“this has been very edifying. I’ve heard it all be¬ fore in a hundred bull sessions, and I suppose I ’ll hear it all again. I don’t know why I’ve hung around. There 7s a little dame that I’ve got to write a letter to, and, believe me, she’s a damn sight more interesting than all your bull.” He strolled out of the door, drawling a slow “good night” over his shoulder. Hugh went to his room and thought over the talk. He was miserably confused. Like Ferguson he had believed everything that his father and mother —and the minister—had told him, and he found himself beginning to discard their ideas. There did n’t seem to be any ideas to put in the place of those he discarded. Until Carl’s recent confidence he had believed firmly in chastity, but he discovered, once the first shock had worn off, that he liked Carl the unchaste just as much as he had Carl the chaste. Carl s-eemed neither better nor worse for his experience.
He was lashed by desire; he was burning with curiosity—and yet, and yet something held him back. Something—he hardly knew what it was— made him avoid any woman who had a reputation for moral laxity. He shrank from such a woman —‘and desired her so intensely that he was ashamed. Life was suddenly becoming very complicated, more complicated, it seemed, every day. With ?ther undergraduates he discussed women and reli-*
