"I'm sorry, I couldn't stop you….
I met him soon after you"—she seemed to search for an expression that should not wound him—"told me your friend had come back.
I was very wretched for a bit, he was extremely kind to me.
He knew someone had made me suffer, of course he doesn't know it was you, and I don't know what I should have done without him.
And suddenly I felt I couldn't go on working, working, working; I was so tired, I felt so ill.
I told him about my husband.
He offered to give me the money to get my divorce if I would marry him as soon as I could.
He had a very good job, and it wouldn't be necessary for me to do anything unless I wanted to.
He was so fond of me and so anxious to take care of me.
I was awfully touched.
And now I'm very, very fond of him."
"Have you got your divorce then?" asked Philip.
"I've got the decree nisi.
It'll be made absolute in July, and then we are going to be married at once."
For some time Philip did not say anything.
"I wish I hadn't made such a fool of myself," he muttered at length. He was thinking of his long, humiliating confession.
She looked at him curiously.
"You were never really in love with me," she said.
"It's not very pleasant being in love."
But he was always able to recover himself quickly, and, getting up now and holding out his hand, he said:
"I hope you'll be very happy.
After all, it's the best thing that could have happened to you."
She looked a little wistfully at him as she took his hand and held it.
"You'll come and see me again, won't you?" she asked.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "It would make me too envious to see you happy."
He walked slowly away from her house.
After all she was right when she said he had never loved her.
He was disappointed, irritated even, but his vanity was more affected than his heart.
He knew that himself.
And presently he grew conscious that the gods had played a very good practical joke on him, and he laughed at himself mirthlessly.
It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one's own absurdity.
LXXX
For the next three months Philip worked on subjects which were new to him.
The unwieldy crowd which had entered the Medical School nearly two years before had thinned out: some had left the hospital, finding the examinations more difficult to pass than they expected, some had been taken away by parents who had not foreseen the expense of life in London, and some had drifted away to other callings.
One youth whom Philip knew had devised an ingenious plan to make money; he had bought things at sales and pawned them, but presently found it more profitable to pawn goods bought on credit; and it had caused a little excitement at the hospital when someone pointed out his name in police-court proceedings.
There had been a remand, then assurances on the part of a harassed father, and the young man had gone out to bear the White Man's Burden overseas.
The imagination of another, a lad who had never before been in a town at all, fell to the glamour of music-halls and bar parlours; he spent his time among racing-men, tipsters, and trainers, and now was become a book-maker's clerk.
Philip had seen him once in a bar near Piccadilly Circus in a tight-waisted coat and a brown hat with a broad, flat brim.
A third, with a gift for singing and mimicry, who had achieved success at the smoking concerts of the Medical School by his imitation of notorious comedians, had abandoned the hospital for the chorus of a musical comedy.
Still another, and he interested Philip because his uncouth manner and interjectional speech did not suggest that he was capable of any deep emotion, had felt himself stifle among the houses of London.
He grew haggard in shut-in spaces, and the soul he knew not he possessed struggled like a sparrow held in the hand, with little frightened gasps and a quick palpitation of the heart: he yearned for the broad skies and the open, desolate places among which his childhood had been spent; and he walked off one day, without a word to anybody, between one lecture and another; and the next thing his friends heard was that he had thrown up medicine and was working on a farm.
Philip attended now lectures on medicine and on surgery.
On certain mornings in the week he practised bandaging on out-patients glad to earn a little money, and he was taught auscultation and how to use the stethoscope.
He learned dispensing.
He was taking the examination in Materia Medica in July, and it amused him to play with various drugs, concocting mixtures, rolling pills, and making ointments.
He seized avidly upon anything from which he could extract a suggestion of human interest.
He saw Griffiths once in the distance, but, not to have the pain of cutting him dead, avoided him.
Philip had felt a certain self-consciousness with Griffiths' friends, some of whom were now friends of his, when he realised they knew of his quarrel with Griffiths and surmised they were aware of the reason.
One of them, a very tall fellow, with a small head and a languid air, a youth called Ramsden, who was one of Griffiths' most faithful admirers, copied his ties, his boots, his manner of talking and his gestures, told Philip that Griffiths was very much hurt because Philip had not answered his letter.
He wanted to be reconciled with him.