“I am, though.” He sluiced the cold water over his head, grunting. “Not near so fit—gettin’ fat too.... Rugger days are over. Wish all my other days were over too.”
He got out of the bath, wiped himself, put on pyjamas, brushed his teeth, then his hair, took out a pipe, and then sat beside me on the bed.
“Look here, Durward,” he said. “I’m desperate, old man.” (He said “desprite.”) “We’re all in a hell of a mess.”
“I know,” I said.
He puffed furiously at his pipe.
“You know, if I’m not careful I shall go a bit queer in the head. Get so angry, you know,” he added simply.
“Angry with whom?” I asked.
“With myself mostly for bein’ such a bloody fool. But not only myself—with Civilisation, Durward, old cock!—and also with that swine Semyonov.”
“Ah, I thought you’d come to him,” I said.
“Now the points are these,” he went on, counting on his thick stubbly fingers. “First, I love Vera—and when I say love I mean love. Never been in love before, you know—honest Injun, never.... Never had affairs with tobacconists’ daughters at Cambridge—never had an affair with a woman in my life—no, never. Used to wonder what was the matter with me, why I wasn’t like other chaps. Now I know. I was waitin’ for Vera. Quite simple. I shall never love any one again—never. I’m not a kid, you know, like young Bohun—I love Vera once and for all, and that’s that...”