like it. I don't always succeed, but I try. That's right, isn't it?"

"I don't know." Peter was puzzled. "It seems to me rather a funny way of
going about it. When you've succeeded, are you much happier? I mean, what
sort of a liking is it? Oh, but I don't understand--there aren't two
sorts really. You either like a thing, or ... well."

At times one needed a rest from Leslie. But outside the province of art
and the pleasures of the eye he was lovable, even likeable, having here
a self-dependence and a personality that put pathos far off, and made
him himself a rest. And his generosity was limitless. It was almost an
oppression; only Peter, being neither proud nor self-conscious, was not
easily oppressed. He took what was lavished on him and did his best to
deserve it. But it was perhaps a little tiring. Leslie was a thoroughly
good sort--a much better sort than most people knew--but Italy was
somehow not the fit setting for him. Nothing could have made Peter
dislike things pleasant to look at; but Leslie's persevering,
uncomprehending groping after their pleasantness made one feel desirous
to dig a gulf between them and him. It was rather ageing. Peter missed
Urquhart and Lucy; one felt much younger with them. The thought of their
clean, light, direct touch on life, that handled its goods without
fumbling, and without the need of any intervening medium, was as
refreshing as a breath of fresh air in a close room.

Rodney too was refreshing. They came across him at Pietrasanta; he was
walking across Tuscany by himself, and came to the station, looking very
dusty and disreputable, to put the book he had finished into his bag that
travelled by train and get out another.

"Come out of that," he said to Peter, "and walk with me to Florence.
Trains for bags; roads for men. You can meet your patron in Florence.
Come along."

And Peter, after a brief consultation with the accommodating Leslie, did
come along. It was certainly more than amusing. The road in Tuscany is
much better than the railway. And Rodney was an interesting and rather
attractive person. Since he left Cambridge he had been pursuing abstruse
chemical research in a laboratory he had in a Westminster slum. Peter
never saw him in London, because the Ignorant Rich do not live in slums,
and because Rodney was not fond of the more respectable quarters of the
city.

Peter was set speculating vaguely on Rodney's vivid idealism. To Peter,
ideas, the unseen spiri