he carried himself heavily; his hands were large but podgy, like a child’s hands. His features, of the same carved clear whiteness as Paul’s, with the same blue eyes, lacked grace, and his gaze was pathetic and full of a childish appeal to be liked. His hair was pale and lightless, and fell about in greasy strands. His face, as he took pleasure in pointing out, was a decadent face. It was over-full, over-ripe, almost flaccid. He was not ambitious, and wanted no more than to be a Professor of History at some university, which he has since become. Unlike the others he was truly homosexual, though he wished he wasn’t. He was in love with Paul whom he despised and who was irritated by him. Much later he married a woman fifteen years older than himself. Last year he wrote me a letter in which he described this marriage—it was obviously written when he was drunk and posted, so to speak, into the past. They slept together, with little pleasure on her side, and none on his—‘though I did put my mind to it, I do assure you!’—for a few weeks. Then she got pregnant, and that was the end of sex between them. In short, a not uncommon English marriage. His wife, it appears, has no suspicion he is not a normal man. He is quite dependent on her and if she died I suspect he’d commit suicide, or retreat into drink.
