lcomed him so flatteringly eight
months before, and walked down the laboratory to the door where the
rest of his fellow-students clustered.

Smithers was talking loudly about the "twistiness" of the
identification, and the youngster with the big ears was listening
attentively.

"Here's Lewisham! How did _you_ get on, Lewisham?" asked Smithers,
not concealing his assurance.

"Horribly," said Lewisham shortly, and pushed past.

"Did you spot D?" clamoured Smithers.

Lewisham pretended not to hear.

Miss Heydinger stood with her hat in her hand and looked at Lewisham's
hot eyes. He was for walking past her, but something in her face
penetrated even his disturbance. He stopped.

"Did you get out the nephridium?" he said as graciously as he could.

She shook her head. "Are you going downstairs?" she asked.

"Rather," said Lewisham, with a vague intimation in his manner of the
offence Smithers gave him.

He opened the glass door from the passage to the staircase. They went
down one tier of that square spiral in silence.

"Are you coming up again next year?" asked Miss Heydinger.

"No," said Lewisham. "No, I shall not come here again. Ever."

Pause. "What will you do?" she asked.

"I don't know. I have to get a living somehow. It's been bothering me
all the session."

"I thought--" She stopped. "Will you go down to your uncle's again?"
she said.

"No. I shall stop in London. It's no good going out of things into the
country. And besides--I've quarrelled rather with my uncle."

"What do you think of doing?--teaching?"

"I suppose it will be teaching, I'm not sure. Anything that turns up."

"I see," she said.

They went on down in silence for a time.

"I suppose you will come up again?" he asked.

"I may try the botanical again--if they can find room. And, I was
thinking--sometimes one hears of things. What is your address? So that
if I heard of anything."

Lewisham stopped on the staircase and thought. "Of course," he
said. He made no effort to give her the address, and she demanded it
again at the foot of the stairs.

"That confounded nephridium--!" he said. "It has put everything out of
my head."

They exchanged addresses on leaflets torn from Miss Heydinger's little
note-book.

She waited at the Book in the hall while he signed his name. At the
iron gates of the Schools she said: "I am going through Kensington
Gardens."

He was now feeling irritated about the addresses, and he would not s