esk that was full of childish things, she curled herself
over the note-paper.

MAY

A pleasant company of thoughts traveled with Guy and his bicycle on the
road to Oxford. In this easy progress the material hindrances to
marriage were not seeming very important, and as he thought of his love
for Pauline it spread before him, untroublous like the road down which
he was spinning before a light breeze. With so much to compensate for
their brief parting it was impossible to feel depressed; and as Guy drew
near the city he felt he was an undergraduate again; and when he greeted
Michael Fane in St. Giles he could positively hear his own Oxford drawl
again. It was really delightful to be sitting here in view of his old
college; and when after lunch he and Michael started for Wytham woods,
more and more Guy was in an Oxford dream and carrying off the fantastic
notion of the Parnassian academy with all the debonair confidence of his
second year. Yet Guy knew that the scheme was absurd, and when Michael
argued against it in his solemn way he found himself taking the other
side from a mere undergraduate pleasure in argument. Indeed, Michael
declared he had become a freshman since he went down, which made Guy
stop dead, ankle-deep in kingcups, and laugh aloud for his youth, with
hidden thoughts of Pauline to make him rejoice that he was young. He
laughed again at Michael's seriousness and flung his scheme to the broad
clouds, for on this generous day he and Pauline were enough, and neither
anybody else's opinion nor anybody else's help was worth a second
thought. The heartening warmth, however, did not last; and when towards
evening the sun faded in a blanch of watery clouds with a cold wind for
aftermath, Guy felt Michael might have been more sympathetic. Rather
silently they walked back from Godstow, with Pauline between them; so
that, after all, Guy thought, Michael was still an undergraduate,
whereas he had embarked upon life.

That night, however, when the curtains were drawn across Michael's bay
window that overhung the whispering and ancient thoroughfare; when the
fire burned high and the tobacco smoke clouded the glimmer of the books
on the walls; when his chair creaked with that old Oxford creaking--Guy
forgave Michael for any lack in his reception of the great plan. After
all, he was writing to Pauline while his host was reading the
Constitutional History of England at a table littered with heavy
volumes, on wh