y talked all tea-time of the project, and when they had eaten enough
bread and honey, they set out for Oxford by way of Godstow. The generous
sun was blanched by watery clouds. A shrewd wind had risen while they
sat in the inn, and the primroses looked very wan in the shriveled
twilight. Michael had Guy's company for a week of long walks and snug
evenings, but the real intimacy which he had expected would be
consummated by this visit never effected itself somehow. Guy was more
remote in his mood of communal ambitions than he was at Oxford, living
his life of whimsical detachment. After he went back to Plashers Mead,
Michael only missed the sound of his voice, and was not conscious of
that more violent wrench when the intercourse of silence is broken.

It happened that year St. Mark's Eve fell upon a Sunday, and Michael,
having been reading the poems of Keats nearly all the afternoon, was
struck by the coincidence. Oxford on such an occasion was able to
provide exactly the same sensation for him as Winchester had given to
the poet. Michael sat in his window-seat looking out over the broad
thoroughfare of St. Giles, listening to the patter and lisp of Sabbath
footfalls, to the burden of the bells; and as he sat there with the city
receding in the wake of his window, he was aware more poignantly than
ever of how actually in a few weeks it would recede. The bells and the
footsteps were quiet for a while: the sun had gone: it was the vesper
stillness of evening prayer: slowly the printed page before him faded
from recognition. Already the farther corners of the room were black,
revealing from time to time, as a tongue of flame leaped up in the
grate, the golden blazonries of the books on the walls. It was
everywhere dark when the people came out of church, and the footsteps
were again audible. Michael envied Keats the power which he had known to
preserve forever that St. Mark's Eve of eighty years ago in Winchester.
It was exasperating that now already the footfalls were dying away, that
already their sensation was evanescent, that he could not with the wand
of poetry forbid time to disturb this quintessential hour of Oxford. Art
alone could bewitch the present in the fashion of that enchantress in
the old fairy tale who sent long ago a court to sleep.

What was the use of reading history unless the alchemy of literature had
transcended the facts by the immortal presentation of them? These
charters and acts of parliament, th