examined his possessions in critical discontent. They seemed to
symbolize the unpleasant crudity of youth. In the familiar surroundings
of childhood they had seemed on the contrary to testify to his maturity.
Now at Oxford he felt most abominably young again, yet he was able to
console himself with the thought that youth would be no handicap among
his peers. He took down the scenes of Montmartre even from the walls of
his bedroom and pushed them ignominiously out of sight under the bed.

Michael abandoned the contemplation of his possessions, and looked out
of his sitting-room window at the High. There was something salutary in
the jangle of the trams, in the vision of ordinary people moving
unconsciously about the academic magnificence of Oxford. An
undergraduate with gown wrapped carelessly round his neck flashed past
on a bicycle, and Michael was discouraged by the sense of his diabolic
ease. The luxury of his own rooms, the conviction of his new
independence, the excitement of an undiscovered life all departed from
him, and he was left with nothing but a loneliness more bitter even than
when at Randell House he had first encountered school.

Porcher came in presently with lunch, and the commons of bread and
cheese with the ale foaming in a silver tankard added the final touch to
Michael's depression. He thought that nothing in the world, could
express the spirit of loneliness so perfectly as a sparse lunch laid for
one on a large table. He wandered away from its melancholy invitation
into the bedroom and looked sadly down into the quad. In every doorway
stood knots of senior men talking: continually came new arrivals to hail
familiarly their friends after the vacation: scouts hurried to and fro
with trays of food: from window to window gossip, greetings,
appointments were merrily shouted. Michael watched this scene of
intimate movement played against the background of elms and gray walls.
The golden fume of the October weather transcended somehow all
impermanence, and he felt with a sudden springing of imagination that so
had this scene been played before, that so forever would it be played
for generations to come. Yet for him as yet outside the picture
remained, fortunately less eternal, that solitary lunch. He ate it
hurriedly and as soon as he had finished set out to find Alan at Christ
Church.

Freedom came back with the elation of walking up the High; and in the
Christ Church lodge Michael was able to ask wit