e knew that it was not just a Midland
town with a liability to fogs and floods. Also he knew that his uncle
had been wrong when he said that the place didn't matter and only the
institution counted. For he had even learned to love the lambent
tongues of mist that crept stealthily from the river to the walls of
Corpus and Merton and drifted over roofs and towers to the noise and
splendour of the High. The myriad lights of rooms piled on rooms
flashing out into a blue dusk of winter, the reds and greys of
Holywell, the clatter of the Corn and the bells that told unfailingly
the hours of the night were now in his memory the blended symbols of a
growing intimacy. He had found out Cumnor Hurst and Besselsleigh, and
the sweep of the downs clear-cut against the sky, and the old towns to
the West, Burford and Fairford and all the Chippings of the Wolds. But
clearest of all in his memory were the canoe voyages made by Rendell
and Lawrence and himself at the close of the summer term. Then, while
a horde of wealthy trippers came to Oxford to dance and flirt and hold
sumptuous revel, they pierced every dim recess of the upper river and
probed the secrets of the Evenlode. They had bathed in the morning and
in the afternoon and again by moonlight, running in wild nakedness over
strewn hay to recover warmth. At Bablock Hythe they had eaten cold
ducks and drunk cider in gallons: they had lain for hours on the Long
Leas gazing into an infinite dome of stars and waiting for the idle
nightingale. And Lawrence had nearly murdered Rendell for quoting
Matthew Arnold.

Martin was eager to be back, despite the prospect of two stiff terms.
And when he was back once more in Oxford, no longer the leaf-clad city
of pleasant waters but grey and dripping with the autumn mists, he
found that both he himself and his friends had far too much to say.
They were all in new and more desirable rooms and Martin was free from
the domination of Galer. He had chosen to dwell high up in the back
quad, where the windows were large and the rooms airy, and lately he
had revised his pictures. This term he purchased some quaintly
luminous and misty landscapes which were the fruit either of startling
genius or blank incompetence. As to which was the case there was great
argument. Rendell, being senior scholar of his year, had been able to
claim the famous rooms of the college, oak-panelled and majestically
dark. For Art he relied upon Rembrandt and Duere