“All right.  What shall we do?” answered Hayward.

“Let’s get on a penny steamboat and go down to Greenwich.”

The idea appealed to Hayward, and they jumped into a cab which took them to Westminster Bridge.  They got on the steamboat just as she was starting.  Presently Philip, a smile on his lips, spoke.

“I remember when first I went to Paris, Clutton, I think it was, gave a long discourse on the subject that beauty is put into things by painters and poets.  They create beauty.  In themselves there is nothing to choose between the Campanile of Giotto and a factory chimney.  And then beautiful things grow rich with the emotion that they have aroused in succeeding generations.  That is why old things are more beautiful than modern.  The Ode on a Grecian Urn is more lovely now than when it was written, because for a hundred years lovers have read it and the sick at heart taken comfort in its lines.”

Philip left Hayward to infer what in the passing scene had suggested these words to him, and it was a delight to know that he could safely leave the inference.  It was in sudden reaction from the life he had been leading for so long that he was now deeply affected.  The delicate iridescence of the London air gave the softness of a pastel to the gray stone of the buildings; and in the wharfs and storehouses there was the severity of grace of a Japanese print.  They went further down; and the splendid channel, a symbol of the great empire, broadened, and it was crowded with traffic; Philip thought of the painters and the poets who had made all these things so beautiful, and his heart was filled with gratitude.  They came to the Pool of London, and who can describe its majesty?  The imagination thrills, and Heaven knows what figures people still its broad stream, Doctor Johnson with Boswell by his side, an old Pepys going on board a man-o’-war:  the pageant of English history, and romance, and high adventure.  Philip turned to Hayward with shining eyes.

“Dear Charles Dickens,” he murmured, smiling a little at his own emotion.

“Aren’t you rather sorry you chucked painting?” asked Hayward.

“No.”

“I suppose you like doctoring?”

“No, I hate it, but there was nothing else to do.  The drudgery of the first two years is awful, and unfortunately I haven’t got the scientific temperament.”

“Well, you can’t go on changing professions.”

“Oh, no.  I’m going to stick to this.  I think I shall like it better when I get into the wards.  I have an idea that I’m more interested in people than in anything else in the world.  And as far as I can see, it’s the only profession in which you have your freedom.  You carry your knowledge in your head; with a box of instruments and a few drugs you can make your living anywhere.”

“Aren’t you going to take a practice then?”

“Not for a good long time at any rate,” Philip answered.  “As soon as I’ve got through my hospital appointments I shall get a ship; I want to go to the East—­the Malay Archipelago, Siam, China, and all that sort of thing—­and then I shall take odd jobs.  Something always comes along, cholera duty in India and things like that.  I want to go from place to place.  I want to see the world.  The only way a poor man can do that is by going in for the medical.”