heless he held that calculations were relatively easy, and that he
could do them as well as the driest duffer in the profession when he set
his mind to them. But the doubt as to the correctness of his answer
developed into a certainty. Facing the question in private again, he
obtained four different solutions in an hour; it was John Orgreave who
ultimately set him right, convicting him of a most elementary
misconception. Forthwith his faith in his whole "Construction" paper
vanished. He grumbled that it was monstrous to give candidates an
unbroken stretch of four hours' work at the end of a four-day effort.
Yet earlier he had been boasting that he had not felt the slightest
fatigue. He had expected to see Marguerite on the day of repose. He did
not see her. She had offered no appointment, and he said to himself
that he had not the slightest intention of running after her. Such had
become the attitude of the lover to the beloved.

On the Thursday morning, however, he felt fit enough to face a dozen
oral examiners, and he performed his morning exercises in the club
bedroom with a positive ferocity of vigour. And then he was gradually
overtaken by a black moodiness which he could not explain. He had passed
through similar though less acute moods as a boy; but this was the first
of the inexplicable sombre humours which at moments darkened his
manhood. He had not the least suspicion that prolonged nervous tension
due to two distinct causes had nearly worn him out. He was melancholy,
and his melancholy increased. But he was proud; he was defiant. His
self-confidence, as he looked back at the years of genuine hard study
behind him, was complete. He disdained examiners. He knew that with all
their damnable ingenuity they could not floor him.

The crisis arrived in the afternoon of the first of the two days. His
brain was quite clear. Thousands of details about drainage, ventilation,
shoring, architectural practice, lighting, subsoils, specifications,
iron and steel construction, under-pinning, the properties of building
materials, strains, thrusts, water-supply; thousands of details about
his designs--the designs in his 'testimonies of study,' the design for
his Thesis, and the designs produced during the examination itself--all
these peopled his brain; but they were in order; they were under
control; they were his slaves. For four and a half hours, off and on, he
had admirably displayed the reality of his knowledge, and then h