Paul's longing for beauty and glamour causes him to feel detached from most people. Cather demonstrates his sense of alienation through his unease around those who should be closest to him—his family, neighbors, and classmates. In the opening scene at his faculty hearing, Cather emphasizes this by describing how Paul withdraws from his teacher's supportive hand. He feels "loathing" for his own street, and while neighbors gather for friendly conversations on Sunday afternoons, he sits alone on the bottom step, "staring into the street." At school, he brags about his friendships with theater people and can't "bear to have the other pupils think" he takes his schoolwork seriously. Paul holds "contempt" for the ordinary world, believing he doesn't belong in it. He feels at ease only among the wealthy strangers in New York's dazzling crowd, yet even there, he has "no especial desire to meet or to know any of these people." Despite being among them, he remains an outsider in their society.