Snow fell, froze, thawed, and fell again. The aching darkness within him matched that without, as the dormant seed of intoxi­cating joy in his spirit paralleled the motionless hidden forces of the spring, waiting their turn. Experimenting with various anodynes—drink, the cinema, detective stories—Charles found that the only solace with any power to assuage the fever that gripped him was to lose his identity in lonely contemplation of nature. So the old sentimental rubbish was true after all! Once again he found a grim amusement in the ironic lessons that life was teaching him. The intolerable prosings of Wordsworth, and the namby-pamby dribblings of Shelley and the others, contained a truth that stood out as vital and important now that he was really in trouble, when the ‘advanced’ writings he had once admired faded and dissolved from his mind.

He had acquired a rust-eaten bicycle, and increasingly took to pedalling into the countryside to dull his pain with the mon­otonous grind at the worn-out pedals and the peacefully bitter silence of the fields and woods. Heedless of route or destination, he would turn his handlebars at random; when night fell he lit his lamps and mournfully pushed on. It was a powerful drug, and he turned eagerly to it whenever his daily toil allowed.