, and then dark
clustering fir trees far below.

I had an extraordinary feeling of having come out of things, of being
outside.

"But this is the round world!" I said, with a sense of never having
perceived it before; "this is the round world!"

9

That holiday was full of big comprehensive effects; the first view of
the Rhone valley and the distant Valaisian Alps, for example, which we
saw from the shoulder of the mountain above the Gemmi, and the early
summer dawn breaking over Italy as we moved from our night's crouching
and munched bread and chocolate and stretched our stiff limbs among the
tumbled and precipitous rocks that hung over Lake Cingolo, and surveyed
the winding tiring rocky track going down and down to Antronapiano.

And our thoughts were as comprehensive as our impressions. Willersley's
mind abounded in historical matter; he had an inaccurate abundant habit
of topographical reference; he made me see and trace and see again the
Roman Empire sweep up these winding valleys, and the coming of the first
great Peace among the warring tribes of men....

In the retrospect each of us seems to have been talking about our
outlook almost continually. Each of us, you see, was full of the same
question, very near and altogether predominant to us, the question:
"What am I going to do with my life?" He saw it almost as importantly as
I, but from a different angle, because his choice was largely made and
mine still hung in the balance.

"I feel we might do so many things," I said, "and everything that calls
one, calls one away from something else."

Willersley agreed without any modest disavowals.

"We have got to think out," he said, "just what we are and what we are
up to. We've got to do that now. And then--it's one of those questions
it is inadvisable to reopen subsequently."

He beamed at me through his glasses. The sententious use of long words
was a playful habit with him, that and a slight deliberate humour,
habits occasional Extension Lecturing was doing very much to intensify.

"You've made your decision?"

He nodded with a peculiar forward movement of his head.

"How would you put it?"

"Social Service--education. Whatever else matters or doesn't matter, it
seems to me there is one thing we MUST have and increase, and that
is the number of people who can think a little--and have"--he beamed
again--"an adequate sense of causation."

"You're sure it's worth while."

"For me--certainly