It had begun the moment after he had suggested the concert. I'll get a new top hat before then. The awful demand for a jest. His way of waiting as if one were some queer being he was waiting to see say or do something anyone could understand was the same as the English way only more open. But English people like that did not care for music and did not have books read to them. Perhaps his parents belonged to the other sort of English and he had the stamp of it, promising seriousness and a love of beautiful things, and forced by life into the jesting way of worldly people who seemed to have no sacred patches at all. Quick words, bathed in laughter heaped up into a questioning of what the _matter_ was. Men, demanding jests and amusement; women succeeding only by jesting satirically about everything. Von Heber's a man who'll _carve_ his way.... My. He's _great_. Carve his way; one of those phrases that satisfy and worry you; short, and leaving out nearly everything; Dr. von Heber going through life with a chisel, intent on carving; everybody envying him; the von Heber not seen or realised; his way is carved, he _is_ his way ... going ahead further and further away as one listened. His poverty and drudgery behind him, at Winnipeg, amongst the ice. Hoisting himself out of it, _making_ himself into a doctor; a graduate of "McGill" ... standing out among the graduates with even the very manner of success more marked in him than in them with their money and ease; sailing to England steady-minded in the awful risk of borrowed money ... it's wrong, insulting to him to think of it while he is still in the midst of the effort ... a sort of treachery to know the details at all ... the _impossibility_ of not dwelling on them. But thinking disperses his general effect. In the strength and sunshine of him there is power. The things he has done are the power in him; no need to know the gossipy details; that was why the facts sounded so familiar; reproachful, as Dr. Hurd brought them out.... I knew _all_ about him when I met his sunshine. I ought to have rushed away garlanded with hawthorn, with some woman, and waited till he came again. Dr. Hurd looks like an old woman; an old gossip. Old men are worse gossips than old women. They can't keep their hands off. They make phrases. Dr. Hurd is a dead, dead old woman. Handling things like an old man. It was so natural to listen. 'Natural' things get you lost and astray ... kiss-in-the-ring 'just a little harmless nonsense ... there's no harm in a little gay nonsense chickie.' There's no such thing as harmless nonsense: Dissipation makes you forget everything. Secret sacred places. George and John faithful and steady can't make those. They smile _personally_ and the room or the landscape is immediately silly and tame.... * * * * *