As the Warden's eyes watched the hands of the clock, they pointed to
five minutes to eleven. A thought came to him.

"All the bells are silent now," he said, "except in the safe daylight."

May looked up at him.

"Even 'Tom' is silent. The Clusius is not tolled now."

He got up and walked along the room to the open window. There he held
the curtain well aside and looked back at her. Why it was, May did not
know, but it seemed imperative to her to come to him. She put her work
aside and came through into the broad embrasure of the bay. Then he let
the curtain fall and they stood together in the darkness. The Warden
pushed out the latticed frame wider into the dark night. The air was
scarcely stirring, it came in warm and damp against their faces.

The quadrangle below them was dimly visible. Eastwards the sky was heavy
with a great blank pale space stretching over the battlemented roof and
full of the light of a moon that had just risen, but overhead a heavy
cloud slowly moved westwards.

They both leaned out and breathed the night air.

"It will rain in a moment," said the Warden.

"In the old days," he said, "there would have been sounds coming from
these windows. There would have been men coming light-heartedly from
these staircases and crossing to one another. Now all is under military
rule: the poor remnant left of undergraduate life--poor mentally and
physically--this poor remnant counts for nothing. All that is best has
gone, gone voluntarily, eagerly, and the men who fill their places are
training for the Great Sacrifice. It's the most glorious and the most
terrible thing imaginable!"

May leaned down lower and the silence of the night seemed oppressive
when the Warden ceased speaking.

After a moment he said, "In the old days you would have heard some
far-off clock strike the hour, probably a thin, cracked voice, and then
it would have been followed by other voices. You would have heard them
jangle together, and then into their discordance you would have heard
the deep voice of 'Tom' breaking."

"But he is at his best," went on the Warden, "when he tolls the Clusius.
It is his right to toll it, and his alone. He speaks one hundred and one
times, slowly, solemnly and with authority, and then all the gates in
Oxford are closed."

Drops of rain fell lightly in at them, and May drew in her head.

"Oxford has become a city of memories to me," said the Warden, and he
put out his arm to draw in the wind