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I couldn’t have talked a bit sooner.”
    Laurie looked up from the book. “I wish we had.”
    “Well,” said Lanyon briskly, “it’s too late now.”
    Laurie continued to look up at him. With a feeling of great strangeness and astonishment he knew that they were no longer the head prefect and a fifth-former, but just two people in a room.
    “Is it?” he said.
    Lanyon sat down on the edge of the table, looked at Laurie, and shook his head. “Spud,” he said quite gently, “you mustn’t be difficult.”
    Laurie didn’t answer. He felt like someone who tries to read a book when the pages are being turned a little too quickly.
    “I’ve been watching you,” Lanyon said, “for a long time. You’re on the way to being something, and I don’t know what, not for certain. So I’m not going to interfere with it.”
    “I don’t know,” said Laurie slowly. “I feel as if you had already.”
    Lanyon smiled at him and he had to look down.
    “That’s only because you don’t know what it’s all about. Look, if you want to know, one reason why not is because it would mean too much. To me, too, if that’s any satisfaction to you. Anyway, no. Too much responsibility.”
    “I can take my own responsibility. I’m not a child.”
    “That’s what you think. Stop making such a bloody nuisance of yourself.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s all right. You’ll see the point of all this later.”
    Laurie turned and looked out of the window. He couldn’t think what had come over him. Lanyon had taken it pretty well.
    From over by the fireplace, Lanyon said, “No good getting ideas, Spud. It doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s all just a myth, really.”
    Presently Laurie said, “What are you going to do? After you leave, I mean?”
    “Merchant seaman.” He spoke with the effortless-seeming decision he might have used on a matter of House routine. “I’m going straight down to Southampton tomorrow.”
    “Are you all right for money?” It was strange to feel so natural about asking Lanyon a thing like this. “I’ve got about a pound I could lend you.”
    “No, thanks. I can get a ship quite quickly. I know a man who’ll fix me up.”
    “Oh,” said Laurie flatly. “That’s all right, then.”
    “We ran into each other. He’s not so bad. I don’t know him very well.”
    Suddenly they had come to the end of all that there was to say.
    “Well, I’d better finish packing,” Lanyon said. He looked at Laurie, telling him to go. Laurie stared at him, mutely; but there wasn’t anything one could say. Lanyon said, briskly, “Take these lists on your way down, will you, and pin them on the board. The usual order. You know how they go.”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s all, goodbye. What is it, then? Come here a moment. … Now you see what I mean, Spud. It would never have done, would it? Well, goodbye.”
    “But when can we—”
    “Goodbye.”
    After a moment Laurie said, “Goodbye, Lanyon. Good luck.”
    “I don’t believe in luck,” said Lanyon as they parted.

3
    T HE TWO LINES OF beds converged in a neat perspective on the desk at the end. The crude design on the cotton counterpanes was shrill and unfaded, hard reds and blues on a buff ground. The deal lockers, the low beds, even the prefabricated walls were new. New things were everywhere; it was only the men in the beds who looked shabby and worn. None of them were old, and many were no older than Laurie, who was twenty-three; but they had had a good deal of hard use.
    It was ten minutes to eleven of the Sister’s morning off, which began at ten-thirty. As usual she was still there, giving last reminders to the Charge Nurse, who as usual resented it.
    “Don’t forget that Major Ferguson is doing the sequestrectomy after the arthrodesis.”
    “No, Sister.”
    “And do see that there’s no muddle about the injections, this time.”
    “Yes, Sister.”
    Laurie, overhearing this, unstrapped his watch; later he might get drowsy and forget. He pushed it