ore tragic because
their lives were ugly and sordid, and they knew nothing that gave beauty
to the world. There was one stone which was very beautiful, a bas relief
of two young men holding each other's hand; and the reticence of line, the
simplicity, made one like to think that the sculptor here had been touched
with a genuine emotion. It was an exquisite memorial to that than which
the world offers but one thing more precious, to a friendship; and as
Philip looked at it, he felt the tears come to his eyes. He thought of
Hayward and his eager admiration for him when first they met, and how
disillusion had come and then indifference, till nothing held them
together but habit and old memories. It was one of the queer things of
life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with
him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation
came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had
seemed essential proved unnecessary. Your life proceeded and you did not
even miss him. Philip thought of those early days in Heidelberg when
Hayward, capable of great things, had been full of enthusiasm for the
future, and how, little by little, achieving nothing, he had resigned
himself to failure. Now he was dead. His death had been as futile as his
life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even
at the end, to accomplish anything. It was just the same now as if he had
never lived.

Philip asked himself desperately what was the use of living at all. It all
seemed inane. It was the same with Cronshaw: it was quite unimportant that
he had lived; he was dead and forgotten, his book of poems sold in
remainder by second-hand booksellers; his life seemed to have served
nothing except to give a pushing journalist occasion to write an article
in a review. And Philip cried out in his soul:

"What is the use of it?"

The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The bright hopes of
youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment. Pain
and disease and unhappiness weighed down the scale so heavily. What did it
all mean? He thought of his own life, the high hopes with which he had
entered upon it, the limitations which his body forced upon him, his
friendlessness, and the lack of affection which had surrounded his youth.
He did not know that he had ever done anything but what seemed best to do,
and what a cropper he had come! Other men, with no mo