“I’m afraid I can’t walk very fast.”
“Good heavens, I don’t walk for a wager. I prefer to stroll. Don’t you remember the chapter in Marius where Pater talks of the gentle exercise of walking as the best incentive to conversation?”
Philip was a good listener; though he often thought of clever things to say, it was seldom till after the opportunity to say them had passed; but Hayward was communicative; anyone more experienced than Philip might have thought he liked to hear himself talk. His supercilious attitude impressed Philip. He could not help admiring, and yet being awed by, a man who faintly despised so many things which Philip had looked upon as almost sacred. He cast down the fetish of exercise, damning with the contemptuous word pothunters all those who devoted themselves to its various forms; and Philip did not realise that he was merely putting up in its stead the other fetish of culture.
