ice of man, not the wandering of untutored
souls who had not been shown the way. I felt religious. I wanted to go
to church, I wanted to maintain, when it was on me, that exaltation I
dimly felt as communion with a higher power, with God, and which also
was identical with my desire to write, to create....

I bought books, sets of Wordsworth and Keats, of Milton and Shelley
and Shakespeare, and hid them away in my bureau drawers lest Tom and my
friends should see them. These too I read secretly, making excuses for
not joining in the usual amusements. Once I walked to Mrs. Bolton's and
inquired rather shamefacedly for Hermann Krebs, only to be informed that
he had gone out.... There were lapses, of course, when I went off on
the old excursions,--for the most part the usual undergraduate follies,
though some were of a more serious nature; on these I do not care to
dwell. Sex was still a mystery.... Always I awoke afterwards to bitter
self-hatred and despair.... But my work in English improved, and I
earned the commendation and friendship of Mr. Cheyne. With a wisdom
for which I was grateful he was careful not to give much sign of it
in classes, but the fact that he was "getting soft on me" was evident
enough to be regarded with suspicion. Indeed the state into which I had
fallen became a matter of increasing concern to my companions, who tried
every means from ridicule to sympathy, to discover its cause and shake
me out of it. The theory most accepted was that I was in love.

"Come on now, Hughie--tell me who she is. I won't give you away," Tom
would beg. Once or twice, indeed, I had imagined I was in love with the
sisters of Boston classmates whose dances I attended; to these parties
Tom, not having overcome his diffidence in respect to what he called
"social life," never could be induced to go.

It was Ralph who detected the true cause of my discontent. Typical as no
other man I can recall of the code to which we had dedicated ourselves,
the code that moulded the important part of the undergraduate world
and defied authority, he regarded any defection from it in the light of
treason. An instructor, in a fit of impatience, had once referred to
him as the Mephistopheles of his class; he had fatal attractions, and a
remarkable influence. His favourite pastime was the capricious exercise
of his will on weaker characters, such as his cousin, Ham Durrett; if
they "swore off," Ralph made it his business to get them drunk again