hey
are to be found in the front garden and the next street. No, Parkinson!
The good painter has skill. It is the bad painter who loves his art. The
good musician loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With
such a pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game
itself. I love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or tape,
as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland, the four
seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the mallets, and the click of
the balls is music. The four colours are to me sacramental and symbolic,
like the red of martyrdom, or the white of Easter Day. You lose all
this, my poor Parkinson. You have to solace yourself for the absence of
this vision by the paltry consolation of being able to go through hoops
and to hit the stick."

And I waved my mallet in the air with a graceful gaiety.

"Don't be too sorry for me," said Parkinson, with his simple sarcasm. "I
shall get over it in time. But it seems to me that the more a man likes
a game the better he would want to play it. Granted that the pleasure
in the thing itself comes first, does not the pleasure of success come
naturally and inevitably afterwards? Or, take your own simile of the
Knight and his Lady-love. I admit the gentleman does first and foremost
want to be in the lady's presence. But I never yet heard of a gentleman
who wanted to look an utter ass when he was there."

"Perhaps not; though he generally looks it," I replied. "But the truth
is that there is a fallacy in the simile, although it was my own. The
happiness at which the lover is aiming is an infinite happiness, which
can be extended without limit. The more he is loved, normally speaking,
the jollier he will be. It is definitely true that the stronger the love
of both lovers, the stronger will be the happiness. But it is not true
that the stronger the play of both croquet players the stronger will
be the game. It is logically possible--(follow me closely here,
Parkinson!)--it is logically possible, to play croquet too well to enjoy
it at all. If you could put this blue ball through that distant hoop as
easily as you could pick it up with your hand, then you would not put it
through that hoop any more than you pick it up with your hand; it would
not be worth doing. If you could play unerringly you would not play at
all. The moment the game is perfect the game disappears."

"I do not think, however," said Parkinson, "that you