PART II
I
1
They came to an idle halt near Cleopatra's needle, and leaning against
the Embankment wall, looked across the river to the warehouses opposite,
which, in the evening mist, had the look of stark cliffs guarded by a
solitary watchful lion. The smaller of the two young men took off his
soft hat and set it beside him so that he could let the wind brush
through his thick red hair. He held himself very straight, his slender
body taut with solemn exultation.
"If only one could do something with it," he said; "eat it--hug it--get
inside of it somehow--belong to it. It hurts--this gaping like an
outsider. Look now--one shade of purple upon another. Isn't it
unendurably beautiful? But if one could write a sonnet--or a sonata--or
paint a picture---- That's where the real artist has the pull over us
poor devils who can only feel things. He wouldn't just stand here. He'd
get out his fountain pen or his paint-box and make it all his for ever
and ever. Think of Whistler now--what he would do with it."
"I can't," Stonehouse said. "Who's Whistler?"
Cosgrave laughed in anticipation of his little joke. "Nobody, old
fellow. At least, he never discovered any bugs."
The wind snatched up his forgotten hat and it sailed off up river into
the darkness like a large unwieldy bird. He looked after it ruefully.
"That was a new hat. I'll have to go home without one, and the Pater
will think I've been in a drunken brawl, and there'll be a beastly row.
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