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 Having awakened to Eric's limitations, knowing intuitively more about Eric than Eric would ever know about anybody, his own peculiar superiority disentangled itself and floated up serene. Forevermore he would be proof against the kind of prestige enjoyed by solid people like Eric, for now he knew that their solidity was part and parcel of their immovability, and in the long run immovability was damn stupid. It wasn't out of principle that the Peperells of the world were orthodox and decorous; it was because they hadn't sufficient imagination to gamble with their funds; they stuck to hopelessly safe bonds.

This triumphant conclusion had got into the bass of the Chopin etude, and, for all his carefully cultivated low-brow taste, Eric was paying attention. There was a deferential look in his clear eyes, and from it Grover made two pleasant deductions: one, Eric, today more than ever, leaned upon him for some intangible support, an idea, a clever tag, a flavor that no other personality could supply, though Eric had all Harvard to choose from; two, Eric's particular kind of superiority, so dependent on the accidental glory of youth, was at its zenith and must henceforth wane, whereas his own kind, less accidental than painfully evolved, had barely commenced to manifest itself and would augment from year to year. Never before lmd he negotiated that cascade of chromatic thirds so neatly!

"It's a pity you don't like these, Pep," he said, turn-