--quick march!"

And taking his wife and daughter by the shoulders, he turned them both
forcibly out, and sat down to make his final preparations for a lecture
that afternoon on the "feminism" of Euripides.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Connie Bledlow and her maid were walking quickly down the
Broad towards the busy Cornmarket with its shops. It was a brilliant
morning--one of those east wind days when all clouds are swept from the
air, and every colour of the spring burns and flashes in the sun. Every
outline was clear; every new-leafed tree stood radiant in the bright
air. The grey or black college walls had lost all the grimness of
winter, they were there merely to bring out the blue of the sky, the
yellow gold, the laburnum, the tossing white of the chestnuts. The
figures, even, passing in the streets, seemed to glitter with the trees
and the buildings. The white in the women's dresses; the short black
gowns and square caps of the undergraduates; the gay colours in the
children's frocks; the overhanging masses of hawthorn and lilac that
here and there thrust themselves, effervescent and rebellious, through
and over college walls:--everything shimmered and shone in the May
sunlight. The air too was tonic and gay, a rare thing for Oxford; and
Connie, refreshed by sleep, walked with such a buoyant and swinging step
that her stout maid could hardly keep up with her. Many a passer-by
observed her. Men on their way to lecture, with battered caps and gowns
slung round their necks, threw sharp glances at the tall girl in black,
with the small pale face, so delicately alive, and the dark eyes that
laughed--aloof and unabashed--at all they saw.

"What boys they are!" said Constance presently, making a contemptuous
lip. "They ought to be still in the nursery."

"What--the young men in the caps, my lady?"

"Those are the undergraduates, Annette--the boys who live in the
colleges."

"They don't stare like the Italian young gentlemen," said Annette,
shrugging her shoulders. "Many a time I wanted to box their ears for the
way they looked at you in the street."

Connie laughed. "I liked it! They were better-looking than these boys.
Annette, do you remember that day two years ago when I took you to that
riding competition--what did they call it?--that gymkhana--in the Villa
Borghese--and we saw all those young officers and their horses? What
glorious fellows they were, most of them! and how they rode!