And perceiving this showed him what was indeed the truth that all his life
had been only Boy's History. He had gone up--he had gone down--he had loved
and hated, exulted and despaired, but it was all with a boy's intense
realisation of the moment, with a boy's swift, easy transition from one
crisis to another.
It had been his education--and now his education was over. As he had said
those words to Norah Monogue, "I will go back," he had become a man. Never
again would Life be so utterly over as it had been two months ago--never
again would he be so single-hearted in his reserved adoption of it as he
had been those days ago, at Norah Monogue's side.
He saw that always, through everything that boy, Peter Westcott had been
in the way. It was not until he had taken, on that day in Norah Monogue's
room, Peter Westcott in his hands and flung him to the four winds that he
had seen how terribly in the way he had been. "Go back," Norah had said to
him; "you have done all these things for yourself and you have been beaten
to your knees--go back now and do something for others. You have been brave
for yourself--be brave now for others."
And he was going back.
He was going back, as he had seen on that day, to no easy life. He was
going to take up all those links that had been so difficult for him
before--he was going to learn all over again that art that he had fancied
that he had conquered at the very first attempt--he was going now with no
expectations, no hopes, no ambitions.
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