This Knauer vanished later from my path, neither did I miss him. No arrangement, no understanding was necessary with him. But it was with Pistorius. Towards the close of my school career in St. ⸻ I lived through another peculiar experience with my friend.

Even innocuous, innocent people are not altogether spared the shock of a conflict. Even they come once in their lives in conflict with the beautiful virtues of piety and gratitude. Each must make the step which parts him from his father, from his teachers. Each must once feel something of the bitterness of loneliness, though most people cannot support it for long and soon creep back to their homes again. It was not a great struggle for me to part from my parents and their world, the “bright” world of my beautiful childhood. But slowly and almost imperceptibly I had got further from them and become more of a stranger to them. I regretted it; it often caused me bitter hours during my visits home; but it was not deep. I could bear it.