“Love me?” she said, struggling away from me, “Don’t!” and then, as the train ran into a station, “You must tell no one.... I don’t know.... You shouldn’t have done that....” Then two other people got in with us and terminated my wooing for a time. When we found ourselves alone together, walking towards Battersea, she had decided to be offended. I parted from her unforgiven and terribly distressed. When we met again, she told me I must never say “that” again. I had dreamt that to kiss her lips was ultimate satisfaction. But it was indeed only the beginning of desires. I told her my one ambition was to marry her. “But,” she said, “you’re not in a position—What’s the good of talking like that?” I stared at her. “I mean to,” I said. “You can’t,” she answered. “It will be years” “But I love you,” I insisted. I stood not a yard from the sweet lips I had kissed; I stood within arm’s length of the inanimate beauty I desired to quicken, and I saw opening between us a gulf of years, toil, waiting, disappointments and an immense uncertainty. “I love you,” I said. “Don’t you love me?” She looked me in the face with grave irresponsive eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I _like_ you, of course.... One has to be sensibl...” I can remember now my sense of frustration by her unresilient reply. I should have perceived then that for her my ardour had no quickening fire. But how was I to know? I had let myself come to want her, my imagination endowed her with infinite possibilities. I wanted her and wanted her, stupidly and instinctively.... “But,” I said “Love—!” “One has to be sensible,” she replied. “I like going about with you. Can’t we keep as we are?’” VI Well, you begin to understand my breakdown now, I have been copious enough with these apologia. My work got more and more spiritless, my behaviour degenerated, my punctuality declined; I was more and more outclassed in the steady grind by my fellow-students. Such supplies of moral energy as I still had at command shaped now in the direction of serving Marion rather than science. I fell away dreadfully, more and more I shirked and skulked; the humped men from the north, the pale men with thin, clenched minds, the intent, hard-breathing students I found against me, fell at last from keen rivalry to moral contempt. Even a girl got above me upon one of the lists. Then indeed I made it a point of honour to show by my public disregard of every rule that I really did not even pretend to try.