a or at the pleasant old porter who hastened to throw open the white
gate of the station-drive serving as a substitute for the Hours.

The country air was still sweet between the hazel hedgerows, although
the grass was drouthy and the scabious blooms were already grey with
dust. Nothing for Michael could have been more charged with immemorial
perfume than this long walk at July's end. It held the very quintessence
of holiday airs through all the marching years of boyhood. It was
haunted by the memory of all the glad anticipations of six weeks'
freedom that time after time had succeeded the turmoil of breaking up
for the August holidays. The yellow amoret swinging from the tallest
shoot of the hedge was the companion of how many summer walks. The acrid
smell of nettles by the roadside was prophetic of how many pastoral
days. The butterflies, brown and white and tortoiseshell, that danced
away to right and left over the green bushes, to what winding paths did
they not summon. And surely Alan gave a final grace to this first walk
of the holidays. Surely he crystallized all hopes, all memories, all
delights of the past in a perfection of present joy.

Yet Michael, as he walked beside him, could only think of Alan as a
beautiful inanimate object for whom perception did not exist. Inanimate,
however, was scarcely the word to describe one who was so very
definitely alive: Michael racked his invention to discover a suitable
label for Alan, but he could not find the word. With a shock of
misgiving he asked himself whether he had outgrown their friendship, and
partly to test, but chiefly to allay his dread, he took Alan's arm with
a gesture of almost fierce possession. He was relieved to find that
Alan's touch was still primed with consolation, that companionship with
him still soothed the turbulence of his own spirit reaching out to grasp
what could never be expressed in words, and therefore could never be
grasped. Michael was seized with a longing to urge Alan to grow up more
quickly, to make haste lest he should be left behind by his adventurous
friend. Michael remembered how he used to dread being moved up, hating
to leave Alan in a class below him, how he had deliberately dallied to
allow Alan to overtake him. But idleness in school-work was not the same
as idleness in experience of life, and unless Alan would quickly grow
up, he knew that he must soon leave him irremediably behind. It was
distressing to reflect that Alan wo