Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/255

Rh in foundling asylums as pitiful samples of a vicious atavism.'

Wilson made no reply, looking in front of him.

'Now,' said Randal, 'I am once more waiting to be confuted.'

'I can't confute you. Perhaps you are right. Who knows? No one can see more than a few steps ahead. We all have the hopeless sadness of our limitations, and it is easy to destroy the little nest of trust which, like to frail and migrant birds, we construct with dreams of downy fledglings, eager for the skies.'

There was a long silence.

Then Randal said gently:

'You make me remind myself of the brutal, heedless schoolboy who has just wrecked such a nest, from the sheer wanton sense of his brutal heedlessness. Forgive me!' And he extended his left hand.

Wilson took it with his right and pressed it.

'It is nothing,' he said, 'for, again, perhaps you are wrong. Who knows?'

The silence fell upon them once more.

It was Randal who broke it, saying:

'How we dawdle and delay in our projects on Italy! I almost feel as if we should not summon enough resolution to get there after all.'

'Once or twice,' murmured Wilson, still looking in