I wanted to maintain, when it was on me, that
exaltation I dimly felt as communion with a higher power, with God, and
which also was identical with my desire to write, to create....

I bought books, sets of Wordsworth and Keats, of Milton and Shelley and
Shakespeare, and hid them away in my bureau drawers lest Tom and my
friends should see them. These too I read secretly, making excuses for
not joining in the usual amusements. Once I walked to Mrs. Bolton's and
inquired rather shamefacedly for Hermann Krebs, only to be informed that
he had gone out.... There were lapses, of course, when I went off on the
old excursions,--for the most part the usual undergraduate follies,
though some were of a more serious nature; on these I do not care to
dwell. Sex was still a mystery.... Always I awoke afterwards to bitter
self-hatred and despair.... But my work in English improved, and I earned
the commendation and friendship of Mr. Cheyne. With a wisdom for which I
was grateful he was careful not to give much sign of it in classes, but
the fact that he was "getting soft on me" was evident enough to be
regarded with suspicion. Indeed the state into which I had fallen became
a matter of increasing concern to my companions, who tried every means
from ridicule to sympathy, to discover its cause and shake me out of it.
The theory most accepted was that I was in love.

"Come on now, Hughie--tell me who she is. I won't give you away," Tom
would beg. Once or twice, indeed, I had imagined I was in love with the
sisters of Boston classmates whose dances I attended; to these parties
Tom, not having overcome his diffidence in respect to what he called
"social life," never could be induced to go.

It was Ralph who detected the true cause of my discontent. Typical as no
other man I can recall of the code to which we had dedicated ourselves,
the code that moulded the important part of the undergraduate world and
defied authority, he regarded any defection from it in the light of
treason. An instructor, in a fit of impatience, had once referred to him
as the Mephistopheles of his class; he had fatal attractions, and a
remarkable influence. His favourite pastime was the capricious exercise
of his will on weaker characters, such as his cousin, Ham Durrett; if
they "swore off," Ralph made it his business to get them drunk again, and
having accomplished this would proceed himself to administer a new oath
and see that it was kept. Alcohol seemed to ha