ld sympathy and utter comprehension of
Alan's most secret moods, and Michael realized that his old friend would
be too shy to accept this strange, inexplicable revival, unless it were
renewed, as it was begun, by careless, artless intercourse.

The immediate result of this looking back to an earlier period was to
arouse in Michael an interest in boys younger than himself, and through
his idealism to endow them with a conscious joy of life which he fell to
envying. He had a desire to warn them of the enchantment under whose
benign and dulcet influence they lived, to warn them that soon the
lovely spell would be broken, and bid them make the most of their
stripling time. Continually he was seeing boys in the lower forms whose
friendship blooming like two flowers on a spray shed a fragrance so
poignant that tears came springing to his eyes. He began to imagine
himself very old, to feel that by some unkind gift of temperament he had
nothing left to live for. It chanced that summer term the History Sixth
learned for repetition the Odes of Keats, and in the Ode on a Grecian
Urn Michael found the expression of his mood:

_Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave_
_Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;_
_Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,_
_Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;_
_She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,_
_For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!_

These lines were learnt in June, and for Michael they enshrined
immortally his yearning. Never had the fugitive summer glided so fast,
since never before had he sat in contemplation of its flight. Until this
moment he had been one with the season's joy like a bird or a sunbeam,
but now for the first time he had the opportunity of regarding the empty
field during the hours of school, and of populating it with the merry
ghosts of the year with Caryll. All through schooltime the
mowing-machine hummed its low harmony of perishable minutes and wasted
sunlight. The green field was scattered with the wickets of games in
progress that stood luminously in golden trios, so brightly did the
sunny weather enhance their wood. The scoring-board of the principal
match stared like a stopped clock with the record of the last breathless
run, and as if to mock the stillness from a distant corner came a sound
of batting, where at the nets the two professionals practised idly. A
bluebottle buzzed upon the