“I know. But you have made the first step. Also, I can say it now, you look very much better than when you came.”
“I am not more happy,” said Philip.
“No, but you conceive it distantly possible that one day you may be. That has only just begun to occur to you.”
Philip established his elbows more firmly yet.
“You are a living miracle, Tom!” he said. “I believe you are happier than any man on this earth has ever been, since, at any rate, man began to grow complicated and want things. You want nothing, I suppose, do you? And is it that which has made you a boy again, while wanting and not getting, and being robbed of what was mine, has made an old man of me?”
Tom smiled, showing his white even teeth.
“Ah, I want,” he said, “I want passionately, but I feel sure I shall get what I want. It is the old story, I have told it you before: what I want is the full realisation of the oneness of all life, and of the joy that pervades everything.”
“What would I not give to realise one millionth-part of that?” said Philip.
He paused a moment and then broke out suddenly.
“Ah, it is the very intensity and completeness with which I loved her that makes it all so bitter,” he said. “A little love would only have meant a little bitterness. But my love was not little, and so also is not my bitterness. And afterwards, I did the best thing I could think of. I worked, using work as a drug. As you know, I took too much of that drug, and nearly broke down in consequence. And, oddly enough, now, so far from finding myself a slave to it, the thought of it is rather distasteful than otherwise. I might have made quite a lot of money to-day, if I had only taken the trouble to write a telegram, which would have been done in ten minutes and have cost me ten shillings. But I thought: ‘Is it worth while?’ And when one thinks that, it is certainly not worth while: only things that are quite indubitably worth while are worth while at all. And then I thought over what I had done to Evelyn, and that seemed not worth while either. I should not do it again if I had the chance.”