e, of
course. Drugs, and all that. He soon won't have a sound faculty left. Oh,
I'm attached to him; he's entertaining, and one can really talk to him,
which is exceptional in Venice, or, indeed, anywhere else. Is his nephew
still up here, by the way?"

"Yes. He's going down this term."

"You see a good deal of him, I suppose?"

"Off and on," said Peter.

"Of course," said Hilary, "you're almost half-brothers. I do feel that
the Urquharts owe us something, for the sake of the connexion. I shall
talk to Lord Evelyn about you. He was very fond of your mother.... I am
very sorry about you, Peter. We must think it over sometime, seriously."

He got up and began to walk about the room in his nervous, restless way,
looking at Peter's things. Peter's room was rather pleasing. Everything
in it had the air of being the selection of a personal and discriminating
affection. There was a serene self-confidence about Peter's tastes; he
always knew precisely what he liked, irrespective of what anyone else
liked. If he had happened to admire "The Soul's Awakening" he would
beyond doubt have hung a copy of it in his room. What he had, as a matter
of fact, hung in his room very successfully expressed an aspect of
himself. The room conveyed restfulness, and an immense love, innate
rather than grafted, of the pleasures of the eye. The characteristic of
restfulness was conveyed partly by the fat green sofa and the almost
superfluous number of extremely comfortable arm-chairs, and Peter's
attitude in one of them. On a frame in a corner a large piece of
embroidery was stretched--a cherry tree in blossom coming to slow birth
on a green serge background. Peter was quite good at embroidery. He
carried pieces of it (mostly elaborately designed book-covers) about in
his pockets, and took them out at tea-parties and (surreptitiously) at
lectures. He said it was soothing, like smoking; only smoking didn't
soothe him, it made him feel ill. On days when he had been doing tiresome
or boring or jarring things, or been associating with a certain type of
person, he did a great deal of embroidery in the evenings, because, as he
said, it was such a change. The embroidery stood for a symbol, a type of
the pleasures of the senses, and when he fell to it with fervour beyond
the ordinary, one understood that he had been having a surfeit of the
displeasures of the senses, and felt need to restore the balance.

Hilary stopped before a piece of extremely sha