“I don’t follow,” he retorted, punching.
“It isn’t right, even for a little time, to forget that you exist.”
“I suppose you’ve never been tempted to go to sleep?”
Just then the train passed through a coppice in which the grey undergrowth looked no more alive than firewood. Yet every twig in it was waiting for the spring. Rickie knew that the analogy was false, but argument confused him, and he gave up this line of attack also.
“Do be more careful over life. If your body escapes you in one thing, why not in more? A man will have other temptations.”
“You mean women,” said Stephen quietly, pausing for a moment in this game. “But that’s absolutely different. That would be harming some one else.”
“Is that the only thing that keeps you straight?”
“What else should?” And he looked not into Rickie, but past him, with the wondering eyes of a child. Rickie nodded, and referred himself to the window.
He observed that the country was smoother and more plastic. The woods had gone, and under a pale-blue sky long contours of earth were flowing, and merging, rising a little to bear some coronal of beeches, parting a little to disclose some green valley, where cottages stood under elms or beside translucent waters. It was Wiltshire at last. The train had entered the chalk. At last it slackened at a wayside platform. Without speaking he opened the door.
“What’s that for?”