“I’ve got the decree nisi. It’ll
be made absolute in July, and then we are going to
be married at once.”
For some time Philip did not say anything.
“I wish I hadn’t made such a fool of myself,”
he muttered at length.
He was thinking of his long, humiliating confession.
She looked at him curiously.
“You were never really in love with me,”
she said.
“It’s not very pleasant being in love.”
But he was always able to recover himself quickly,
and, getting up now and holding out his hand, he said:
“I hope you’ll be very happy. After
all, it’s the best thing that could have happened
to you.”
She looked a little wistfully at him as she took his
hand and held it.
“You’ll come and see me again, won’t
you?” she asked.
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“It would make me too envious to see you happy.”
He walked slowly away from her house. After all
she was right when she said he had never loved her.
He was disappointed, irritated even, but his vanity
was more affected than his heart. He knew that
himself. And presently he grew conscious that
the gods had played a very good practical joke on
him, and he laughed at himself mirthlessly. It
is not very comfortable to have the gift of being
amused at one’s own absurdity.
For the next three months Philip worked on subjects
which were new to him. The unwieldy crowd which
had entered the Medical School nearly two years before
had thinned out: some had left the hospital, finding
the examinations more difficult to pass than they
expected, some had been taken away by parents who
had not foreseen the expense of life in London, and
some had drifted away to other callings. One youth
whom Philip knew had devised an ingenious plan to
make money; he had bought things at sales and pawned
them, but presently found it more profitable to pawn
goods bought on credit; and it had caused a little
excitement at the hospital when someone pointed out
his name in police-court proceedings. There had
been a remand, then assurances on the part of a harassed
father, and the young man had gone out to bear the
White Man’s Burden overseas. The imagination
of another, a lad who had never before been in a town
at all, fell to the glamour of music-halls and bar
parlours; he spent his time among racing-men, tipsters,
and trainers, and now was become a book-maker’s
clerk. Philip had seen him once in a bar near
Piccadilly Circus in a tight-waisted coat and a brown
hat with a broad, flat brim. A third, with a
gift for singing and mimicry, who had achieved success
at the smoking concerts of the Medical School by his
imitation of notorious comedians, had abandoned the
hospital for the chorus of a musical comedy.
Still another, and he interested Philip because his
uncouth manner and interjectional speech did not suggest
that he was capable of any deep emotion, had felt
