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and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else.
In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you
may think as you choose. They’re both very good things. I
personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you
get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t
think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s be-
cause it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.’
He leaned back cautiously, for the chair on which he sat
had a ricketty leg, and it was disconcerting when a rhetori-
cal flourish was interrupted by a sudden fall to the floor.
‘I ought to go back to England this year, but if I can scrape
together enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms
I shall stay another twelve months. But then I shall have to
go. And I must leave all this’—he waved his arm round the
dirty garret, with its unmade bed, the clothes lying on the
floor, a row of empty beer bottles against the wall, piles of
unbound, ragged books in every corner—‘for some provin-
cial university where I shall try and get a chair of philology.
And I shall play tennis and go to tea-parties.’ He interrupted
himself and gave Philip, very neatly dressed, with a clean
collar on and his hair well-brushed, a quizzical look. ‘And,
my God! I shall have to wash.’
Philip reddened, feeling his own spruceness an intoler-
able reproach; for of late he had begun to pay some attention
to his toilet, and he had come out from England with a pret-
ty selection of ties.
The summer came upon the country like a conquer-
or. Each day was beautiful. The sky had an arrogant blue
which goaded the nerves like a spur. The green of the trees

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