other.

The years dominated by Desmond had been supreme. They had left school
together, when Roy was seventeen; and, at the time, their parting had
seemed like the end of everything. Yet, very soon after, he had found
himself in the thick of fresh delights--a wander-year in Italy, Greece,
the Mediterranean, with the parents and Christine----

And now, here he was, nearing the end of the Oxford interlude--dominated
by Dyan and India; and, not least, by Oxford herself, who counts her
lovers by the million; holds them for the space of three or four years
and sets her impress for life on their minds and hearts. For all his
dreamings and scribblings, he had played hard and worked hard. In the
course of reading for Greats, he had imbibed large draughts of the
classics; had browsed widely on later literature, East and West; won the
Newcastle, and filled a vellum-bound volume--his mother's gift--with
verse and sketches in prose, some of which had appeared in the more
exclusive weeklies. He had also picked up Hindustani from Dyan, and
looked forward to tackling Sanskrit. In the Schools, he had taken a
First in Mods; and, with reasonable luck, hoped for a First in the
Finals. Once again, parting would be a wrench, but India glowed like a
planet on the horizon; and he fully intended to make that interlude the
pick of them all....

What novels he would write! Not modern impressionist stuff; not mean
streets and the photographic touch. No--his adventuring soul, with its
tinge of Eastern mysticism, craved colour and warmth and light;--not the
mere trappings of romance, but the essence of it that imparts a deeper
sense of the significance and mystery of life; that probes to the
mainsprings of personality, the veiled yet vital world of spiritual
adventure ... Pain and conflict; powers of evil, of doubt and
indecision:--no evading these. But in any imaginative work he essayed,
beauty must be the prevailing element--if only as a star in darkness.
And nowadays Beauty had become almost suspect. Cleverness, cynicism, sex
and sensation--all had their votaries and their vogue. Mere Beauty, like
Cinderella, was left sitting among the ashes of the past; and
Roy--prince or no--was her devout lover.

To the son of Nevil and Lilamani, her clear call could never seem either
a puritanical snare of the flesh or a delusion of the senses; but
rather, a grace of the spirit, the joy of things seen detached from
self-interest: the visible proof that