his life hitable qualities were in his face,as surely as kissable qualities have ever lurked in a girl's lips

Dalyrimple,you've got brains & you've got the stuff in you—& that's what I want.I'm going to put you into the State Senate

The what?

The State Senate.We want a young man who has got brains,but is solid & not a loafer.& when I say State Senate I don't stop there.We're up against it here.We've got to get some young men into politics-you know the old blood that's been running on the party ticket year in & year out

Other men who broke the laws of justice and charity lied to all the world. He at any rate would not lie to himself. He was more than Byronic now: not the spiritual rebel, Don Juan; not the philosophical rebel, Faust; but a new psychological rebel of his own century—defying the sentimental a priori forms of his own mind——

Cutting corners—the words began to fall apart,forming curious phrasings—little illuminated pieces of themselves,each of which had a strangely familiar ring.

Cutting corners meant rejecting the old childhood principles that success came from faithfulness to duty,that evil was necessarily punished or virtue necessarily rewarded—that honest poverty was happier than corrupt riches

It meant being hard

I don't want to shock you,Kieth,but I can't tell you how—how inconvenient being a Catholic is.It really doesn't seem to apply any more.As far as morals go, some of the wildest boys I know are Catholics.& the brightest boys—I mean the ones who think and read a lot, don't seem to believe in much of anything any more

Tell me about it.The bus won't be here for another half-hour

They sat down on a bench by the path

I'm all right, she repeated.

But though a warm peace was falling her mind and heart she felt oddly broken and chastened, as if some one had held her stripped soul up and laughed.

“But people want human sympathy," objected Lois. "They want to feel the other person's been tempted."

"Lois, in their hearts they want to feel that the other person's been weak. That's what they mean by human.”

She saw how quickly he had turned her remark and instantly she knew what this quality was that he gave off. He was sweet. Her thoughts went of on a side-track and then she broke the silence with an odd remark.

Sweetness is hard, she said suddenly.

What?

Nothing, she denied in confusion. I didn't mean to speak aloud. I was thinking of something—I suppose real sweetness is a sort of hardness—and strength.

She found herself analyzing his personality as she analyzed the personality of every man she met. She wondered if the effect of—of intimacy that he gave was bred by his constant repetition of her name. He said it as if he loved the word, as if it had an inherent meaning to him.

Of course he had been only nineteen then & now he was thirty-six—didn't look like that at all;in recent snap-shots he was much broader & his hair had grown a little thin, but the impression of her brother she had always retained was that of the big picture.& so she had always been a little sorry for him.What a life for a man!Seventeen years of preparation & he wasn't even a priest yet—wouldn't be for another year

Again Bernice had to speak
Do you want me to go home?
Well,said Marjorie,considering,I suppose if you're not having a good time you'd better go.No use being miserable
Don't you think common kindness—
Oh,please don't quote 'Little Women'!cried Marjorie impatiently.That's out of style
You think so?
Heavens,yes!What modern girl could live like those inane females?
They were the models for our mothers
Marjorie laughed

There was another silence, while Marjorie considered whether or not convincing her mother was worth the trouble.

People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Having decided this, Marjorie said good night.

No matter how beautiful or brilliant a girl may be,the reputation of not being frequently cut in on makes her position at a dance unfortunate.Perhaps boys prefer her company to that of the butterflies with whom they dance a dozen times an but,youth in this jazz-nourished generation is temperamentally restless,and the idea of fox-trotting more than one full fox trot with the same girl is distasteful,not to say odious.

The balcony was inside. It consisted of the circle of wicker chairs that lined the wall of the combination clubroom and ballroom. At these Saturday-night dances it was largely feminine; a great babel of middle-aged ladies with sharp eyes and icy hearts behind lorgnettes and large bosoms.