ties. He became a master of the Virgilian
vegetable and the Demosthenic demurrer, and though he knew the Latin
for burrs and calthrops and succory and bogwort, he would have been
quite incapable of distinguishing those herbs from one another. Thus
do we study the poets and orators. But it was distressing work.

And then he became aware of Pink Roses. He noticed her because of her
ubiquity and partly, perhaps, because she was always alone: he noticed
her in the Broad, in the High, at a football match in the parks, once
in the cinema. She was not beautiful, not even pretty: otherwise she
need scarcely have remained alone in a community so rapacious. Usually
she wore a coat and skirt of dark blue and a little black hat with pink
roses. Beneath her hat Martin had observed light fluffy hair done
witchingly about her ears and he had been able to notice that she had a
pleasing smile and the tiniest of dimples. But her features, too heavy
to be piquant, were not strong enough to be striking.

He pointed her out one day to Lawrence and demanded his opinion.

"Oh, that's your Pink Roses," he said critically. "Pretty poor stuff."

"She may be all right," answered Martin meekly.

"She walks all right, but she has got a face like a milk pudding."

Martin did not attempt to argue against this higher criticism.
Lawrence, he thought, was an old dear but he certainly lacked
perception. There was something about Pink Roses.

And then one evening, when he was turning into a main street, he walked
right into her. He smiled vaguely and apologised, but she had hurried
past him and did not hear. He turned and watched her. She stopped
outside the cinema and studied the programme: eventually she went in.
Martin had meant to do an hour's work before dinner and began walking
back to college. Soon he stopped again and stood vaguely on the
pavement, gazing at the passing crowd. At last resolvedly he resumed
his journey to the college and the poets. Five minutes later he was
passing a shilling through the grille of the cinema ticket office. It
seemed an age before a film ended and the light went up. Then he saw
the Pink Roses flowering alone in the sixpenny seats. As soon as the
pictures began he would go in her direction. But when the time came he
felt self-conscious and afraid. 'Ridiculous ass,' he said to himself.
"You desert Lucretius for Pink Roses and now you don't even gather the
rose-buds." And then again: 'Who is