han Philip might have
thought he liked to hear himself talk. His supercilious attitude impressed
Philip. He could not help admiring, and yet being awed by, a man who
faintly despised so many things which Philip had looked upon as almost
sacred. He cast down the fetish of exercise, damning with the contemptuous
word pot-hunters all those who devoted themselves to its various forms;
and Philip did not realise that he was merely putting up in its stead the
other fetish of culture.

They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace that overlooked the
town. It nestled in the valley along the pleasant Neckar with a
comfortable friendliness. The smoke from the chimneys hung over it, a pale
blue haze; and the tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it a
pleasantly medieval air. There was a homeliness in it which warmed the
heart. Hayward talked of Richard Feverel and Madame Bovary, of
Verlaine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald's
translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the elect, and Hayward
repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting poetry, his own and
that of others, which he did in a monotonous sing-song. By the time they
reached home Philip's distrust of Hayward was changed to enthusiastic
admiration.

They made a practice of walking together every afternoon, and Philip
learned presently something of Hayward's circumstances. He was the son of
a country judge, on whose death some time before he had inherited three
hundred a year. His record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that when he
went to Cambridge the Master of Trinity Hall went out of his way to
express his satisfaction that he was going to that college. He prepared
himself for a distinguished career. He moved in the most intellectual
circles: he read Browning with enthusiasm and turned up his well-shaped
nose at Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley's treatment of
Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of his rooms were
reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts, Burne-Jones, and Botticelli);
and he wrote not without distinction verses of a pessimistic character.
His friends told one another that he was a man of excellent gifts, and he
listened to them willingly when they prophesied his future eminence. In
course of time he became an authority on art and literature. He came under
the influence of Newman's Apologia; the picturesqueness of the Roman
Catholic faith appealed to his esthetic sensibility; a