Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/247

 opportunity. He was afraid of life; that was it, afraid of life! Nothing seemed to be easy for him. Another, perhaps, even more thin-skinned than himself, but less obstinate, less timid, would have put up with his father's stupid joke, have fallen in with his father's wishes. Paul would have done so, he reflected. To Paul, with his sense of irony, one course would have seemed as bad or as good as another. There was, apparently, a great gulf fixed between any two generations, the way people have lived and the way they live now. Youth must bridge this gulf. Others did; why couldn't he? Why to all intents and purposes did he still belong to his Aunt Sadi's generation rather than to Paul's? Paul seemed to have nothing in his nature which resisted, which revolted, while he seemed to have nothing else but resistance and revolt in his nature. He could accept nothing unaccustomed without an internal struggle. What was it: pride or stupidity which held him in its vice, so that he felt unable to turn in any direction without a sense that he was shaming some older and more honourable intention? He did not know. All he knew was that he was that way, and he had begun to realize that, at bottom, no one changes. As one is born one is. . . always. The only growth possible lay on the side of increasing comprehension of oneself. He did not understand himself, or Alice, or Campaspe, but Campaspe he accepted, as he accepted his aunt and Persia Blaine. These three, alone, in the world with which