I caught him by the shoulders and turned
him round with his back against some church railings. I forget
what I said. We are strange mixtures. I thought of the shy,
backward boy I had coached and bullied at old Fauerberg's, of the
laughing handsome lad I had watched grow into manhood. The very
restaurant we had most frequented in his old Oxford days--where we
had poured out our souls to one another, was in this very street
where we were standing. For the moment I felt towards him as
perhaps his mother might have felt; I wanted to scold him and to
cry with him; to shake him and to put my arms about him. I pleaded
with him, and urged him, and called him every name I could put my
tongue to. It must have seemed an odd conversation. A passing
policeman, making a not unnatural mistake, turned his bull's-eye
upon us, and advised us sternly to go home. We laughed, and with
that laugh Cyril came back to his own self, and we walked on to
Staple Inn more soberly. He promised me to go away by the very
first train the next morning, and to travel for some four or five
months, and I undertook to make all the necessary explanations for
him.
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