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So Hapley went down into a quiet village in Kent, and thought
day and night of Pawkins, and good things it was now impossible to say
about him.
At last Hapley began to realise in what direction the pre-occupation
tended. He determined to make a fight for it, and started by trying to
read novels. But he could not get his mind off Pawkins, white in the face
and making his last speech--every sentence a beautiful opening for Hapley.
He turned to fiction--and found it had no grip on him. He read the "Island
Nights' Entertainments" until his "sense of causation" was shocked beyond
endurance by the Bottle Imp. Then he went to Kipling, and found he "proved
nothing," besides being irreverent and vulgar. These scientific people
have their limitations. Then unhappily, he tried Besant's "Inner House,"
and the opening chapter set his mind upon learned societies and Pawkins at
once.
So Hapley turned to chess, and found it a little more soothing. He soon
mastered the moves and the chief gambits and commoner closing positions,
and began to beat the Vicar.


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