hat,
although, I didn't aspire to a double first. You really do look quite
knocked up. By the way," he continued, looking at Vane with a smile
whose significance he might have seen had it not been for those two
spoonsful of brandy, "I suppose you've quite got over that--well, if
you'll excuse me saying so--that foolishness about inherited alcoholism
and that sort of stuff, and therefore you'll lay all your laurels at the
feet of the fair Enid without a scruple? Of course, you remember that
juvenile hiding you gave me on the "Orient"? Quite romantic, wasn't it?
Well, I must admit that you proved yourself the better boy then, and as
you've taken a double first and I have only got a single, you've proved
yourself the better man as well. Here's to you, Maxwell, won't you join
me? You know you have quite an ordeal to go through to-day, and just one
won't hurt you--do you good, in fact. You look as if you wanted a
bracer."

Vane listened to the tempting words, so kindly and frankly spoken, as he
might have listened to words heard in a dream. All the high resolves
which had shaped themselves with such infinite labour during the past
two years, seemed already to have been made by someone else--a someone
else who was yet himself. He had made them and he was proud of them,
and, of course, he meant to hold to them; but he had conquered that
deadly fear which had held him in chains so long. He was a free man
now, and could do as he liked with his destiny.

His long probation was over, and he had come through it triumphant. He
was to see Enid again that day for the first time for two years. He
would hear her voice offering him the sweetest of all congratulations,
and when it was all over, there would be a little family gathering in
his rooms, just their fathers and themselves, and he would tell them
everything frankly, and they should help him to choose--for after all,
it was only their right, and she, surely, had the best right of all to
be consulted. Meanwhile, now that he had fought and conquered that old
craving for alcohol, there would be no harm, especially on such a
morning as this, in joining Garthorne in just one brandy and soda.

It never struck him how strangely inverted these thoughts were; what an
utter negation of his waking thoughts, as they flashed through his mind
while Garthorne was speaking. They seemed perfectly reasonable to him,
and--so subtle was the miracle wrought by those two spoonsful of
brandy--perfect