d above to grant one other thing:
Before old Death can grimly smile
And take me unawares,
A little time to rest awhile,
To think, and say my prayers.

"Gad!" I said. "You're a poet."

I liked the little trifle, not least because I suspected that the
"one familiar friend" was myself. Everyone likes to be mentioned in
a poem.

Doe beamed with pleasure that I had not spoken harshly of his
off-spring.

"Glad you like it," he said.

"There's this," I suggested, "you talk about only wanting 'these
little things' out of life. But it seems to me that you want quite a
lot."

"A lot! By Jove, Ray," cried Doe excitedly, "it's only when I'm in
my unworldly moods that I want so little as that. In my worse
moments--that's nine-tenths of the day--I want yards more: Fame and
Flattery and Power."

"Funny. Once, outside the baths, I had a sort of longing to--"

"Ray, I only tell _you_ these things," interrupted Doe, now worked
up, "but often I feel I've something in me that must come
out--something strong--something forceful."

"I don't think I ever felt quite like that," said I, ruminating.
"But I did once feel outside the baths--"

"The trouble is," Doe carried on, "that this something in me isn't
pure. It's mixed up with the desire for glory. When I told Radley
I'd like to be a leader of the people, I knew that one-third was a
real desire for their good, and two-thirds a desire for my own
glory."

"Yes, but I was going to tell you that once--"

"And I wish it were a pure force. I'd love to pursue an Ideal for
its own sake, and without any thought for my own glory. I wonder if
I shall ever do a really perfect thing."

"I was going to tell you," I persisted; and, though I knew he
measured my temperament as far inferior to Edgar Doe's artistic
soul, and would rather have continued his own revelations, yet must
I interrupt by telling him of my one moment of aspiration and
yearning. Perhaps, I, too, wanted to pour out my mind's little
adventures. We're all the same, and like a heart-to-heart talk, so
long as it is about ourselves.

I told him, accordingly, of that strange evening outside the baths,
when I had felt so overpowering an aspiration towards a vague
ideal--an ideal that could not be grasped or seen, but was somehow
both great and good.

Sec.4

The last evening of that summer term there was a noisy breaking-up
banquet at Bramhall House. And in the morning I went to Radley's
room