'Scarcely that.'

'How shall you spend your time when you are not deep in electrics? What
do you mean to read these holidays?'

'Chiefly German, I think. I have only just begun to read it.'

'And I can't read it at all. Now and then I make a shot at the meaning
of a note in a German edition of some classical author, every time
fretting at my ignorance. But there is so endlessly much to do, and a
day is so short.'

'Isn't it hateful,' he broke forth, 'this enforced idleness of mine? To
think that weeks and weeks go by and I remain just where I was, when the
loss of an hour used to seem to me an irreparable misfortune. I have
such an appetite for knowledge, surely the unhappiest gift a man can be
endowed with it leads to nothing but frustration. Perhaps the appetite
weakens as one grows in years; perhaps the sphere of one's keener
interests contracts; I hope it may be so. At times I cannot work--I
mean, I could not--for a sense of the vastness of the field before me.
I should like you to see my rooms at Balliol. Shelves have long since
refused to take another volume; floor, tables, chairs, every spot is
heaped. And there they lie; hosts I have scarcely looked into, many I
shall never have time to take up to the end of my days.'

'You have the satisfaction of being able to give your whole time to
study.'

'There is precisely the source of dissatisfaction My whole time, and
that wholly insufficient. I have a friend, a man I envy intensely; he