He turned and awaited her approach. She took his cold limp fingers. He seemed shy--almost angry--and would not look at her. "May and I have missed you, Paul. Were you trying to run away from me?" A moment before hearing her voice he had felt worldly and old and self-possessed. He hated himself because, at the time, she always obliged him to believe in her estimate of him rather than his own. He walked along beside her with his hands in his pockets, his head lowered. "Until I met your aunt the other day I thought you had taken the long voyage you were always talking about. We haven't been such bad friends that we deserve to be ignored, have we?" Paul said, "I haven't been to see anybody." She thought his reserve sulky. "Aren't you going to college in a few days?" Paul turned red. He was all against her. "I think a lot of college is a waste of time." "I suppose it is, but one might waste time much more disastrously." "I feel that going to college would be hypnotizing myself for four years so I wouldn't know what real people were doing." "Surely there are some real people in college!" "Well, they manage to hide themselves. No college professor would ever let you know that there was such a thing as a class struggle going on!" Poor child! Why is he so angry! "I see you're still very much interested in economics." "Well, I haven't much use for the theoretical side of it." "I thought economics was all theory." Paul's intolerance scarcely permitted him to answer her. Most women, who go in for making the world right over a cup of tea, do! "If anything good comes to the working people of this country it will be through direct action." He could not go on. His words suffocated him. He knew that she was cursing him once more with the sin of youth. "I can't expect people who don't know anything about actual conditions to agree with me." His trembling hands fumbled helplessly in his pockets. It was all dim between them. Love. I must love the world. She has never suffered. It was almost as if she must suffer before he could go on with what he believed. The world that was old seemed stronger and harder than he could bear. People work because they must starve otherwise. She goes to work that is only another diversion. They die. I could die. Dead beast. Beauty and the beast. His heart was like a stone. Julia, watching him as they walked, saw his gullet move in his long stooped neck. Poor awkward child! "I like you for feeling all this, Paul. I used to feel the same things." "I suppose you don't believe in them now!" "I'm afraid I don't, Paul--not entirely. So many people have tried." She was jealous of the child's illusion, but at the same time complacently sad. He doesn't know me. The boy doesn't know me. Pity, baby, Dudley, Charles, Laurence. "It wouldn't be hopeless if they didn't all pat themselves on the back for being disillusioned."