cilious. He laid claim to a vast knowledge of the
sex, and by reason of a Continental year spent since leaving school his
boast of Experience demanded some respect. In England, however, he
never spoke to women. One night Lawrence, being tolerably drunk, told
him he was afraid of women. Whereupon Davenant said he hated rosebuds
and liked his flowers faded. Lawrence called him 'an unnachral beas','
and made a long speech about purity, in the middle of which he upset
his beer and swore most filthily.

Davenant's evening cloak, wrought of a dark but flashing blue, caused
its owner more trouble than joy. Lawrence stole it one Saturday night
and, clad in it, went roaming through the town, to the great joy of the
Oxford maidens who like that kind of joke. He made great play with it
in the cinema and ultimately left it in The Grapes. When Davenant
called for it on the next day it had vanished, and he was not sorry.
The cloak had been an embarrassment, nor had he even really cared for
it.

But they didn't mind his posing so long as he avowedly posed. He was,
after all, amusing, and at bottom he had a great fund of human
kindness. Martin firmly believed that if he had to ask a friend for
help or advice he would rather have appealed to Davenant, the
apparently supercilious, than to Rendell, the faithful feministic
Fabian.

It must not be supposed that the Push became a Push in a day. They
only worked up to friendship by rather heavy conversations. They would
begin on politics or literature, talking at first with reticence and
slight suspicion, but soon their relative isolation brought them closer
together and made way for clearer statements and more liberal
confessions about sex and religion. It was astonishing how soon after
the final breaking of ice they established complete intimacy.
Davenant, who had aesthetic friends in other colleges, was least merged
in the joint personality of the Push. But all wise men need an
audience, and Davenant was not going to desert them while there were
still points on which he could gain a hearing.

On several matters they were in complete agreement. They were all
'damned if they were going to row.' The secretary of the Boat Club
turned out to be the Rhodes scholar, Theo. K. Snutch, whose rooms
Martin had occupied during the scholarship exam. He pointed out gently
that the tradition of the 'cahlege' laid down that all freshers should
be tubbed. Davenant managed to persuade