l. So
informative and unrestrained, so gushing and----"

"I wish you'd answer my question," Alan grumbled, "and call me what you
like without talking about it."

"Now I've forgotten my answer," said Michael. "And it was a wonderful
answer. Oh, I remember now. Of course, your philosophy is applicable to
the world. You coming from a metropolitan university will try to infect
the world with your syllogisms. You will meet Cambridge men much better
educated than yourself, but all of them incompetent to appreciate their
own education. You will gently banter them, trying to allay their
provincial suspicion of your easy manner. You will----"

"_You_ will simply not be serious," said Alan. "And so I shall go to
bed."

"My dear chap, I'm only talking like this because if I were serious, I
couldn't bear to think that to-night is almost the end of our fourth
year. It is, in fact, the end of 99 St. Giles."

"Well, it isn't as if we were never going to see each other again," said
Alan awkwardly.

"But it is," said Michael. "Don't you realize, even with all your
researches into philosophy, that after to-night we shall only see each
other in dreams? After to-night we shall never again have identical
interests and obligations."

"Well, anyway, I'm going to bed," said Alan, and with a good-night very
typical in its curtness of many earlier ones uttered in similar accents,
he went upstairs.

Michael, when he found himself alone, thought it wiser to follow him. It
was melancholy to watch the moon above the empty thoroughfare, and to
hear the bells echoing through the spaces of the city.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LAST WEEK

Michael's old rooms in college were lent to him for three or four days
as he had hoped they would be. The present occupant, a freshman, was not
staying up for Commemoration, and though next term he would move into
larger rooms for his second year, his effects had not yet been
transferred. Michael found it interesting to deduce from the evidence of
his books and pictures the character of the owner with whom he had
merely a nodding acquaintance. On the whole, he seemed to be a dull
young man. The photographs of his relatives were dull: his books were
dull and unkempt: his pictures were dull, narrative rather than
decorative. Probably there was nothing in the room that was strictly
individual, nothing that he had acquired to satisfy his own taste. Every
picture had probably been brought to Oxford because its