to shelter the unshrinking spirit.  It was all exposed, exposed to the sweep of plain, to the high, strong sky, and to human gaze.  A kind of boldness, an indifference.  Aaron was impressed and fascinated.  He looked with new interest at the Italians in the carriage with him—­for this same boldness and indifference and exposed gesture.  And he found it in them, too.  And again it fascinated him.  It seemed so much bigger, as if the walls of life had fallen.  Nay, the walls of English life will have to fall.

Sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again.  The presence of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in England.  In England, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left free.  Every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast as he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone and reveal what is inside.  And every other passenger is forced, by the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also.  Which in the end becomes a sort of self-conscious madness.

But here, in the third class carriage, there was no tight string round every man.  They were not all trussed with self-conscious string as tight as capons.  They had a sufficient amount of callousness and indifference and natural equanimity.  True, one of them spat continually on the floor, in large spits.  And another sat with his boots all unlaced and his collar off, and various important buttons undone.  They did not seem to care if bits of themselves did show, through the gaps in the wrapping.  Aaron winced—­but he preferred it to English tightness.  He was pleased, he was happy with the Italians.  He thought how generous and natural they were.

So the towns passed by, and the hours, and he seemed at last to have got outside himself and his old conditions.  It seemed like a great escape.  There was magic again in life—­real magic.  Was it illusion, or was it genuine?  He thought it was genuine, and opened his soul a if there was no danger.

Lunch-time came.  Francis summoned Aaron down the rocking tram.  The three men had a table to themselves, and all felt they were enjoying themselves very much indeed.  Of course Francis and Angus made a great impression again.  But in the dining car were mostly middle-class, well-to-do Italians.  And these did not look upon our two young heroes as two young wonders.  No, rather with some criticism, and some class-envy.  But they were impressed.  Oh, they were impressed!  How should they not be, when our young gentlemen had such an air!  Aaron was conscious all the time that the fellow-diners were being properly impressed by the flower of civilisation and the salt of the earth, namely, young, well-to-do Englishmen.  And he had a faint premonition, based on experience perhaps, that fellow-passengers in the end never forgive the man who has “impressed” them.  Mankind loves being impressed.  It asks to be impressed.  It almost forces those whom it can force to play a role and to make an impression.  And afterwards, never forgives.