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They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace
that overlooked the town. It nestled in the valley along the
pleasant Neckar with a comfortable friendliness. The smoke
from the chimneys hung over it, a pale blue haze; and the
tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it a pleasantly
medieval air. There was a homeliness in it which warmed
the heart. Hayward talked of Richard Feverel and Madame
Bovary, of Verlaine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those
days Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam was known
only to the elect, and Hayward repeated it to Philip. He
was very fond of reciting poetry, his own and that of others,
which he did in a monotonous sing-song. By the time they
reached home Philip’s distrust of Hayward was changed to
enthusiastic admiration.
They made a practice of walking together every after-
noon, and Philip learned presently something of Hayward’s
circumstances. He was the son of a country judge, on whose
death some time before he had inherited three hundred a
year. His record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that when
he went to Cambridge the Master of Trinity Hall went out
of his way to express his satisfaction that he was going to
that college. He prepared himself for a distinguished career.
He moved in the most intellectual circles: he read Brown-
ing with enthusiasm and turned up his well-shaped nose at
Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley’s treatment of
Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of his
rooms were reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts, Burne-
Jones, and Botticelli); and he wrote not without distinction
verses of a pessimistic character. His friends told one an-

1 Of Human Bondage