very interesting, and he felt that it was of
greater import than trigonometry, which he never could understand. It was
like a window on life that he had a chance of peeping through, and he
looked with a wildly beating heart.

"No, you can keep your dirty money," said Wharton.

"But how about your dinner?" said Philip, with a smile, for he knew
exactly how his master's finances stood.

Wharton had even asked him to pay him the two shillings which the lesson
cost once a week rather than once a month, since it made things less
complicated.

"Oh, never mind my dinner. It won't be the first time I've dined off a
bottle of beer, and my mind's never clearer than when I do."

He dived under the bed (the sheets were gray with want of washing), and
fished out another bottle. Philip, who was young and did not know the good
things of life, refused to share it with him, so he drank alone.

"How long are you going to stay here?" asked Wharton.

Both he and Philip had given up with relief the pretence of mathematics.

"Oh, I don't know. I suppose about a year. Then my people want me to go to
Oxford."

Wharton gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. It was a new
experience for Philip to learn that there were persons who did not look
upon that seat of learning with awe.

"What d'you want to go there for? You'll only be a glorified schoolboy.
Why don't you matriculate here? A year's no good. Spend five years here.
You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and
freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what
you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In
Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you
choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of
thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention.
You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because
it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse."

He leaned back cautiously, for the chair on which he sat had a ricketty
leg, and it was disconcerting when a rhetorical flourish was interrupted
by a sudden fall to the floor.

"I ought to go back to England this year, but if I can scrape together
enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms I shall stay another twelve
months. But then I shall have to go. And I must leave all this"--he waved
his arm round the dirty garret, with its unmade bed, the clothes lying o