hem all, and I should hear once more
what I knew very well myself, that it was a shameful thing for a boy
of my age to cry like a little girl. Yet the tears were there and the
hard lump in my throat, and I could not master them, though I stood
in the woods while the sun set with a splendour that chilled my
heart, and tried to drain my eyes dry of their rebellious, bitter
waters. I would choke over my tea and be rebuked for bad manners.

When the last day came that I had feared most of all, I succeeded in
saying goodbye to the people at the house where I had stopped, and in
making the mournful train journey home without disgracing myself. It
seemed as though a merciful stupor had dulled my senses to a mute
acceptance of my purgatory. I slept in the train, and arrived home so
sleepy that I was allowed to go straight to bed without comment. For
once my body dominated my mind, and I slipped between the sheets in
an ecstasy of fatigue and fell asleep immediately.

Something of this rare mood lingered with me in the morning, and it
was not until I reached the Meat Market that I realised the extent of
my misfortune. I saw the greasy, red-faced men with their hands and
aprons stained with blood. I saw the hideous carcases of animals, the
masses of entrails, the heaps of repulsive hides; but most clearly of
all I saw an ugly sad little boy with a satchel of books on his back
set down in the midst of an enormous and hostile world. The windows;
and stones of the houses were black with soot, and before me there
lay school, the place that had never brought me anything but sorrow
and humiliation. I went on, but as I slid on the cobbles, my mind
caught an echo of peace, the peace of pine-woods and heather, the
peace of the library at home, and, my body trembling with revulsion,
I leant against a lamp-post, deadly sick. Then I turned on my heels
and walked away from the Meat Market and the school for ever. As I
went I cried, sometimes openly before all men, sometimes furtively
before shop-windows, dabbing my eyes with a wet pocket-handkerchief,
and gasping for breath. I did not care where my feet led me, I would
go back to school no more.

I had played truant for three days before the grown-ups discovered
that I had not returned to school. They treated me with that
extraordinary consideration that they always extended to our great
crimes and never to our little sins of thoughtlessness or high
spirits. The doctor saw me. I was told t