ree
conscience. In for a penny, in for a pound."

"I'm sick of the whole business," said Martin.

"Don't be an ass," answered Rayner, and that evening he spoke firmly to
Granny. Somehow or other the combined effect of Martin's treatment of
Dickinson and Rayner's conversation with Granny led to a change of
policy in the workroom.

That night Martin again took prep. As he sat on his dais regarding the
victims of his wrath, he was haunted for a moment by the ghost of his
murdered ideals; but only for a moment.

And he sat in peace.

X

During the winter term before he was to go up to Oxford for a
scholarship examination Martin felt more than ever isolated. Rayner
was a good enough companion for 'brewing' or a casual talk, but he had,
distinctly, his limitations. It was only now, when Gregson had gone to
Oxford and the light, that Martin realised how much he missed him and
how dark and murky was the cave of school life.

There is little satisfaction to be derived from discoveries which
cannot be communicated: to find a perfect poem, or, if you are young, a
perfect epigram, is good, but to let your friends know you have found
it is doubly delightful. And now Martin had to keep his discoveries to
himself: if he devised another argument against the existence of God or
detected another logical absurdity in Christian dogma there was no one
to whom he could declare his joy: if he stumbled in his reading on a
thing which pleased him--well, the rest of the house were swine for
such a pearl.

Because Martin was treading the path of knowledge alone he was driven
by sheer force of necessity into intellectual priggishness and crudity.
When he was not engaged in prefectorial work, he tended to become a
recluse and to read in his study for long periods at a stretch: and
because he had no opposition and no conversation, save the rather mild
stimulus of discussing aesthetics with Mrs Berney, he became, as time
went on, more violent in his opinions. He often longed for the bitter
tongue and incisive reasoning of Gregson, not least when he had
completed a course of Shaw's dramas. There was no escape from
attendance at chapel and prayers and the wrath always engendered in the
sceptic by compulsory religion should have an outlet. Martin, having
no one to talk to, was forced to amuse himself with blasphemous
imaginings: but even that began to pall.

It was at this point that he became aware of Finney. Until he had
b