their return with a gracious calm. The Thames
was a sheet of trembling silver, and the distant roofs and spires and
trees of the Surrey shore no more than breath upon a glass. In this
luminous and immaterial city the house in Cheyne Walk stood out with the
pleasant aspect of its demure reality, and Mrs. Fane like one of those
clouded rose pastels on the walls of her room was to both of them after
their absence from London herself for a while as they had known her in
childhood.

"Dear children, how charming to see you looking so well. I'm not quite
sure I like that very Scotch-looking skirt, darling Stella. I'm so glad
you've enjoyed yourselves together. Is it a heather mixture? And I was
in France, too. But the trains are so oddly inconvenient. Mrs.
Carruthers' most interesting! I wish, darling Stella, you would take up
Mental Science. Ah, but I forgot, you have your practicing."

It was time to go up to Oxford after the few days that Stella and
Michael spent in making arrangements for a series of Brahms recitals in
one of the smaller concert halls. Alan met Michael on the platform at
Paddington. This custom they had loyally kept up each term, although
otherwise their paths seemed to be diverging.

"Good vac?" Michael asked.

"Oh, rather! I've been working at rather a tricky slow leg-break.
Fifty-five wickets for 8.4 during the vac. Not bad for a dry summer. I
was playing for the Tics most of the time. What did you do?"

Michael during the journey up talked mostly about Stella.

CHAPTER VII

VENNER'S

The most of Michael's friends had availed themselves of the right of
seniority to move into more dignified rooms for their second year. These
"extensions of premises," as Castleton called them, reached the limit of
expansion in the case of Lonsdale who, after a year's residence in two
small ground-floor rooms of St. Cuthbert's populous quad, had acquired
the largest suite of three in Cloisters. Exalted by palatial ambitions,
he spent the first week of term in buttonholing people in the lodge, so
that after whatever irrelevant piece of chatter he had seized upon as
excuse he might wind up the conversation by observing nonchalantly:

"Oh, I say, have you chaps toddled round to my new rooms yet? Rather
decent. I'm quite keen on them. I've got a dining-room now. Devilish
convenient. Thought of asking old Wedders to lay in a stock of pictures.
It would buck him up rather."

"But why do you want these barrac