lways very definitely Oxford undergraduates, but they
lacked the serenity of Oxford, and seemed already to have planted a foot
in London. The big modern room over the big cheap shop was a restless
place, and its pretentiousness and modernity were tinged with
Thespianism. Scarcely ever did the Academic Muse enter the O.U.D.S.,
Michael thought. She must greatly dislike Thespianism with all that it
connoted of mildewed statuary in an English garden. Yet it would be
possible to transmute the O.U.D.S., he dreamed. It had the advantage of
a limited membership. It might easily become a grove where Apollo and
Athene could converse without quarreling. Therefore, he could continue
to frequent its halls.

The Bullingdon was always delightful; the gray bowlers and the white
trousers striped with vivid blue displayed its members, in their
costume, at least, as unchanging types, but the archaism made it a club
too conservative to register much more than an effect of peculiarity.
The Bullingdon had too much money, and not enough unhampered humanity to
achieve the universal. The Union, on the other hand, was too
indiscriminate. Personality was here submerged in organization.
Manchester or Birmingham could have produced a result very similar.

The Grid, perhaps for the very fact that it was primarily a dining-club,
was the abode of discreet good-fellowship. Its membership was very
strictly limited, and might seem to have been confined to the seven or
eight colleges that considered themselves the best colleges, but any man
who deserved to be a member could in the end be sure of his election.
The atmosphere was neither political nor sporting nor literary, nor
financial, but it was very peculiarly and very intimately the elusive
atmosphere of Oxford herself. The old rooms looking out on the
converging High had recently been redecorated in a very crude shade of
blue. Members were grumbling at the taste of the executive, but Michael
thought the unabashed ugliness was in keeping with its character. It was
as if unwillingly the club released its hold upon the externals of
Victorianism. Such premises could afford to be anachronistic, since the
frequenters were always so finely sensitive to fashion's lightest
breath. Eccentricity was not tolerated at the Grid except in the case of
the half-dozen chartered personalities who were necessary to set off the
correctness of the majority. The elective committee probably never made
a mistake, and when s