after lunch.
Please tell her; so kind of you! Good-bye, good-bye," and Mrs. Potten
got fiercely into her car.

"Well, I never!" she said, and she said it over and over again. A cloud
of thoughts seemed to float with her as the car skimmed along the road,
and through that cloud seemed to peer at her, though somewhat dimly, the
"beaux yeux" of the Warden of King's.

"I think I shall," said Mrs. Potten, "I think I shall; but I shall make
certain first--absolutely certain--first."

CHAPTER XXII

MR. BOREHAM'S PROPOSAL

Boreham's purpose had been thwarted for the moment. But there was still
time for him to make another effort, and this time it was to be a
successful effort.

A letter to May would have been the easiest way in which to achieve his
purpose, but Boreham shrank from leaving to posterity a written proposal
of marriage, because there always was just the chance that such a letter
might not be answered in the right spirit, and in that case the letter
would appear to future readers of Boreham's biography as an unsolicited
testimonial in favour of marriage--as an institution. So Boreham decided
to continue "feeling" his way!

After all, there was not very much time in which to feel the way, for
May was leaving Oxford on Monday. To-day was Friday, and Boreham knew
the King's party were going to chapel at Magdalen. If he went, too, it
would be possible for him to get May to himself on the way back to the
Lodgings (in the dark).

So to Magdalen he went, hurrying along on that Friday afternoon, and the
nearer he got to Magdalen the more sure he was that only fools lived in
the country; the more convinced he was that Chartcote had become, even
in three months, a hateful place.

Boreham was nearly late, he stumbled into the ante-chapel just as they
were closing the doors with solemn insistence. He uncovered his head as
he entered, and his nostrils were struck with a peculiar odour of stone
and mortar; a sense of space around him and height above him; also with
the warmth of some indefinable sense of community of purpose that
annoyed him. He was, indeed, already warm enough physically with his
haste in coming; he was also spiritually in a glow with the
consciousness of his own magnanimity and toleration. Here was the
enlightened Boreham entering a temple where they repeated "Creeds
outworn." Here he was entering it without any exhibition of violent
hostility or even of contempt. He was entering it decorous