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be quenched again, and one thing in him at last was real.
    Next morning he was calmer. He had a cold for one thing, the rain having soaked him unnoticed, and for another he had overslept to the extent of missing a chapel and two lectures. It was impossible to get his life straight. After lunch he changed for football, and being in good time flung himself on his sofa to sleep till tea. But he was not hungry. Refusing an invitation, he strolled out into the town and, meeting a Turkish bath, had one. It cured his cold, but made him late for another lecture. When hall came, he felt he could not face the mass of Old Sunningtonians, and, though he had not signed off, absented himself, and dined alone at the Union. He saw Risley there, but with indifference. Then the evening began again, and he found to his surprise that he was very clear-headed, and could do six hours' work in three. He went to bed at his usual time, and woke up
    healthy and very happy. Some instinct, deep below his consciousness, had advised him to let Durham and his thoughts about Durham have a twenty-four-hours' rest.
    They began to see a little of one another. Durham asked him to lunch, and Maurice asked him back, but not too soon. A caution alien to his nature was at work. He had always been cautious pettily, but this was on a large scale. He became alert, and all his actions that October term might be described in the language of battle. He would not venture on to difficult ground. He spied out Durham's weaknesses as well as his strength. And above all he exercised and cleaned his powers.
    If obliged to ask himself, "What's all this?" he would have replied, "Durham is another of those boys in whom I was interested at school," but he was obliged to ask nothing, and merely went ahead with his mouth and his mind shut. Each day with its contradictions slipped into the abyss, and he knew that he was gaining ground. Nothing else mattered. If he worked well and was nice socially, it was only a by-product, to which he had devoted no care. To ascend, to stretch a hand up the mountainside until a hand catches it, was the end for which he had been bom. He forgot the hysteria of his first night and his stranger recovery. They were steps which he kicked behind him. He never even thought of tenderness and emotion; his considerations about Durham remained cold. Durham didn't dislike him, he was sure. That was all he wanted. One thing at a time. He didn't so much as have hopes, for hope distracts, and he had a great deal to see to.
    7 Next term they were intimate at once. "Hall, I nearly wrote a letter to you in the vac," said Durham, plunging into a conversation.
    "That so?"
    "But an awful screed. I'd been having a rotten time."
    His voice was not very serious, and Maurice said, "What went wrong? Couldn't you keep down the Christmas pudding?"
    It presently appeared that the pudding was allegorical; there had been a big family row.
    "I don't know what you'll say—I'd rather like your opinion on what happened if it doesn't bore you."
    "Not a bit," said Maurice.
    "We've had a bust up on the religious question."
    At that moment they were interrupted by Chapman.
    "I'm sorry, we're fixing something," Maurice told him.
    Chapman withdrew.
    "You needn't have done that, any time would do for my rot," Durham protested. He went on more earnestly.
    "Hall, I don't want to worry you with my beliefs, or rather with their absence, but to explain the situation I must just tell you that I'm unorthodox. I'm not a Christian."
    Maurice held unorthodoxy to be bad form and had remarked last term in a college debate that if a man had doubts he might have the grace to keep them to himself. But he only said to Durham that it was a difficult question and a wide one.
    "I know—it isn't about that. Leave it aside." He looked for a little into the fire. "It is about the way my mother took it. I told her six months ago—in the summer—and she didn't mind. She made some foolish joke, as she does, but