chael clung to his own gloom and his own uncouthness, if by getting
rid of them he would also have been obliged to get rid of his own
temperament, unhappy as it was, but yet capable of strong desire. He did
not want to be content; he wanted to see always ahead of him a golden
mist, through which the shadows of unconjecturable shapes appeared. He
was willing and eager to get lost, if only he might go wandering on,
groping with his big hands, stumbling with his clumsy feet,
desiring . . .

There are the indications of a path visible to all who desire. Michael
knew that his path, the way that seemed to lead in the direction of
the ultimate goal, was music. There, somehow, in that direction lay his
destiny; that was the route. He was not like the majority of his sex
and years, who weave their physical and mental dreams in the loom of a
girl's face, in her glance, in the curves of her mouth. Deliberately,
owing chiefly to his morbid consciousness of his own physical defects,
he had long been accustomed to check the instincts natural to a young
man in this regard. He had seen too often the facility with which
others, more fortunate than he, get delightedly lost in that golden
haze; he had experienced too often the absence of attractiveness in
himself. How could any girl of the London ballroom, he had so frequently
asked himself, tolerate dancing or sitting out with him when there was
Francis, and a hundred others like him, so pleased to take his place?
Nor, so he told himself, was his mind one whit more apt than his body.
It did not move lightly and agreeably with unconscious smiles and easy
laughter. By nature he was monkish, he was celibate. He could but cease
to burn incense at such ineffectual altars, and help, as he had helped
this afternoon, to replenish the censers of more fortunate acolytes.

This was all familiar to him; it passed through his head unbidden,
when Francis had left him, like the refrain of some well-known song,
occurring spontaneously without need of an effort of memory. It was
a possession of his, known by heart, and it no longer, except for
momentary twinges, had any bitterness for him. This afternoon, it is
true, there had been one such, when Francis, gleeful with his cheque,
had gone out to his dinner and his theatre and his dance, inviting him
cheerfully to all of them. In just that had been the bitterness--namely,
that Francis had so overflowing a well-spring of content that he
could be cordial i