these two figures had been growing, waiting for the moment when he
would recognise them. One figure was the Martin whom he knew--brown,
healthy, strong and sane; a figure wearing his clothes, his own
clothes, the tweeds and the cloths, the brogues and the heavy boots,
the soft untidy hats; the figure was hard, definite, resolute,
quarrelling, arguing, loving, joking, swearing all in the sensible way.
It was a figure that all the world had understood, that had been drunk
often enough, lent other men money, been hard-up and extravagant and
thoughtless. "A good chap." "A sensible fellow." "A pal." "No flies on
Warlock." That was the kind of figure. And the life had been physical,
had never asked questions, had never known morbidity, had lived on what
it saw and could touch and could break ... And the other figure! That
was, physically, less plainly seen. No, there it was, standing a little
away from the other, standing away, contemptuously, despising it,
deriding it. Fat, soft, white hanging cheeks, wearing anything to cover
its body, but shining in some way through the clothes, so that it was
body that you saw. A soft body, hands soft and the colour of the flesh
pale and unhealthy. But it was the eyes that spoke: the mouth trembled
and was weak, the chin was fat and feeble, but the eyes lived,
lived--were eager, fighting, beseeching, longing, captive eyes!

And this figure, Martin knew, was a prey to every morbid desire, rushed
to sensual excess and then crept back miserably to search for some
spiritual flagellation. Above all, it was restless, as some one presses
round a dark room searching for the lock of the door, restless and
lonely, cowardly and selfish, but searching and sensitive and even
faithful, faithful to something or to some one ... pursued also by
something or some one. A figure to whom this world offered only
opportunities for sin and failure and defeat, but a figure to whom this
world was the merest shadow hiding, as a shade hides a lamp, the life
within. Wretched enough with its bad health, its growing corpulence,
its weak mouth, its furtive desires, but despising, nevertheless, the
strong, healthy figure beside it. Thurston was right. Men are not born
to be free, but to fight, to the very death, for the imprisonment and
destruction of all that is easiest and most physically active and most
pleasant to the sight and touch ...

"And so Hector really hopes that he'll be able to get down to us for
Christma