But Cosgrave, listening to Stonehouse's own account of the
incident, saw in it only an example of a strange, inexorable truth. What
men called "Fate" was the shadow of themselves. They imposed their
characters upon events, significant or insignificant, willingly or
unwillingly. Beyond that there was no such thing as Fate at all.
They stepped back from the crowd into the shelter of the Piccadilly Tube.
They had been walking the streets for an hour, and as much of their lives
as they were able to tell one another had been told. Now they were both
baffled and tired out. Of what had really happened to them they could
say nothing, and their memories, disinterred in a kind of desperate haste
("Do you remember that row with Dickson about my hair, Robert?") had
crumbled, after a moment's apparent vitality, into a heap of dust. It
was all too utterly dead--too unreal to both of them. The things that
had mattered so much, which had seemed so laughable or so tragic, were
like the repetition of a story in which they could only force a polite
interest. Their laughter, their exclamations, sounded shallow and
insincere.
And yet it was borne in upon them that they did still care for one
another. They had had no other friendship to compare with this.
Strictly speaking, there had been no other friends. There had been
acquaintances--people whom you talked to because you worked with them.
Robert Stonehouse had always known his own loneliness.
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