ental than correct. Michael
vainly tried to dispel these illusions, which made him resentful and for
the moment crudely normal. He felt towards them much as he felt towards
Garrod's attempt to cure his ignorance at Clere. These were excellent
fellows from whom to accept a cigarette or sometimes even an invitation
to lunch at a Soho restaurant, but when they presumed upon his
condescension and dared to include in their tainted outlook himself as a
personal factor, Michael shrivelled with a virginal disdain.

Unreasonably to the others, Michael did not object very much to Wilmot's
oracular addresses on the delights of youth. He felt that so much of
Wilmot was in the mere word, and he admired so frankly his embroideries
of any subject, and above all he liked Wilmot so much personally, that
he listened to him, and was even so far influenced by him as to try to
read into the commonplace of a summer term all that Wilmot would
suggest.

"O fortunate shepherd, to whom will you pipe to-morrow, or what slim and
agile companion will you crown for his prowess? O lucky youth, able to
drowse in the tempered sunlight that the elm-trees give, while your
friend splendidly cool in his white flannels bats and bowls for your
delight!"

"But I haven't got any particular friend that I can watch," objected
Michael.

"One day you will terribly regret the privileges of your pastoral life."

"Do you really think I am not getting all I can out of school?" demanded
Michael.

"I'm sure you're not," said Wilmot.

Michael began to trouble himself over Wilmot's warning, and also he
began to look back with sentimental regret to what had really been his
happiest time, his friendship with Alan. Pride kept him from approaching
Alan with nothing to offer for nearly two years' indifference. There had
been no quarrel. They had merely gradually drifted apart, yet it was
with a deep pang of remorse that one day he realized in passing the
dusty Upper Fifth that Alan was now wrestling with that imprisonment.
Michael racked his brains to think of some way by which he and Alan
might come together in their old amity, their perfect fellowship. He
sought some way that would make it natural and inevitable, but no way
presented itself. He could, so deep was his sudden regret, have stifled
his own pride and deliberately invited Alan to be friends; he would even
have risked a repulse; but with the renewal of his longing for the
friendship came a renewal of the o