accepted
the job, and, with a very complete set of papers and a store of
ready-made reminiscences (it took him some time to swot up the names of
the peaks and passes he had traversed) set out for St Anton, having
dispatched beforehand a monstrously ill-spelt letter announcing his
coming. He could barely read and write, but he was good at maps, which
he had studied carefully, and he noticed with satisfaction that the
valley of St Anton gave easy access to Italy.

As he journeyed south the reflections of that porter would have
surprised his fellow travellers in the stuffy third-class carriage. He
was thinking of a conversation he had had some days before in a cafe at
Dijon with a young Englishman bound for Modane ...

We had bumped up against each other by chance in that strange flitting
when all went to different places at different times, asking nothing of
each other's business. Wake had greeted me rather shamefacedly and had
proposed dinner together.

I am not good at receiving apologies, and Wake's embarrassed me more
than they embarrassed him. 'I'm a bit of a cad sometimes,' he said.
'You know I'm a better fellow than I sounded that night, Hannay.'

I mumbled something about not talking rot--the conventional phrase.
What worried me was that the man was suffering. You could see it in his
eyes. But that evening I got nearer Wake than ever before, and he and I
became true friends, for he laid bare his soul before me. That was his
trouble, that he could lay bare his soul, for ordinary healthy folk
don't analyse their feelings. Wake did, and I think it brought him
relief.

'Don't think I was ever your rival. I would no more have proposed to
Mary than I would have married one of her aunts. She was so sure of
herself, so happy in her single-heartedness that she terrified me. My
type of man is not meant for marriage, for women must be in the centre
of life, and we must always be standing aside and looking on. It is a
damnable thing to be left-handed.'

'The trouble about you, my dear chap,' I said, 'is that you're too hard
to please.'

'That's one way of putting it. I should put it more harshly. I hate
more than I love. All we humanitarians and pacifists have hatred as our
mainspring. Odd, isn't it, for people who preach brotherly love? But
it's the truth. We're full of hate towards everything that doesn't
square in with our ideas, everything that jars on our lady-like nerves.
Fellows like you are so in love with t