Philip had hoped, earnestly enough, as his old associations faded more and more completely out of his life, to pass beyond the fog of strangeness which shrouded from him the heart and meaning of Doomington School. But he was forced to realize that volition was by no means adequate to achieve this purpose; for the paradoxical truth was borne in upon him, that, as he stood, he was somehow absurdly too young and inconceivably too old to take his place simply among the rest. The problem was to be resolved only by deliberate action, and action was wholly beyond his reach. He could drift sombrely with the tide of his own ineffectual melancholy, but the lassitude that softened his limbs prevented him from striking out against the current. He fell into the habit, therefore, of following for long hours the similar roads of Doomington, the amorphous monster which had always stretched so vaguely, so inscrutably, beyond his own steely horizons. In one direction you reached the museum where the mummies were embalmed in such fatuous splendour; southward lay the University galleries where the skeleton of some immense, extinct beast swung terrifyingly from the roof. Northward the road led far and far away to a place where suddenly three chimneys sprang like giants against the throat of the sky. Or in the centre of the city, at the extremes of the bibliophilic world, were the handcarts whose books concerned themselves mainly with the salvation of your soul, and the plate-glass-windowed shops of Messrs. Dobrett and Lees and Messrs. Hornel, whose books were recommended as admirable companions for your motor tours under the Pyrenees and your yachting cruises in the Mediterranean. It was a lifeless youth, sick at heart, prematurely flotsam, he mourned, on the indifferent waters of life, who passed one afternoon under the shadow of the Stock Exchange, along Transfer Street and in the direction of Consort Square, where his defunct Highness stood isolated and unhappy among the conflicting currents of tramcars. But Philip saw nothing, heard nothing clearly, and paused not even a moment before the innumerable display of the latest Rhodesian novel behind the windows of Messrs. Dobrett and Lees' shop. A book swung vacantly between finger and thumb as he walked vacantly along. And he was so startled when a distinguished young stranger stopped him to ask a question that the book slipped to the ground. Not so much the sudden vision of what Philip conceived to be the most immaculate of grey tweeds as the easy refinement of the young gentleman's voice took him aback. Philip flushed and bent down towards the book. "Oh, allow me, allow me!" said the stranger. "It was entirely my fault!" He stooped gallantly, lifted the book, and with a mauve silk handkerchief flicked, off the Doomington dust. "Thank you!" said Philip. "No, really, it was my fault! I forgot I was holding it!"