"The trouble is," Doe carried on, "that this something in me isn't pure. It's mixed up with the desire for glory. When I told Radley I'd like to be a leader of the people, I knew that one-third was a real desire for their good, and two-thirds a desire for my own glory."
"Yes, but I was going to tell you that once—"
"And I wish it were a pure force. I'd love to pursue an Ideal for its own sake, and without any thought for my own glory. I wonder if I shall ever do a really perfect thing."
"I was going to tell you," I persisted; and, though I knew he measured my temperament as far inferior to Edgar Doe's artistic soul, and would rather have continued his own revelations, yet must I interrupt by telling him of my one moment of aspiration and yearning. Perhaps, I, too, wanted to pour out my mind's little adventures. We're all the same, and like a heart-to-heart talk, so long as it is about ourselves.
I told him, accordingly, of that strange evening outside the baths, when I had felt so overpowering an aspiration towards a vague ideal—an ideal that could not be grasped or seen, but was somehow both great and good.
§4
The last evening of that summer term there was a noisy breaking-up banquet at Bramhall House. And in the morning I went to Radley's room to say a separate good-bye. I was exultant. Next term seemed worlds away: and, meanwhile, eight sunny weeks of holiday stretched before me. My mother and I were off for Switzerland, to whose white heights and blue Genevan lake she loved to take me, for it was my birthplace, and, in her fond way, she would call me her "mountain boy," and tell an old story of a Colonel who had gazed into his grandson's eyes, and said: "Il a dans les yeux un coin du lac." I was dreaming, then, of the Swiss mountain air, and of twin white sails on a lovely lake; and I was visualising, let me admit it, a new well-tailored suit, grey spats, socks of a mauve variety, and other holiday eruptions. So there was no space in my parochial mind for international issues and rumours of wars. Rather I was ridiculously flushed and shining, as I came upon Radley and wished him a happy holiday.
Radley seemed strained, as though he had something ominous to break, and said with a dull and meaning laugh: "I'm sure I hope you have one too."
Observing that he was in one of his harder moods, I at once became awkwardly dumb; and there was a difficult silence, till he asked:
"Have you heard about Herr Reinhardt?"