“Already your life has been lived?” queried Mr. Wilmot very anxiously.
“Well, not exactly,” Michael replied, with a quick glance towards his host to make sure he was not joking. “I expect that when I leave school I shall get interested again. Only just lately I’ve given up everything. First I was keen on Footer, and then I got keen on Ragging, and then I got keen on Work even (this was confessed apologetically), and just lately I’ve been keen on the Church—only now I find that’s pretty stale.”
“The Church!” echoed Mr. Wilmot. “How wonderful! The dim Gothic glooms, the sombre hues of stained glass, the incense-wreathèd acolytes, the muttering priests, the bedizened banners and altars and images. Ah, elusive and particoloured vision that once was mine!”
“Then I got keen on Swinburne,” said Michael.
“You advance along the well-worn path of the Interior and Elect,” said Mr. Wilmot.
“I’m still keen on Swinburne, but he makes me feel hopeless. Sad and hopeless,” said Michael.
“Under the weight of sin?” asked Mr. Wilmot.
“Not exactly—because he seems to have done everything and——”
“You’d like to?”
“Yes, I would,” said Michael. “Only one can’t live like a Roman Emperor at a public school. What I hate is the way everybody thinks you ought to be interested in things that aren’t really interesting at all. What people can’t understand about me is that I could be keener than anybody about things schoolmasters and that kind don’t think right or at any rate important. I don’t mean to say I want to be dissipated, but——”