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he went on to Hayward’s rooms: the maid who opened the
door told him that he had gone down to Brighton for the
week-end. Then Philip went to a gallery and found it was
just closing. He did not know what to do. He was distracted.
And he thought of Griffiths and Mildred going to Oxford,
sitting opposite one another in the train, happy. He went
back to his rooms, but they filled him with horror, he had
been so wretched in them; he tried once more to read Bur-
ton’s book, but, as he read, he told himself again and again
what a fool he had been; it was he who had made the sugges-
tion that they should go away, he had offered the money, he
had forced it upon them; he might have known what would
happen when he introduced Griffiths to Mildred; his own
vehement passion was enough to arouse the other’s desire.
By this time they had reached Oxford. They would put up in
one of the lodging-houses in John Street; Philip had never
been to Oxford, but Griffiths had talked to him about it so
much that he knew exactly where they would go; and they
would dine at the Clarendon: Griffiths had been in the habit
of dining there when he went on the spree. Philip got him-
self something to eat in a restaurant near Charing Cross;
he had made up his mind to go to a play, and afterwards
he fought his way into the pit of a theatre at which one of
Oscar Wilde’s pieces was being performed. He wondered
if Mildred and Griffiths would go to a play that evening:
they must kill the evening somehow; they were too stupid,
both of them to content themselves with conversation: he
got a fierce delight in reminding himself of the vulgarity
of their minds which suited them so exactly to one anoth-

1 Of Human Bondage