hem. I really
couldn't make you realise how I adored some of those men. I used to go to
sleep after a long evening of chatter, simply hating the darkness which
separated me from life and company. There were two in particular, very
ordinary young men, I expect. But they were fond of me, and liked being
with me, and I thought them the most wonderful and enchanting persons, with
a wide knowledge of the great mysterious world. The world! It wasn't, I
saw, a nasty, jostling place, as I had thought at school, but a great
beautiful affair, full of love and delight, of interest and ideas. I read,
I talked, I flew about--it was simply a new birth! I felt like a prisoner
suddenly released. Of course, the mischief was that I neglected my work.
There wasn't time for that: and I fell in love, too, or thought I did, with
the sister of one of those friends, with whom I went to stay. I wonder if
anyone was ever in love like that! I daresay it's common enough. But I
won't go into that; these raptures are for private consumption. I was
roughly jerked up. I took a bad degree. My mother died--I had very little
in common with her: she was an invalid without any hold on life, and I took
no trouble to be kind to her--I was perfectly selfish and wilful. Then I
had to earn my living. I would have given anything to stay at Oxford: and
you know, even now, when I think of Oxford, a sort of electric shock goes
through me, I love it so much. I daren't even set foot there, I'm so afraid
of finding it altered. But when I think of those dark courts and bowery
gardens, and the men moving about, and the fronts of blistered stone, and
the little quaint streets, and the meadows and elms, and the country all
about, I have a physical yearning that is almost a pain--a sort of
home-sickness--"

He broke off, and was silent for a moment, and I saw that his eyes were
full of tears.

"Then it was London, that accursed place! I had a tiny income: I got a job
at a coaching establishment, I worked like the devil. That was a cruel
time. I couldn't dream of marriage--that all vanished, and she married
pretty soon, I couldn't get a holiday--I was too poor. I tried writing, but
I made a hash of that. I simply went down into hell. One of my great
friends died, and the other--well, it was awkward to meet, when I had had
to break it off with his sister. I simply can't describe to you how utterly
horrible it all was. I used to teach all the terms, and in the vacations I
si