32/67 And now as I sit here, in so different a place, amongst men so different, those other two come back to me, happy ghosts. Yes, happy I know that one at least of them is! Like water behind glass, like music behind a screen, Nikitin's voice comes back to me--dim but so close, mysterious but so intimate. Ah, the questions that I would ask him now if only I might have those morning hours over again! "You're a solemn man altogether, Durward. Perhaps all Englishmen seem so to us, and it may be only your tranquillity, so unlike our moods and nerves by which we kill ourselves dead before we're half way through life.... I had an English tutor for a year when I was a boy. |