t
bitterly how much he had wanted to do and how little done. It seemed to
him that all those years, vanished beyond recall, had been utterly wasted.
The boys, fresh and buoyant, were doing the same things that he had done,
it seemed that not a day had passed since he left the school, and yet in
that place where at least by name he had known everybody now he knew not
a soul. In a few years these too, others taking their place, would stand
alien as he stood; but the reflection brought him no solace; it merely
impressed upon him the futility of human existence. Each generation
repeated the trivial round. He wondered what had become of the boys who
were his companions: they were nearly thirty now; some would be dead, but
others were married and had children; they were soldiers and parsons,
doctors, lawyers; they were staid men who were beginning to put youth
behind them. Had any of them made such a hash of life as he? He thought
of the boy he had been devoted to; it was funny, he could not recall his
name; he remembered exactly what he looked like, he had been his greatest
friend; but his name would not come back to him. He looked back with
amusement on the jealous emotions he had suffered on his account. It was
irritating not to recollect his name. He longed to be a boy again, like
those he saw sauntering through the quadrangle, so that, avoiding his
mistakes, he might start fresh and make something more out of life. He
felt an intolerable loneliness. He almost regretted the penury which he
had suffered during the last two years, since the desperate struggle
merely to keep body and soul together had deadened the pain of living. In
the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread: it was not a curse
upon mankind, but the balm which reconciled it to existence.

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the
pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of
a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself
strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and
excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the
design. He sought for beauty consciously, and he remembered how even as a
boy he had taken pleasure in the Gothic cathedral as one saw it from the
precincts; he went there and looked at the massive pile, gray under the
cloudy sky, with the central tower that rose like the praise of men to
their God; but the boys were