lying. I remember how I sneaked home and upstairs to hide the
marks of my blubbering. But when I cried myself to sleep at last
it wasn't for Carnaby, but for the garden, for the beautiful
afternoon I had hoped for, for the sweet friendly women and the
waiting playfellows and the game I had hoped to learn again, that
beautiful forgotten game . . . . .

"I believed firmly that if I had not told-- . . . . . I had
bad times after that--crying at night and wool-gathering by day.
For two terms I slackened and had bad reports. Do you remember?
Of course you would! It was _you_--your beating me in mathematics
that brought me back to the grind again."


III


For a time my friend stared silently into the red heart of the
fire. Then he said: "I never saw it again until I was seventeen.

"It leapt upon me for the third time--as I was driving to
Paddington on my way to Oxford and a scholarship. I had just one
momentary glimpse. I was leaning over the apron of my hansom
smoking a cigarette, and no doubt thinking myself no end of a man
of the world, and suddenly there was the door, the wall, the dear
sense of unforgettable and still attainable things.

"We clattered by--I too taken by surprise to stop my cab until
we were well past and round a corner. Then I had a queer moment,
a double and divergent movement of my will: I tapped the little