nsatisfactory conditions as swiftly as possible.

During this period of his life Hugh made many acquaintances, but no
great friends. In fact the idea of close and intimate relationship
with others fell more and more into the background; he became
interested rather in the superficial and spectatorial aspect of things
and persons. He began to see how differences of character and
temperament played into each other, and formed a resultant which merged
itself in the slow current of affairs. But he seemed to himself to be
acquiring and sorting tangible experiences, and to have little
speculative interest at all; he neither craved to make or to receive
confidences. The hours not occupied by business were given to social
life and to reading; and he was, or fancied himself to be, perfectly
contented.

But as the years went on, instead of sinking into purely conventional
ways, Hugh found a mood of dissatisfaction growing upon him. He found
that after his holidays he came back with increasing reluctance to his
work. The work itself, how unsatisfactory it became! Half the time
and energy of the office seemed to be spent on creating rather than
performing work; an immense amount of detail seemed to be entirely
useless, and to cumber rather than to assist the conduct of the
business that was important. Of course much of it was necessary work
which had to be done by some one; but Hugh began to wonder whether his
life was well bestowed in carrying out a system of which so much seemed
to consist in dealing with unimportant minutiae, and in amassing
immense records of things that deserved only to be forgotten. He found
himself reflecting that life was short, and that he tended to spend the
greater part of his waking hours in matters that were essentially
trivial. He began to question whether there was any duty for him in
the matter at all, and by what law, human or divine, a man was bound to
spend his days in work in the usefulness of which he did not wholly
believe.

Living, as he did, an inexpensive life of great simplicity, he had
contrived to save a certain amount of money, and he was surprised to
find how fast it accumulated. When he had been some fifteen years in
his office, a great-uncle of his died, leaving Hugh quite unexpectedly
a sum of a few thousand pounds, which, together with his savings, gave
him a small but secure competence, as large, in fact, as the income he
was accustomed to spend.

Even so, he did no