luous information. Alan, for instance, had managed
to obtain a scholarship some time in late December, and would henceforth
devote himself to meditating on cricket for one term and playing it hard
for another term. It would be nine months before he went to Oxford, and
for nine months he would live in a state of mental catalepsy fed
despairingly by the masters of the Upper Sixth with the few poor last
facts they could scrape together from their own time-impoverished store.
Michael, in view of Alan's necessity for gaining this scholarship, had
never tried to lure him towards Doris and a share in his own fortune.
But he resolved that during the following term he would do his best to
galvanize Alan out of the catalepsy that he woefully foresaw was
imminent.

Meanwhile the Christmas holidays were here, and Michael on their first
night vowed all their leisure to Lily.

There was time now for expeditions farther afield than Kensington
Gardens, which in winter seemed to have lost some of their pastoral air.
The naked trees no longer veiled the houses, and the city with its dingy
railings and dingy people and mud-splashed omnibuses was always an
intrusion. Moreover, fellow-Jacobeans used to haunt their privacy; and
often when it was foggy in London, out in the country there was winter
sunlight.

These were days whose clarity and silence seemed to call for love's
fearless analysis, and under a sky of turquoise so faintly blue that
scarcely even at the zenith could it survive the silver dazzle of the
low January sun, Michael and Lily would swing from Barnet into Finchley
with Michael talking all the way.

"Why do you love me?" he would flash.

"Because I do."

"Oh, can't you think of any better reason than that?"

"Because--because--oh, Michael, I don't want to think of reasons," Lily
would declare.

"You _are_ determined to marry me?" Michael would flash again.

"Yes, some day."

"You don't think you'll fall in love with anybody else?"

"I don't suppose so."

"Only suppose?" Michael would echo on a fierce pause.

"Well, no, I won't."

"You promise?"

"Yes, yes, I promise," Lily would pout.

Then the rhythm of their walk would be renewed, and arm-in-arm they
would travel on, until the next foolish perplexity demanded solution.
Twilight would often find them still on the road, and when some lofty
avenue engulphed their path, the uneasy warmth of the overarching trees
would draw them very close, while hushed en