o speak
to him of new-burnisht joys and a world of treasure. But of late Peter
had been conscious of increasing effort in being cheerful before Thomas.
It was as if the little too much that breaks had been laid upon him and
under it he was breaking. For the first time he was seeing the world not
as a glorious treasure-place full of glad things for touch and sight and
hearing, full of delightful people and absurd jokes, but as a grey and
lonely sea through which one drifted rudderless towards a lee shore. He
supposed that there was, somewhere, a lee shore; a place where the winds,
having blown their uttermost, ceased to blow, and where wrecked things
were cast up at last broken beyond all mending and beyond all struggling,
to find the peace of the utterly lost. He had not got there yet; he and
his broken boat were struggling in the grey cold waters, which had swept
all his cargo from him, bale by bale. From him that hath not shall indeed
be taken away even that which he hath.

It was Thomas who caused Peter to think of these things newly; Thomas,
who was starting life with so poor a heritage. For Thomas, so like
himself, Peter foresaw the same progressive wreckage. Thomas too, having
already lost a mother, would lose later all he loved; he would give to
some friend all he was and had, and the friend would drop him in the mud
and leave him there, and the cold bitterness as of death would go over
Thomas's head. He would, perhaps, love a woman too, and the woman would
leave him quite alone, not coming near him in his desolation, because he
loved her. He would also lose his honour, his profession, and the
beautiful things he loved to handle and play with. "And then, when you've
lost everything, and perhaps been involved in some of my disgraces,
you'll think that at least you and I can stick together and go under
together and help each other a little. And I daresay you'll find that
I shall say, 'No, I'm going off to Ireland, or Italy, or somewhere; I've
had enough of you, and you can jolly well sink or swim by yourself'--so
you see you won't have even me to live for in the end, just when you want
me most. That's the sort of thing that happens.... Oh, what chance have
you?" said Peter very bitterly, huddled, elbows on knees, over the chilly
fire, while Thomas slumbered in a shawl on the rug.

Bitterness was so strange in Peter, so odd and new, that Thomas was
disturbed by it, and woke and wailed, as if his world was tumbling a