“But you don’t mind going back to London,” said Barthrop.

“No,” said Father Payne, “but that bucks me up.  I was infernally unhappy in London, and it puts me in a thoroughly sensible and cheerful mood to go and look at the outside of my old lodgings, and the place where I used to teach, and to say to myself, ‘Thank God, that’s all over!’ Then I go on my way rejoicing, and make no end of plans.  But if I went to Oxford, I should just remember how happy and young I was; and I might even commit the folly of regretting the lapse of time, and of wishing I could have it back again.  I don’t think it is wholesome to do anything which makes one discontented, or anything which forces one to dwell on what one has lost.  That doesn’t matter.  Nothing really is ever lost, and it only takes the starch out of one to think about it from that angle.  I don’t believe in the past.  It seems unalterable, and I suppose in a sense it is so.  But if you begin to dwell on unalterable things, you become a fatalist, and I’m always trying to get away from that.  The point is that no one is unalterable, and, thank God, we are always altering.  To potter about in the past is like grubbing in an ash-heap, and shedding tears over broken bits of china.  The plate, or whatever it is, was pretty enough, and it had its place and its use; and when the stuff of which it is made is wanted again, it will be used again.  It is simply fatuous to waste time over the broken pieces of old dreams and visions; and I mean to use my emotions and my imagination to see new dreams and finer visions.  Perhaps the time will come when I can dream no more—­the brain gets tired and languid, no doubt.  But even then I shall try to be interested in what is going on.”

“I see your point,” said Barthrop; “but, for the life of me, I can’t see why the old place should not take its part in the new visions!  When I go down to Oxford I don’t regret it.  I go gratefully and happily about, and I like to see the young men as jolly as I was, and as unaware what a good time they are having.  An old pal of mine is a Don, and he puts me up in College, and it amuses me to go into Hall, and to see some of the young lions at close quarters.  It’s all pure and simple refreshment.”

“I’ve no doubt of it, old man,” said Father Payne; “and it’s an excellent thing for you to go, and to draw fresh life from the ancient earth, like Antaeus.  But I’m not made that way.  I’m not loyal—­that is to say, I am not faithful to things simply because I once admired and loved them.  If you are loyal in the right way, as you are, it’s different.  But these old attachments are a kind of idolatry to me—­a false worship.  I’m naturally full of unreasonable devotion to the old and beautiful things; but they get round my neck like a mill-stone, and it is all so much more weight that I have to carry.  I sometimes go to see an old cousin of mine, a widow in the country, who lives entirely in the past, never