hem would have required
so much explanation, such a list of personages, such a description of
circumstances, that he felt unable to embark upon it. His father asked
him whether he would not like some of his school friends to visit him
at home, and he rejected the suggestion with a kind of incredulous
horror. The thought of invading the sanctity, the familiarity of home,
with the presence of a boy who might reveal its secrets to others, was
too appalling to face; it hardly occurred to him that the boys had
homes of their own, places which they loved. He only thought of them
as figures on the school stage, to be conciliated, tolerated, lived
with, his only preoccupation being to shield and guard his own heart
and inner life from any intruding influence whatever. He had no desire
ever to see one of the crew again, boys or masters. Some indeed were
preferable to others, but no one could be trusted for an instant; the
only safe course was to make no claim, and to shield oneself as far as
possible against all external influences, all alliances, all
relationships.

Hugh, in after life, could hardly recall the faces of any of his
companions; the only way at the time in which he differentiated them to
himself was that some looked kinder than others--that was the only
thing that mattered. Thus the years dragged themselves along, the
school-time hated with an intensity of dislike, the holidays eagerly
welcomed as a return to old pursuits. The boy used to lie awake in the
big dormitory in the early summer mornings, thinking with vague terror
and disquiet of the ordered day of labour that lay before him. There
were peacocks kept in the grounds, whose shrill feminine screams of
despairing reproach were always inseparably connected with the
dreariness of the place. His last morning at the school he woke early,
full of joyful excitement, and heard the familiar cries with a thankful
sense that he would never hear them again. He said no good-byes, made
no farewell visits. He waved his hand, as he drove away, in merry
derision at the grim high windows that looked down on the road, the
only thought in his mind being the feeling of unconquerable relief that
the place would see him no more.

He used to wonder, in after days, whether this could have been avoided;
whether it was a wholesome discipline for a child of his age and his
perhaps peculiar temperament to have been brought up under these
conditions. After all, it is the c