CHAPTER III


I must here record one curious circumstance which I have never
explained even to my own satisfaction.

He had been at Cambridge about two years, when, in the common consent
of all his friends, his habits and behaviour seemed to undergo a
complete and radical change.

I have never discovered what the incident was that occasioned this
change; all I know is that suddenly, for several weeks, his geniality
of manner and speech, his hilarity, his cheerfulness, entirely
disappeared; a curious look of haunting sadness, not defined, but
vague, came over his face; and though he gradually returned to his
old ways, yet I am conscious myself, and others would support me in
this, that he was never quite the same again; he was no longer young.

The only two traces that I can discover in his journals, or letters,
or elsewhere, of the facts are these.

He always in later diaries vaguely alludes to a certain event which
changed his view of things in general; "ever since," "since that
November," "for now nearly five years I have felt." These and similar
phrases constantly occur in his diary. I will speak in a moment of
what nature I should conjecture it to have been.

A packet of letters in his desk were marked "to be burnt unopened;"
but at the same time carefully docketed with dates: these dates were