jobs, and it's far more honest. I decided I needed a job, so I took one. Not at the very bottom 'to learn the business,' because I think that's all bunk. There's no reason why you can't learn a business from the top, if you're that kind of person. I've made Father see it, which reverses all his notions of life, a very dangerous experience at his age, poor darling. Anyhow he's given me two raises already."
Rhoda's letter and especially what lay between the written lines,—the most important part of any letter!—blinded him to the fresh green beauty of the banks of the Marne, All he saw was the fresh green of Aldergrove, the deep red of the peonies and the crisp salty foam like the whites of eggs evaporating on the shore.
On his return to Paris he instinctively wandered into cafes that he had long avoided, as though by a return to bohemianism he could prove to himself that the existence of a conventional New Englander would bore him to death. But in the old haunts the old pain returned, bringing a conviction that he was almost structurally detached from the aims of the young moderns, even young moderns whose productions he deeply admired. I can't afford it yet, he told himself,—by which he meant that he might jeopardize his crystallization into the conservative, aristocratic identity that Keyserling had inadvertently done him the service of pointing out to him.
At the same time, the reaction to Rhoda's letter,
