a standard, and not to extinguish the taste for
intellectual things, which is too often what we contrive to do."

"Now we must not be too serious all at once," said Mrs. Graves. "If we
exhaust ourselves about education, we shall have nothing to fall back
upon--we shall be afraid to condescend. I am deplorably ill-educated
myself. I have no standard whatever. I have to consult dear Jane, have
I not? Jane is my intellectual touchstone, and saves me from entire
collapse."

"Well, well," said Mr. Sandys good-humouredly, "Mr. Kennedy and I will
fight it out together sometime. He will forgive an old Pembroke man for
wanting to know what is going forward; for scenting the battle afar
off, in fact."

Mr. Sandys found no lack of subjects to descant upon; but voluble, and
indeed absurd as he was, Howard could not help liking him; he was a
good fellow, he could see, and managed to diffuse a geniality over the
scene. "I am interested in most things," he said, at the end of a
breathless harangue, "and there is something in the presence of a real
live student, from the forefront of the intellectual battle, which
rouses all my old activities--stimulates them, in fact. This will be a
memorable evening for me, Mr. Kennedy, and I have abundance of things
to ask you." He did indeed ask a good many things, but he was content
to answer them himself. Once indeed, in the course of an immense
tirade, in which Mr. Sandys' intellectual curiosity took a series of
ever-widening sweeps, Howard caught his neighbour regarding him with a
half-amused look, and became aware that she was wondering if he were
playing Jack's game. Their eyes met, and he knew that she knew that he
knew. He smiled and shook his head. She gave him a delighted little
smile, and Howard had that touch of absurd ecstasy, which visits men no
longer young, when they find themselves still in the friendly camp of
the young, and not in the hostile camp of the middle-aged.

Presently he said to her something about Jack, and how much he enjoyed
seeing him at Cambridge. "He is really rather a wonderful person," he
added. "There isn't anyone at Beaufort who has such a perfectly defined
relation to everyone in the college, from the master down to the
kitchen-boys. He talks to everyone without any embarrassment, and yet
no one really knows what he is thinking! He is very deep, really, and I
think he has a fine future before him."

Maud lighted up at this, and said: "Do you really thin