voice, and in his sleepy eyes, there would come a curious charm. CHAPTER XXI I had formed no definite conception of what my new school would be like, but there was a flatness about the reality for which I was unprepared. I seemed to slip into my place at once, without attracting the slightest attention either of boys or masters, and at a week’s end any strangeness there might have been had completely worn off. I did not play football, which was the only game played this term. I got to know a good many boys, but I formed no friendships. I found my new companions to be, on the whole, little, if at all, more congenial than the boys at Newcastle, in spite of there being so many more to choose from. I liked them well enough, and they were, with one exception, perfectly decent to me, but it all ended there: that is to say, in my relation with them I had invariably to approach them on their own ground, I had to enter into _their_ world, they were incapable of entering into mine, or even of meeting me halfway. There was a boy I had felt attracted to, purely on account of his good-looks, and as our ways home lay in the same direction I joined him one afternoon just as he was going out at the gate. But the first words he uttered shattered my illusions. He had a harsh, loud voice and spoke through his nose. Almost at once he began to tell me what he imagined to be a funny story, and before I had been with him five minutes I said good-bye abruptly, and left him standing on the pavement, staring after me, nor did I ever speak to him again. Day by day I went to school, neither liking it nor disliking it. Yet it was all rather dismal, for life without any kind of human sympathy, either given or received, is a dreadful, almost an impossible, thing. I thought a good deal of Katherine, and wrote to her, but got only an occasional scrappy note in reply. I did not see much of George, for he was kept in his business till nearly seven o’clock, and in the evenings I had to prepare my work for the next day. George, moreover, had his own circle of friends, none of whom, as I have said, were particularly eager for my company, while George himself, when he was among them, was the least eager of all. Sometimes when I was with him alone I would remember this and resent it, but he could always make me forgive him when he wanted to: he could be extraordinarily pleasant when he wanted to, and it was impossible to be bored in his company.