He was glad to have been born ... he would be quite ready to die. He did
not question the reason of the one state or the other. For the very fact
that life was so simple and unentangled he clung, with the tenacity and
dumb force of an animal to the things that he had. Peter felt, vaguely,
from time to time, the strength with which Stephen held to him. It was
never expressed in word nor in action but it came leaping sometimes, like
fire, into the midst of their conversation--it was never tangible--always
illusive.
To Peter's progress this simplicity of Stephen was of vast importance. The
boy had now reached an age and a period where emotions, judgments,
partialities, conclusions and surmises were fighting furiously for
dominion. His seven years at Brockett's had been, introspectively, of
little moment. He had been too busy discovering the things that other
people had discovered and written down to think very much about himself.
Now released from the domination of books, he plunged into a whirlpool of
surmise about himself. During the fortnight that he sat writing his
articles in Bucket Lane he flew, he sank, according to his moods. It seemed
to him that as soon as he had decided on one path and set out eagerly to
follow it others crossed it and bewildered him.
He was now on that unwholesome, absorbing, thrilling, dangerous path of
self-discovery.
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