th. And then, when it was all over I began
to think: 'What's it all for, what's it all about? What's the good?'
Suppose I have passed, I'll get some beastly little job in some stuffy
Government office, 200 pounds a year, if I'm lucky. And then if I'm good
and not too bright they'll raise me to 250 pounds in a couple of years'
time, and so it'll go on--nothing but fug, and dinge, and skimping, and
planning--with a fortnight at the seaside once a year or a run over to
Paris. I suppose it was good enough for our grandfathers,
Stonehouse--this just keeping alive? But it didn't seem good enough to
me. Don't you feel like that sometimes--when you think of the time when
you'll be able to stick M.D., or whatever it is, after your name--as
though, after all, it didn't matter a brace of shakes?"

Robert Stonehouse roused himself from his lounging attitude and thrust
his hands deep into his trousers pockets. There was a nip in the wind,
and he had no overcoat.

"No. When I've got through this next year I shall feel that I've climbed
out of a black pit and that the world's before me--to do what I like
with."

"Well--you're different." Cosgrave sighed, but not unhappily. "You're
going to do what you want to do, and I expect you'll be great guns at it.
I dare say if I were to play the piano all day long--decently, you know,
as I do sometimes, inside me at any rate--and get money for it, I'd think
it worth while---- But it takes a lot to make one feel that way about
a Government office."

His voice was quenched by a sudden rush of traffic--a tram that jangled
and swayed, a purring limousine full of vague, glittering figures, and a
great belated lorry lumbering in pursuit like an uncouth participant in
some fantastic race. They roared past and vanished, and into the empty
space of quiet there flowed back the undertones of the river, solitary
footfalls, the voice of the drowsing city. The loneliness became
something magical. It changed the colour of Cosgrave's thoughts. He
pressed closer to his companion, and, with his elbows on the balustrade
and his hands clenched in his hair, spoke in an awed whisper.

"It does seem worth while now. That's what's so extraordinary. I feel I
can stick anything--even being a Government clerk all my life. I don't
even seem to mind home like I did. I'm in love. That's what it is.
You've never been in love, have you, Stonehouse?"

"No."

"You're such a cast-iron fellow. I don't