nce at
times. Byron would have become a Benedictine monk if he had lived to be
fifty."

Betteridge smiled, and picking up a Browning from the table sank into an
easy-chair to read.

Tester remained looking into the fire. What a fool he had been to give
himself away just then. It was his great object never to let anyone see
into his soul. He had once shown Caruthers what he was, because he could
not bear to see a person of ability wasting himself for want of high
ideals. He had tried to show him that there was something above the
commonplace routine of life. And in a way he had succeeded. Caruthers
often came in in the evenings to discuss poetry with him, and those were
some of the happiest moments of his life. He was not sorry that he had
poured out his heart to him. Of course Caruthers was still young, was
still under the influence of environment. But in time he was sure to
realise that athletics were not the aim of life, but only a tavern on
the wayside, where we may rest for a little, or which we may pass by,
just as our fancy takes us. If Caruthers saw this at last, he would then
have done at least something not altogether vain.

For, after all, what a useless life his had been. The road he had
travelled seemed white with the skeletons of broken hopes. In the
glowing coals he saw the pageant of his past unroll itself. He had never
been quite the normal person. His father was a minor poet, and for as
long as he could remember his house had been full of literary people.
Arthur Symons and George Moore had often discussed the relations between
art and life across his fireplace. Yeats had told him stories of strange
Irish myths; Thomas Hardy had read to him once or twice. He had spent
his whole life with men who thought for themselves, who had despised the
conventions of their day, and he himself had ceased to believe in
anything except what personal experience taught him. He had resolved to
find out things for himself. And what, after all, had he discovered?
Little except the vanity of mortal things. In his friendship with
Stapleton he had for a term or so found a temporary peace, but it had
not been for long. As soon as he achieved anything it seemed to collapse
before him. He had at times sought to forget his failures in blind fits
of passion, but when the fire was burnt out the old world was the old
world yet! In books alone he found a lasting comfort. The school looked
on him as "quite a decent chap, awfully fast