"Things seem to me so ugly now, all this rasping and grinding. It used not to be so when I was in college but now it makes me feel so unpleasantly futile. When I'm in my room with everything about me as I have grouped it I feel futile too, but pleasantly futile, artistically futile."
"Fanshaw, that's all utter rot."
"That's no argument, Wenny, to call a thing rot."
"But it's rot just the same."
They walked along silent again. How hopeless to make oneself understood. Through the sting of bitterness Fanshaw remembered the first time he had seen Wenny. He had sat beside him in a classroom in front of the yellow varnished desk of the instructor. There was the dry smell of chalk and outside lilacs swayed against a blue sky full of little rosy clouds; the hideous lassitude of words in an even voice that smelt of chalk and blackboards, and besides him a thin brownfaced boy with moist brown eyes intent on everything, the chalky words of the instructor, the lilacs outside, the swallows that flashed against the sky. And now they walked back side by side towards Cambridge as they had walked hundreds of other nights at about this hour, and his arm touched Wenny's arm occasionally as it swung. Was it four years, five years, they had known each other? Hopeless all these futile walks, this constant juggling of words. Wenny's stride was even with his stride now, occasionally the backs of their hands touched as they swung. For all they could tell each other they might be on different continents. Fanshaw felt frozen and rigid in ferocious loneliness. And now there was Nan. The thought that he might love her, that he might be losing himself to her disturbed him so that he tried to brush it aside.
"Strange how we are all settling down," he said. All the while he was thinking of love, his boyish idea of love elegant over teacups, suppertables on terraces at Capri, a handing of old fashioned bouquets with a rose in the center, red rose of passion, romaunt of the rose.
"I haven't settled down," said Wenny, savagely. "I wish I had."
In a smoker once Fanshaw had overheard a story about a rose. The recollection brought a curious little feeling of sickness, stale cigar smoke and smutty eyes in a leer, flabby jowls laughing.
"I mean all our group at college," he heard himself saying.
"What else can they do, they've none of them the guts to do anything or be anything.... Nan hasn't settled down."