suddenly felt herself insignificant
and forsaken. He had been her all, her own, and now on this
training-ground of English youth, it seemed to her that the great human
society had claimed him from her.

CHAPTER V

In his Oxford life Robert surrendered himself to the best and most
stimulating influences of the place, just as he had done at school. He
was a youth of many friends, by virtue of a natural gift of sympathy,
which was no doubt often abused, and by no means invariably profitable
to its owner, but wherein, at any rate, his power over his fellows, like
the power of half the potent men in the world's history, always lay
rooted. He had his mother's delight in living. He loved the
cricket-field, he loved the river; his athletic instincts and his
athletic friends were always fighting in him with his literary instincts
and the friends who appealed primarily to the intellectual and moral
side of him. He made many mistakes alike in friends and in pursuits; in
the freshness of a young and roving curiosity he had great difficulty in
submitting himself to the intellectual routine of the University, a
difficulty which ultimately cost him much; but at the bottom of the lad,
all the time, there was a strength of will, a force and even tyranny of
conscience, which kept his charm and pliancy from degenerating into
weakness, and made it not only delightful, but profitable to love him.
He knew that his mother was bound up in him, and his being was set to
satisfy, so far as he could, all her honourable ambitions.

His many undergraduate friends, strong as their influence must have been
in the aggregate on a nature so receptive, hardly concern us here. His
future life, so far as we can see, was most noticeably affected by two
men older than himself, and belonging to the dons--both of them fellows
and tutors of St. Anselm's, though on different planes of age.

The first one, Edward Langham, was Robert's tutor, and about seven years
older than himself. He was a man about whom, on entering the college,
Robert heard more than the usual crop of stories. The healthy young
English barbarian has an aversion to the intrusion of more manner into
life than is absolutely necessary. Now, Langham was overburdened with
manner, though it was manner of the deprecating and not of the arrogant
order. Decisions, it seemed, of all sorts were abominable to him. To
help a friend he had once consented to be Pro-proctor. He resigned in a
month