a week, and really,
Alan, it's not good for Stella to think that everybody falls in love
with her. I don't mind about Maurice. It would do him good to be turned
down."

"Would he be?" demanded Alan gloomily.

"Of course, of course ... it seems funny to be talking to you about love
... you used to be so very scornful about it.... I expect you know
you'll fall in love pretty deeply now.... Alan, I'm frightfully keen you
should marry Stella. But let her alone. Don't let her interfere with
your cricket. Don't take up golf on account of her."

Michael was so much in earnest with his exhortation to Alan that he
picked up a meringue and was involved in the difficulties of eating it
before he was aware he was doing so. Alan began to laugh, and the heavy
airs of disappointment and hopelessness were lightened.

"It's funny," said Michael, "that I should have an opportunity now of
talking to you about love and cricket."

"Funny?" Alan repeated.

"Don't you remember three years ago on the river one night how I wished
you would fall in love, and you said something about it being bad for
cricket?"

"I believe I do remember vaguely," said Alan.

Michael saw that after the explanation of his depression he wanted to
let the subject drop, and since that was the very advice he had
conferred upon Alan, he felt it would be unfair to tempt him to
elaborate this depression merely to gratify his own pleasure in the
retrospect of emotion. So Stella was not discussed again for a long
while, and as she did after all go to Vienna to study a new technique,
the abstention was not difficult. Michael was glad, since he had
foreseen the possibility of a complication raveled by Maurice. Her
departure straightened this out, for Maurice was not inclined to gather
strength from absence. Other problems more delicate of adjustment even
than Stella began to arise, problems connected with the social aspects
of next term.

Alan would still be in college. Scholars at Christ Church were allowed
sometimes to spend even the whole of their four years in college.
Michael tried in vain to persuade him to ask leave to go into digs. Alan
offered his fourth year to companionship with Michael, but nothing would
induce him to emerge from college sooner. And why did Michael so
particularly want him? There were surely men in his own college with
whom he was intimate enough to share digs. Michael admitted there were
many, but he did not tell Alan that the real rea