tched for his solitary pleasure
in the golden emptiness of morn. At such an hour it were vain to repine;
so supreme was beauty like this that Michael's own departure from Oxford
appeared to him as unimportant as the fall of a petal unshaken by any
breath of summer wind. With the air brimming to his draught and with
early bees restless along the herbaceous border by the stream's parapet,
Michael began to read Manon Lescaut. He would finish this small volume
before breakfast, unless the fumes of the sun should drug him out of all
power to award the Abbe his fast attention. The great artist was
stronger than the weather, and Michael read on while the sun climbed the
sky, while the noises of a new day began, while the footsteps of
hurrying scouts went to and fro.

It was half-past eight when he finished that tale of love. For a few
moments he sat dazed, visualizing that dreadful waste near New Orleans
where in the sand it was so easy for the star-crossed Chevalier to bury
the idol of his heart.

Porcher was surprised to find Michael up and wide awake.

"You oughtn't to have gone and tired yourself like that, sir," he said
reproachfully.

Michael rather resented putting back the little book among those
magazines. He felt it would be almost justifiable to deprive the owner
of what he so evidently did not esteem, and he wondered if, when he had
cut the pages with his prurient paper-knife the purchaser had wished at
the end of this most austere tale that he had not spent his money so
barrenly. _C'est une douzaine de filles de joie._ It was a bitter
commentary on human nature, that a mere aquatint of these poor naked
creatures jolting to exile in their tumbril should extort half a crown
from an English undergraduate to probe their history.

"Dirty-minded little beast," said Michael, as he confiscated the edition
of Manon Lescaut, placing it in his suitcase. Then he went out into St.
Mary's Walks, and at the end of the longest vista sat down on a
garden-bench beside the Cherwell. Before him stretched the verdurous way
down which he had come; beyond, taking shape among the elms, was the
college; to right and left were vivid meadows where the cattle were
scarcely moving, so lush was the pasturage here; and at his side ran the
slow, the serpentine, the tree-green tranquil Cher.

As he sat here among the bowers of St. Mary's, the story he had just
read came back to him with a double poignancy. He scarcely thought that
any tale