“Gad!” I said.  “You’re a poet.”

I liked the little trifle, not least because I suspected that the “one familiar friend” was myself.  Everyone likes to be mentioned in a poem.

Doe beamed with pleasure that I had not spoken harshly of his off-spring.

“Glad you like it,” he said.

“There’s this,” I suggested, “you talk about only wanting ’these little things’ out of life.  But it seems to me that you want quite a lot.”

“A lot!  By Jove, Ray,” cried Doe excitedly, “it’s only when I’m in my unworldly moods that I want so little as that.  In my worse moments—­that’s nine-tenths of the day—­I want yards more:  Fame and Flattery and Power.”

“Funny.  Once, outside the baths, I had a sort of longing to—­”

“Ray, I only tell you these things,” interrupted Doe, now worked up, “but often I feel I’ve something in me that must come out—­something strong—­something forceful.”

“I don’t think I ever felt quite like that,” said I, ruminating.  “But I did once feel outside the baths—­”

“The trouble is,” Doe carried on, “that this something in me isn’t pure.  It’s mixed up with the desire for glory.  When I told Radley I’d like to be a leader of the people, I knew that one-third was a real desire for their good, and two-thirds a desire for my own glory.”

“Yes, but I was going to tell you that once—­”

“And I wish it were a pure force.  I’d love to pursue an Ideal for its own sake, and without any thought for my own glory.  I wonder if I shall ever do a really perfect thing.”

“I was going to tell you,” I persisted; and, though I knew he measured my temperament as far inferior to Edgar Doe’s artistic soul, and would rather have continued his own revelations, yet must I interrupt by telling him of my one moment of aspiration and yearning.  Perhaps, I, too, wanted to pour out my mind’s little adventures.  We’re all the same, and like a heart-to-heart talk, so long as it is about ourselves.

I told him, accordingly, of that strange evening outside the baths, when I had felt so overpowering an aspiration towards a vague ideal—­an ideal that could not be grasped or seen, but was somehow both great and good.

Sec.4

The last evening of that summer term there was a noisy breaking-up banquet at Bramhall House.  And in the morning I went to Radley’s room to say a separate good-bye.  I was exultant.  Next term seemed worlds away:  and, meanwhile, eight sunny weeks of holiday stretched before me.  My mother and I were off for Switzerland, to whose white heights and blue Genevan lake she loved to take me, for it was my birthplace, and, in her fond way, she would call me her “mountain boy,” and tell an old story of a Colonel who had gazed into his grandson’s eyes, and said:  “Il a dans les yeux un coin du lac.” I was dreaming, then, of the Swiss mountain air, and of twin white sails on a lovely lake; and I was visualising, let me admit it, a new well-tailored suit, grey spats, socks of a mauve variety, and other holiday eruptions.  So there was no space in my parochial mind for international issues and rumours of wars.  Rather I was ridiculously flushed and shining, as I came upon Radley and wished him a happy holiday.