e train on Wednesday he fell at once from the heights to the depths.
To begin with, he was going back to Mods. Before the tumult of his
mind flashed visions of texts marked with blue lines, texts which he
had omitted to look up. He wondered whether he really knew about
Ulysses' abominable boat and whether he remembered which words in the
Greek meant dowels and trenails. And he was going back to Pink Roses.
The squalor of it! To-night he was to meet her and slink away
somewhere. He couldn't, he simply couldn't! He had learned, rather he
thought he had learned, what a conversation with a woman ought to be.
There could be no more whisperings with May. On reaching Oxford Martin
sent a telegram: he was unavoidably prevented from seeing her. He felt
that he ought to be angry with himself because it didn't hurt him to
treat her like this: but his conscience failed to rise to the
situation. Quite plainly he had done with May.

Mods in the actual presence afforded him eight days of consummate
torture. It was all right for Rendell, who knew his work thoroughly,
and Lawrence, who didn't know it at all. They could view their papers
without concern, the one scribbling diligently, the other yawning
complacently, guessing words, and tossing up with a penny when there
seemed to be two equally probable meanings to a passage for construe.
But for Martin every prepared paper was a thing of reminiscence and
suggestion. He knew just enough to appreciate his own ignorance: as he
stared at the passages on which he had to comment he recognised them
with maddening vagueness as a man who cannot put a name to a face he
knows. Hauntingly they seemed to cry out at him: "You saw me last
January, but you don't know what the devil I'm about." While Rendell
used his knowledge and Lawrence his imagination, Martin sweated and
racked his memory and got everything half right. His nerve went and he
began, he thought, to make a mess of his composition. Afterwards he
was left with a blur of sensations and images which included a large
clock and a smiling invigilator, aching hands and nights of relentless
preparation.

When it was all over he hurried down to Devonshire, leaving Lawrence to
forty-eight hours of continuous intoxication. Freda would still be
there. But, to his fury, he discovered that she had gone to Paris with
Margaret. He sulked obviously, and hated the whole world: life and
letters had tended to leave his nerves raw and any