d back with
astonishment at the amount of apposite reading accomplished in what
seemed, now so cruelly swift were the hours, a mere week of rain.

He obtained leave to stay up during the Easter vacation, and time might
have seemed to stand still, but that Spring on these rathe mornings of
wind and scudded blue sky was forward with her traceries, bringing with
every morning green Summer visibly nearer. The urgency of departure less
than the need for redoubled diligence in acquiring knowledge obsessed
Michael all this April. Sitting in the bay-window at Ninety-nine on
these luminous eves of Spring, he vexed himself with the thought of
disturbing so soon his books, of violating with change the peaceful
confusion achieved in two terms. The fancy haunted him that for the
length of the Long Vacation 99 St. Giles would drowse under the
landlady's nick-nacks brought out to replace his withdrawn treasures;
that nothing would keep immortal the memory of him and Alan save their
photographs in frames of almost royal ostentation. Vaguely through his
mind ran the notion of becoming a don, that forever he might stay here
in Oxford, a contemplative intellectual cut-off from the great world.
For a week the notion ripened swiftly, and Michael worked very hard in
his determination to proceed from a First to the competition for a
Fellowship. The notion ripened too swiftly, however, and fell with a
plump, fit for nothing, when he suddenly realized he would have to stay
on in Oxford alone, since of all his friends he could see not one who
would be likely in the academic cloister to accompany his meditations.
With a gesture of weary contempt Michael flung Stubbs into the corner,
and resolved that, come what might in the History Schools, for what
remained of his time at Oxford he would enjoy the proffered anodyne.

After he had disowned his work, he took to wandering rather aimlessly
about the streets; but their aspect, still unfrequented as yet by the
familiar figures of term-time, made him feel sad. Guy Hazlewood was
summoned by telegram from where at Plashers Mead he was presumed to have
found abiding peace. He came bicycling in from the Witney road at noon
of a blue April day so richly canopied with rolling clouds that the
unmatured season took on some of June's ampler dignity. After lunch they
walked to Witham Woods, and Guy tried to persuade Michael to come to
Wychford when the summer term was over. He was full of the plan for
founding