There were other considerations that made me look forward to the end of the term with misgiving.  Since it had been made plain to me that I was a remarkable boy, I had rather enjoyed my life at school.  I had conceived myself as strutting with a measured dignity before a background of the other boys—­a background that moved and did not change, like a wind-swept tapestry; but I was quite sure that I would not be allowed to give myself airs at home.  It seemed to me that a youngest brother’s portion of freedom would compare but poorly with the measure of intellectual liberty that I had secured for myself at school.  My brothers were all very well in their way, but I would be expected to take my place in the background and do what I was told.  I should miss my sense of being superior to my environment, and my intensely emotional Sundays would no longer divide time into weeks.  The more I thought of it, the more I realised that I did not want to go home.

On the last night of the term, when the dormitory had at length become quiet, I considered the whole case dispassionately in my bed.  The labour of packing my play-box and writing labels for my luggage had given me a momentary thrill, but for the rest I had moved among my insurgent comrades with a chilled heart.  I knew now that I was too greedy of life, that I always thought of the pleasant side of things when they were no longer within my grasp; but at the I same time my discontent was not wholly unreasonable.  I had learnt more of myself in three months than I had in all my life before, and from being a nervous, hysterical boy I had arrived at a complete understanding of my emotions, which I studied with an almost adult calmness of mind.  I knew that in returning to the society of my healthy, boyish brothers, I was going back to a kind of life for which I was no longer fitted.  I had changed, but I had the sense to see that it was a change that would not appeal to them, and that in consequence I would have another and harder battle to fight before I was allowed to go my own way.

I saw further still.  I saw that after a month at home I would not want to come back to school, and that I should have to endure another period of despondency.  I saw that my whole school life would be punctuated by these violent uprootings, that the alternation of term-time and holidays would make it impossible for me to change life into a comfortable habit, and that even to the end of my school-days it would be necessary for me to preserve my new-found courage.

As I lay thinking in the dark I was proud of the clarity of my mind, and glad that I had at last outwitted the tears that had made my childhood so unhappy.  I heard, the boys breathing softly around me—­those wonderful boys who could sleep even when they were excited—­and I felt that I was getting the better of them in thinking while they slept.  I remembered the prefect who had told me that we were there only for a spell, but I did not speculate as to what would follow afterwards.  All that I had to do was to watch myself ceaselessly, and be able to explain to myself everything that I felt I and did.  In that way I should always be strong I enough to guard my weaknesses from the eyes of the jealous world in which I moved.