eed from that first experience something of the sweet mystery of
faithful devotion; but now he could only idealise, he could not
idolise. The world was full of friendly, gracious, interesting people.
Circumstance spun one to and fro among the groups and companies; how
could one give a unique regard, when there were so many that claimed
allegiance and admiration? He saw others flit from passion to passion,
from friendship to friendship--Hugh's aim was rather to be the same, to
be loyal and true, to be able to take up a suspended friendship where
he had laid it down; the most shameful thing in the world seemed to him
the ebbing away of vitality out of a relationship; and therefore he
would not give pledges which he might be unable to redeem. If the
conscious soul survived mortal death, then perhaps these limitations of
time and space, which suspended friendships, would exist no longer, and
he could wait for that with a quiet hopefulness. But if it all passed
away, and was as though it had never been, if life was but a leaping
flame, a ripple on the stream, then how could one have the heart to tie
indissoluble links?

Hugh half understood that the weakness of his case was that he could
argue about it at all. Others went blindly and ardently into loves and
friendships, because an irresistible impulse carried them away--with
Hugh the impulse was not irresistible. Meanwhile he would give what he
could, offer rather than claim; he would reject no proffer of
friendship, but he would not, or perhaps he could not, fetter himself
with the heavy chains of emotion. But even so he was aware that this
temperance, this balance of nature, was not a wholly beautiful or
desirable thing.

The perception of this came home to Hugh with peculiar force on a
bright fresh day of early spring, when he walked with a friend in the
broad green fields beside the Cam. They had been strolling first in
the college gardens, where the snowdrops were pushing up, some of them
bearing on their heads the crust of earth that had sheltered them;
crocuses rose in the borders, like little bursts of flame. A thrush
was singing on a high bough, and seemed to be telling, in an eager
mystery, the very hopes and dreams of Hugh's heart. He said something
that implied as much to his friend, who replied that he did not
understand that.

This friend of Hugh's was much younger than himself, a fastidious and
somewhat secluded nature, but possessing for Hugh the