Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/66

54 in a wealth of poisonous honeyed blossom in its dying top before both fall in a common ruin.'

There was a pause.

Then Daniel said: 'I will try and tell you what you want to know, which seems to be the outline of my life since we parted. What underlies this—the spiritual struggle in the dark before I could win my way to any light—we can speak of another time; to-night, if you like, when we are alone.'

The carriage, drawn by its two thoroughbreds, passed swiftly along by unfrequented streets, and the roar of the London traffic died away into a continuous murmur, still loud, but not loud enough to muffle the clear, melodious voice of the speaker.

'You remember,' he said, 'that I wrote one or two letters to you at the ranche in Texas, telling you how Oxford impressed me, and I fancy that even then—that is, before I had been there more than a month—I felt I could not put up with much more of it. It was so obviously merely a continuation of Harrow, and I wanted something fresh and new. I wished to face life as a whole by touching it at many points, and Oxford to-day is at best the clever synopsis of academic futility. My father, chiefly owing to my mother, who had always a blind confidence in me, and to the lethargy consequent on growing ill-health, let me have my own way. I left at the end of the