ough a great achievement
as the final triumph of an educational course, is still only the end of
the beginning. That done, the student, armed _cap-a-pie_ in his
intellectual armour, goes forth to face something infinitely sterner and
more pitiless than tutors or proctors, ay, even than Masters and
Chancellors themselves--the presiding genius of that infinitely greater
University called the World, where taking your degree means anything
that human fortune can give you, and where being plucked may mean
anything from a clerkship in an office to selling matches in the gutter.

"I _am_ sorry you missed your double, old man!" said Vane, continuing
the conversation after a pause that had lasted for two or three minutes.
"Still, at any rate, you've got your first, and, after all, a first in
Classics and a second in History is not to be sneezed at, and I don't
suppose it would have mattered a hang to you whether you had come out
anywhere or not."

As he said this there was a sudden contraction of his companion's jaw,
which resulted in the clean biting through of the vulcanite mouthpiece
of his pipe. He spat the pieces out into the fireplace, and said in a
perfectly smooth voice:

"I wonder what I did that for! I suppose that is one of the
circumstances in which people say that it does a man good to swear."

"I should certainly have sworn under the circumstances," said Vane, "or
at least, I should have said something that one would not say in the
presence of one's maiden aunt, but then, of course, you Ernshaw--you're
above all that sort of thing. You have your feelings so well under
control that you don't even need to swear to relieve them. However,
that's not quite the subject. What am I to do? Am I to go back to her,
repenting of the evil of my ways, ask her to pardon a passing madness,
and lay my academic honours at her feet--as God knows I would be only
too glad to do----"

"Wait a moment, Maxwell. Don't say anything more just now, and let me
think a bit. We have been over this subject a good many times already,
but now we have come to the crisis, to the cross-ways, in fact. You have
made me your confidant in this matter. The future of your life and hers
depends upon what you decide to do now, and, not only that, but there is
your father and her father and mother--the completion, that is to say,
of three other lives. It is very, very serious. It is more than serious,
it is solemn. Wait a moment, let me think."

Vane le