"Are you trying to read yourself into a rhapsody with--let's see the book." He snatched it; regarded it derisively.
"Well ?" said Amory a little stiffly.
"'The Life of St.Teresa,'" read Alec aloud.

"Oh, my gosh!" "Say, Alec." "What ?" "Does it bother you ?" "Does what bother me ?" "My acting dazed and all that ?" "Why, no--of course it doesn't _bother_ me." "Well, then, don't spoil it.

If I enjoy going around telling people guilelessly that I think I'm a genius, let me do it." "You're getting a reputation for being eccentric," said Alec, laughing, "if that's what you mean." Amory finally prevailed, and Alec agreed to accept his face value in the presence of others if he was allowed rest periods when they were alone; so Amory "ran it out" at a great rate, bringing the most eccentric characters to dinner, wild-eyed grad students, preceptors with strange theories of God and government, to the cynical amazement of the supercilious Cottage Club.
As February became slashed by sun and moved cheerfully into March, Amory went several times to spend week-ends with Monsignor; once he took Burne, with great success, for he took equal pride and delight in displaying them to each other.

Monsignor took him several times to see Thornton Hancock, and once or twice to the house of a Mrs.Lawrence, a type of Rome-haunting American whom Amory liked immediately.
Then one day came a letter from Monsignor, which appended an interesting P.S.: "Do you know," it ran, "that your third cousin, Clara Page, widowed six months and very poor, is living in Philadelphia?
I don't think you've ever met her, but I wish, as a favor to me, you'd go to see her.

To my mind, she's rather a remarkable woman, and just about your age." Amory sighed and decided to go, as a favor....
***** CLARA She was immemorial....