Tommy, who was every day being shown a little more how Prudence Varley had from the beginning 'quite withdrawn,' concerned himself, not with the honesty or the kindness of the principle, but merely with its immediate basis. So, coming to an understanding of its basis, he saw vividly his own hopelessly unachieved intimacy, his attempts so driven back upon themselves, yet gaily denying defeat, his battering at walls which had been built--not at all, as he had supposed, of abstraction, but of entire perception. He saw now more and more each day the impenetrability of those walls; retrospect illumined for him the unheeding detachment, the abrupt swerves from persons to things, so frequent because he had been so indomitable in his return to persons, perceiving them for gates in the impenetrable walls. There had been times, there had been moments, when the gates had yielded a very little; one had, as it were, got sudden glimpses through. After all, the Crevequers had never failed, till now, to achieve any intimacy.... The half-conscious, vague knowledge of this made the shut gates the more significant; their barred faces were written over, large, with words. The Crevequers, having begun to learn to read, spelt them out. Tommy's reading was perhaps attained to with greater slowness, greater difficulty--the fault of sex--than Betty's; but in the end the attainment was equally complete. To Tommy one element in the business was all-important; before it the other elements shrivelled into nothing. But there were other elements which at times had their turn. There was the attitude of Venables, now realized as the basis of the embarrassment which had for some time been oddly, inexplicably, growing into their intercourse with each other. Wholly to absorb that attitude Tommy had to go back some years, to an old atmosphere--an atmosphere of discriminations between the things a man could do and the other things which he could not do. It is curious how environment can choke an atmosphere. This, of a certain social and moral decency, as evolved by youth in community, had been brought back to Tommy by Venables. Venables and the atmosphere reacted on each other; each explained the other. This was rather a question of the renewal of old things than of new acquirements. Four years--those four years--do not easily slip out of life. They had not slipped out of Tommy's; but it had needed Venables to make them stand and deliver their message. They delivered it, with whispers growing to clamour--a sordid recital of the things which a man cannot do. From the friendly inexpressiveness of Venables' eyes, Tommy gathered the classification 'just scum.' With a side glance at Betty's part in the business, he admitted that there were also, beyond doubt, the things which a girl cannot do--beyond doubt, too, Betty had done them; but here old atmosphere did not come to his help: his ignorance was as outer darkness. Those things were Betty's concern.