Page 768 - of-human-bondage-

slightly open; her legs were stretched out, and her boots
protruded from her petticoats in a grotesque fashion. His
eyes had been resting on her vaguely, but now he looked
at her with peculiar attention. He remembered how pas-
sionately he had loved her, and he wondered why now he
was entirely indifferent to her. The change in him filled him
with dull pain. It seemed to him that all he had suffered
had been sheer waste. The touch of her hand had filled him
with ecstasy; he had desired to enter into her soul so that
he could share every thought with her and every feeling; he
had suffered acutely because, when silence had fallen be-
tween them, a remark of hers showed how far their thoughts
had travelled apart, and he had rebelled against the unsur-
mountable wall which seemed to divide every personality
from every other. He found it strangely tragic that he had
loved her so madly and now loved her not at all. Sometimes
he hated her. She was incapable of learning, and the experi-
ence of life had taught her nothing. She was as unmannerly
as she had always been. It revolted Philip to hear the inso-
lence with which she treated the hard-worked servant at the
boarding-house.
Presently he considered his own plans. At the end of
his fourth year he would be able to take his examination
in midwifery, and a year more would see him qualified.
Then he might manage a journey to Spain. He wanted to
see the pictures which he knew only from photographs; he
felt deeply that El Greco held a secret of peculiar moment
to him; and he fancied that in Toledo he would surely find it
out. He did not wish to do things grandly, and on a hundred