c faith. On first
acquiring a study Anstey had bought 'Peggy' and the usual pictures:
three weeks later he was converted, exchanged 'Peggy' for a Madonna,
and dotted the room with candles.

To Martin, Anstey would talk on any subject, from religious experience,
which he had not undergone, to the beauty of his elder sisters which
was equally fictitious. At times they read together, prose and poetry,
Classics and English, and after reading they would launch out into vast
discussions. In the Christmas holidays Martin went to stay with the
Ansteys in Kensington: he was disappointed in the sisters, who indeed
took very little notice of him, but Cyril Anstey was more than usually
charming. They wandered about London together, went often to the play,
and spent far more money than the Anstey family could afford: but of
course Martin did not know that. It was not, however, until the summer
term that Martin's friendship for Cyril Anstey reached its height; now
at last he discovered how limited and pent up all his school life had
been. He had had no enthusiasms. Religion had no appeal for him, the
ancient literatures had been so fouled by pedantic notes and
introductions that they had not moved him as they should have done, for
games he had only a lukewarm affection. He liked discussing teams and
the chances of teams, but he had never had personal successes in
athletics; while he knew that the correct hitting of a ball might be
one of life's most splendid things, his experience of that pleasure was
too fragmentary to satisfy his appetite. His talks with Gregson had
been enjoyable, for they had given him an opportunity to let himself
go: but life, on the whole, this life at school which was universally
supposed to teem with opportunities, had become monotonous and barren.
One could live without feeling.

But Anstey made a difference. On Sunday afternoons or whenever through
the week they could escape from cricket, they wandered together on the
downs and lay on the short grass watching the white clouds sailing
majestically like galleons in the blue dome above them and listening to
the larks and the charge of the wind. Below them were the school
towers and the green patch of playing-fields and the glittering pool of
water where in summer one bathed: behind them ran the smooth sweep of
the downs, clear-cut against the sunset and firm and strong as when the
Roman came and built his camp upon the brow and threw his road acro