"Roland!" I exclaimed reproachfully.
When his friend had gone to bed he walked fiercely up and down the room in which he was now alone with me.
"You can see what I feel, Big Yeogh Wough. I don't want you to see work that I think is bad. And you know that home and you are something quite apart from everything else with me. My best self is always here, but I've had to bring out another self in my school life, or I couldn't have got on in that life at all. And I don't want you to hear about that other self. Any boy that comes here must come on condition that he doesn't tell you."
"You ought to be very grateful to this particular boy who is here now, for he has told me of all sorts of goodnesses in you—of your kindness in helping other fellows less clever than yourself—helping them even to compete against you—and of your great sense of justice. You have learnt to rule, and I am glad, for now you will have to put your ability to the test; and I am very proud to know that last Speech Day the Head thanked you for the change for the better that you had worked in your house since you had been an important boy there."
He came and sat down on the big couch beside me and leaned his head against mine.
"Are you particularly fond of Edward's sister, Roland?"
"Of Vera Brennan? No, not particularly fond of her. I like her tremendously. You would, too, if you knew her. She's not like other girls. She's brilliant and can think for herself. She wants to be a writer some day. But first she's going to Oxford. If it hadn't been for this war we should have been there at the same time."
"Going to Oxford isn't the way for a woman to be a writer—except of treatises. But that's beside the point. Are you getting to be fond of her? Do you think you will ever be as fond of her as you are of me?"
"What are you talking about, Big Yeogh Wough? I'm only a boy yet and am not likely to get fond of any woman, except in a comradely way. You know that when the time comes for me to love a woman and think of marrying her, I should like to find one like you if I could. But I'm not likely to be able to do that. Yet, whether the woman be Vera or anybody else, there won't be any question of whether I love you or her the better. You and I have lived so much in each other's life that we're like one person, and the woman I love will have to have you for a lover as well as me, while she'll have to love you if she wants me."