down. In a few years it'll be as if I've never been up. It
matters very much to me what the world is like. I can't answer
your questions about it; and that's no loss to you, but so much
the worse for me. And then you've got a house--not a metaphorical
one, but a house with father and sisters. I haven't, and never
shall have. There'll never again be a home for me like Cambridge.
I shall only look at the outside of homes. According to your
metaphor, I shall live in the street, and it matters very much to
me what I find there."

"You'll live in another house right enough," said Ansell, rather
uneasily. "Only take care you pick out a decent one. I can't
think why you flop about so helplessly, like a bit of seaweed. In
four years you've taken as much root as any one."

"Where?"

"I should say you've been fortunate in your friends."

"Oh--that!" But he was not cynical--or cynical in a very tender
way. He was thinking of the irony of friendship--so strong it is,
and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part
in the open stream. Nature has no use for us: she has cut her
stuff differently. Dutiful sons, loving husbands, responsible
fathers these are what she wants, and if we are friends it must
be in our spare time. Abram and Sarai were sorrowful, yet their
seed became as sand of the sea, and distracts the politics of
Europe at this moment. But a few verses of poetry is all that
survives of David and Jonathan.