have something precious to remember. Even if they never
met again after those seventeen hours were over, even though they never
saw each other's faces again, she would have something to remember:
words of his spoken only to her, words that betrayed the fineness of his
nature. Those words of his belonged to her.

* * * * *

And it was in this spirit of resignation, held more fully than before,
that she met him again at breakfast. She was in the breakfast-room
first and seized the paper, determined to behave as cheerfully as if she
had arrived, and not as if she was going away. She was going to make a
successful effort to start her new life at once, her life with Oxford
behind her. She was not going to be found by him, when he entered,
silent and reminiscent of last evening.

When the Warden came in she put down the paper with the air of one who
has seen something that suggests conversation.

"I suppose," she said, starting straight away without any preliminary
but a smile at him and an inclination of her head in answer to his
old-fashioned courteous bow as he entered--"I suppose when I come back
to Oxford--say in ten years' time, if any one invites me--I shall find
things changed. The New Oxford we talked of with Mr. Bingham will be in
full swing. You will perhaps be Vice-Chancellor."

The Warden did not smile. "Ah, yes!" he remarked, and he looked
abstractedly at the coffee-pot and at the chair that May was about to
seat herself in. "Ah, yes!" he said again; then he added: "Have I kept
you waiting?"

"Not a bit," said May.

"I ran in to see Lena," he explained.

May took her place opposite the coffee. He watched her, and then went
and sat down at the opposite end of the table in his own seat. Then he
got up and went to the side table.

Try as they would they were painfully conscious of each other's
movements. Everything seemed strangely, cruelly important at that meal.
May poured out the Warden's cup, and that in itself was momentous. He
would come and take it, of course! She moved the cup a little. He waited
on her from the side table and then looked at his coffee.

"Is this for me?" he asked.

"Yes," said May; "it is yours."

He took up the cup and went round with it to his place, as if he was
carrying something rare and significant.

They sat opposite each other, these two, alone together, and for the
last time--possibly. They talked stiffly in measured sentences to eac