"Dark faces and golden crowns--they're kings of Ethiopia. And I
like the way the tits cling to the flowers and pick out the
seeds, while the other loutish birds, grubbing dirtily for their
food, look up in envy from the ground. Do they look up in envy?
That's the literary touch, I'm afraid. Education again. It
always comes back to that." He was silent.

Anne had sat down on a bench that stood in the shade of an old
apple tree. "I'm listening," she said.

He did not sit down, but walked backwards and forwards in front
of the bench, gesticulating a little as he talked. "Books," he
said--"books. One reads so many, and one sees so few people and
so little of the world. Great thick books about the universe and
the mind and ethics. You've no idea how many there are. I must
have read twenty or thirty tons of them in the last five years.
Twenty tons of ratiocination. Weighted with that, one's pushed
out into the world."

He went on walking up and down. His voice rose, fell, was silent
a moment, and then talked on. He moved his hands, sometimes he
waved his arms. Anne looked and listened quietly, as though she
were at a lecture. He was a nice boy, and to-day he looked
charming--charming!

One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas
about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life
fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's
philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly