l copperplate engraving of
the Primavera. This expenditure frightened him from buying any more
pictures that afternoon and seemed a violent and sudden extravagance.
However, he paid a visit to the Bank where, after signing his name
several times, he was presented with a check book. In order to be
perfectly sure he knew how to draw a check, he wrote one then and there,
and the five sovereigns the clerk shoveled out as irreverently as if
they were chocolate creams, made him feel that his new check-book was
the purse of Fortunatus.

Michael quickly recovered from the slight feeling of guilt that the
purchase of the Botticelli print had laid upon his conscience, and in
order to assert his independence in the face of Alan's continuous
dissuasion, he bought a hookah, a miniature five-barred gate for a
pipe-rack, a mother-of-pearl cigarette-holder which he dropped on the
pavement outside the shop and broke in pieces, and finally seven ties of
knitted silk.

By this time Michael and Alan had reached the Oriental Cafe in
Cornmarket Street; and since it was now five o'clock and neither of them
felt inclined to accept the responsibility of inviting the other back to
tea, they went into the cafe and ate a quantity of hot buttered toast
and parti-colored cakes. The only thing that marred their enjoyment and
faintly disturbed their equanimity was the entrance of three exquisitely
untidy undergraduates who stood for a moment in the doorway and surveyed
first the crowded cafe in general, and then more particularly Michael
and Alan with an expression of outraged contempt. After a prolonged
stare one of them exclaimed in throaty scorn:

"Oh, god, the place is chock full of damned freshers!"

Whereupon he and his companions strode out again.

Michael and Alan looked at each other abashed. The flavor had departed
from the tea: the brilliant hues of the cakes had paled: the waitress
seemed to have become suddenly critical and haughty. Michael and Alan
paid their bill and went out.

"Are you coming back to my rooms?" Michael asked. Yet secretly he half
hoped that Alan would refuse. Dusk was falling, and he was anxious to be
alone while the twilight wound itself about this gray city.

Alan said he wanted to finish unpacking, and Michael left him quickly,
promising to meet him again to-morrow.

Michael did not wander far in that dusk of fading spires and towers, for
a bookshop glowing like a jewel in the gloom of an ancient street lur