Opposed to this was the inarticulate, friendly soul of
Stephen. Stephen understood nothing and at the same time understood
everything. Against the testing of his few simple laws Peter's complexities
often vanished ... but vanished only to recur again, unsatisfied, demanding
a subtler answer. It was during those days, through all the trouble and
even horror that so shortly came upon them both, that Stephen realised with
a dull, unreasoned pain, like lead at the heart, that Peter was passing
inevitably from him into a country whither Stephen could not follow--to
deal with issues that Stephen could not, in any kind of way, understand.
Stephen realised this many days before Peter even dimly perceived it, and
the older man by the love that he had for the boy whom he had known from
the very first period of his growth was enabled, although dimly, to see
beyond, above all these complexities, to a day when Peter would once more,
having learnt and suffered much in the meanwhile, come back to that first
simplicity.
But that day was far distant.
II
On the evening of the day on which Peter finished the last of his five
attempts to take the London journals by storm Stephen returned from his
restaurant earlier than usual--so early indeed, that Peter, had he not been
so bent on his own immediate affairs, must have noticed and questioned it.
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