ty is a
doubtful blessing and that it means cruelty and waste and sacrifice and
compels us to jettison the rare to save the common. For the sake of
example, to preserve discipline, to keep the house working he had now
to give up the most precious thing in his life. In the last few weeks
something new had burst into his soul like a drunken reveller,
upsetting things and setting things up, something at once beautiful and
terrible: but its beauty had surpassed its terror. Beauty had been
blown into his sight and imaginings on the wind-swept downs and now it
was to be swept away again by the grim forces of convention and
utility. Just because others spoiled things he must be deprived of
them: the high must be of less account then the low, the beautiful must
yield to the ugly. This was morality and the social good, this was the
Law of whose glories complacent philosophers loved to preach. He ought
to fight it; he must fight it. But how? The question was as
unanswerable as it was insistent. At length he gave it up. All that
he could do was to pour out his soul to Gregson, for here, if anywhere,
Gregson might be of use. Together they denounced the Iron Heel, and it
was well for Martin that this outlet was not denied him. He was saved
from despair, perhaps from disaster, by a fortnight's ferocious
Anarchism.

And in a fortnight the wound had healed. Enforced abstention from
Anstey's society did its work. Anstey easily picked up new friends and
Martin was astonished to find that he was not jealous of them. He was
equally astonished at his own speedy reconciliation with the order of
things and his swift relapse from Anarchism to Socialism. Anstey had
been right: there was, after all, much to be said for social peace and
convenience.

In another week he was beginning to ask himself what he had ever seen
to admire in Anstey. Climbing the downs was a horrid sweat and cricket
with Rayner had undoubted fascinations.

IX

In the Michaelmas term Martin became a house prefect. He was glad to
obtain the position, not only because authority has always some
attraction, but also because it brought with it some definite and
desirable privileges. No longer need he observe hated bounds, no
longer was he obliged to turn up at games if he felt disinclined.
Martin now became a person to be consulted, an organiser with a voice
in the affairs of a community. Though he was not, like many of Mr
Foskett's disciples, fire