It is slowly becoming my dominant thought that the sort of people whose will this Utopia embodies must be people a little heedless of small pleasures. You cannot focus all good things at the same time. That is my chief discovery in these meditations at Lucerne. Much of the rest of this Utopia I had in a sort of way anticipated, but not this. I wonder if I shall see my Utopian self for long and be able to talk to him freely....
We lie in the petal-strewn grass under some Judas trees beside the lake shore, as I meander among these thoughts, and each of us, disregardful of his companion, follows his own associations.
“Very remarkable,” I say, discovering that the botanist has come to an end with his story of that Frognal dog.
“You'd wonder how he knew,” he says.
“You would.”
I nibble a green blade.
“Do you realise quite,” I ask, “that within a week we shall face our Utopian selves and measure something of what we might have been?”
The botanist's face clouds. He rolls over, sits up abruptly and puts his lean hands about his knees.
“I don't like to think about it,” he says. “What is the good of reckoning ... might have beens?”