Philip was sick with anxiety.  He could not sleep at night; he bolted his breakfast, reduced now to tea and bread and butter, in order to get over to the club reading-room and see the paper; sometimes the news was bad, and sometimes there was no news at all, but when the shares moved it was to go down.  He did not know what to do.  If he sold now he would lose altogether hard on three hundred and fifty pounds; and that would leave him only eighty pounds to go on with.  He wished with all his heart that he had never been such a fool as to dabble on the Stock Exchange, but the only thing was to hold on; something decisive might happen any day and the shares would go up; he did not hope now for a profit, but he wanted to make good his loss.  It was his only chance of finishing his course at the hospital.  The Summer session was beginning in May, and at the end of it he meant to take the examination in midwifery.  Then he would only have a year more; he reckoned it out carefully and came to the conclusion that he could manage it, fees and all, on a hundred and fifty pounds; but that was the least it could possibly be done on.

Early in April he went to the tavern in Beak Street anxious to see Macalister.  It eased him a little to discuss the situation with him; and to realise that numerous people beside himself were suffering from loss of money made his own trouble a little less intolerable.  But when Philip arrived no one was there but Hayward, and no sooner had Philip seated himself than he said: 

“I’m sailing for the Cape on Sunday.”

“Are you!” exclaimed Philip.

Hayward was the last person he would have expected to do anything of the kind.  At the hospital men were going out now in numbers; the Government was glad to get anyone who was qualified; and others, going out as troopers, wrote home that they had been put on hospital work as soon as it was learned that they were medical students.  A wave of patriotic feeling had swept over the country, and volunteers were coming from all ranks of society.

“What are you going as?” asked Philip.

“Oh, in the Dorset Yeomanry.  I’m going as a trooper.”

Philip had known Hayward for eight years.  The youthful intimacy which had come from Philip’s enthusiastic admiration for the man who could tell him of art and literature had long since vanished; but habit had taken its place; and when Hayward was in London they saw one another once or twice a week.  He still talked about books with a delicate appreciation.  Philip was not yet tolerant, and sometimes Hayward’s conversation irritated him.  He no longer believed implicitly that nothing in the world was of consequence but art.  He resented Hayward’s contempt for action and success.  Philip, stirring his punch, thought of his early friendship and his ardent expectation that Hayward would do great things; it was long since he had lost all such illusions, and he knew now that Hayward would never do anything but