SCOTT IS LONELY.
Bravery Reginald Scott, of Merton, was one of Gobion's chief admirers. He thought that no one was so clever or so good, and felt sure that his friend's traducers—and they were many—had never really got down below the crust of cynicism and surface immorality of mind as he had done. He certainly knew that Gobion occasionally drank more than was good for him, but he put it down to misadventure more than taste.
He was a good young man, rather commonplace in intellect, but of a blameless life and an unsuspicious, happy temperament.
A man who had always been on the best of terms with an adoring family and a wealthy father, he ambled easily through life, enjoying everything, and being especially happy when he was worked up into an emotion by a poem or sunset.
Generally tethered in the shallows of everyday circumstances, his mind experienced undimmed delight in acute sensation.
He had one great motif running like a silver thread through his consciousness—his love for Gobion; and every night he humbly and earnestly prayed for him, kneeling at a little prie-Dieu painted green.
To him there had been something very sacred in his relations with this man. One night Gobion had stayed behind after a wine party, and had sat late, staring into the fire and talking simply and hopefully about the trials and temptations of a young man's life. Very frankly he had talked with a nobleness of ideal and breadth of thought that fascinated Scott and made him feel drawn close to this strange handsome boy who was so assured and so hopeful.
After that first night there had been others when they sat alone, and Gobion talked airily with a fantastic wealth of fancy and sweetness of expression.
Scott thought he could see in all this man's conversation a high purpose and a stainless purity, made the more obvious by attempts at concealment.