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.
Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality--he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days after he would swell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a first-class actor.