"What were the other reasons you wanted to travel?" Benedict asked.
John thought for a moment.
"I was looking for something," he said.
"But what?"
"I am not sure – just, something different. Something outside my own experience that would make sense of the world. I have always lived in hope and now I shall never find it. All hope is gone."
"Perhaps it isn't to be found abroad?" Benedict suggested.
"I certainly haven't found it in the places I have visited," John agreed. "Perhaps it doesn't exist."
"Of course it does," Benedict said earnestly. "It exists for everyone. But maybe you cannot just go out and find it. Perhaps you have to be ready to recognise it when it finds you."
"Now you are getting mystical," John reproved him.
"And you're getting tipsy, old fellow," Benedict said ki
