" He hugged his knees for a
space. "That's what puzzles me, Ponderevo, no end."
He became animated. "If you will look in that cupboard," he said,
"you will find an old respectable looking roll on a plate and a knife
somewhere and a gallipot containing butter. You give them me and I'll
make my breakfast, and then if you don't mind watching me paddle about
at my simple toilet I'll get up. Then we'll go for a walk and talk about
this affair of life further. And about Art and Literature and anything
else that crops up on the way.... Yes, that's the gallipot. Cockroach
got in it? Chuck him out--damned interloper...."
So in the first five minutes of our talk, as I seem to remember it
now, old Ewart struck the note that ran through all that morning's
intercourse....
To me it was a most memorable talk because it opened out quite new
horizons of thought. I'd been working rather close and out of touch
with Ewart's free gesticulating way. He was pessimistic that day and
sceptical to the very root of things. He made me feel clearly, what
I had not felt at all before, the general adventurousness of life,
particularly of life at the stage we had reached, and also the absence
of definite objects, of any concerted purpose in the lives that were
going on all round us.
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