ought to be the first to welcome the new light breaking in the sky. What
is life worth to you? You have nothing to hope for--nothing to look
forward to--nothing you can kill the aimless with. Why should you desire
to-morrow? To-morrow will bring you nothing different from yesterday;
you will do as you did yesterday and the day before yesterday. It is the
life of a horse or an ox--not the life of a human being, with the
sympathies and needs and aspirations of a man. What is the object of
living at all?"

"I really don't know," said the other, simply.

But this pale hump-backed lad, with the fine nostrils, the sensitive
mouth, the large forehead, and the beautiful eyes, was terribly in
earnest. He forgot about his place at table. He kept walking up and
down, occasionally addressing his friend directly, at other times
glancing out at the dark river and the golden lines of the lamps.
And he was an eloquent speaker, too. Debarred from most forms of
physical exercise, he had been brought up in a world of ideas.
When he went to Oxford, it was with some vague notion of subsequently
entering the Church; but at Oxford he became speedily convinced that
there was no Church left for him to enter. Then he fell back on
æstheticism--worshipped Carpaccio, adored Chopin, and turned his rooms
at Merton into a museum of old tapestry, Roman brass-work, and
Venetian glass. Then he dabbled a little in Comtism; but very soon he
threw aside that gigantic make-believe at believing. Nevertheless,
whatever was his whim of the moment, it was for him no whim at all,
but a burning reality. And in this enthusiasm of his there was no room
left for shyness. In fact, these two companions had been accustomed to
talk frankly; they had long ago abandoned that self-consciousness
which ordinarily restricts the conversation of young Englishmen to