with its statued railing; and the gates
of Trinity on the left. The air was full of bells, and the streets of
undergraduates; a stream of young men taking fresh possession, as it
were, of the grey city, which was their own as soon as they chose to
come back to it. The Oxford damp, the Oxford mist, was everywhere,
pierced by lamps, and window-lights, and the last red of a
stormy sunset.

Connie drew in her breath.

"No, I am not sorry, I am very glad to be back--though my aunts have
been great dears to me."

"I'll bet anything Annette isn't glad to be back--after the Langmoors!"
said Nora grimly.

Connie laughed.

"She'll soon settle in. What do you think?" She slipped her arm into her
cousin's. "I'm coming down to breakfast!"

"You're not! I never heard such nonsense! Why should you?"

Connie sighed.

"I think I must begin to do something."

"Do something! For goodness' sake, don't!" Nora's voice was fierce. "I
did think you might be trusted!"

"To carry out your ideals? So kind of you!"

"If you take to muddling about with books and lectures and wearing ugly
clothes, I give you up," said Nora firmly.

"Nora, dear, I'm the most shocking ignoramus. Mayn't I learn something?"

"Mr. Sorell may teach you Greek. I don't mind that."

Connie sighed again, and Nora stole a look at the small pale face under
the sailor hat. It seemed to her that her cousin had somehow grown
beautiful in these months of absence. On her arrival in May, Connie's
good looks had been a freakish and variable thing, which could be often
and easily disputed. She could always make a certain brilliant or
bizarre effect, by virtue of her mere slenderness and delicacy, combined
with the startling beauty of her eyes and hair. But the touch of
sarcasm, of a half-hostile remoteness, in her look and manner, were
often enough to belie the otherwise delightful impression of first
youth, to suggest something older and sharper than her twenty years had
any right to be. It meant that she had been brought up in a world of
elder people, sharing from her teens in its half-amused, half-sceptical
judgments of men and things. Nothing was to be seen of it in her roused
moments of pleasure or enthusiasm; at other times it jarred, as though
one caught a glimpse of autumn in the spring.

But since she and Nora had last met, something had happened. Some heat
of feeling or of sympathy had fused in her the elements of being; so
that a more human richness and w