n
why you're still here. If it had been tea I should have said 'don't
bother about it,' but dinner's another matter, isn't it? And he always
has dinner laid for two or more in case he's asked anybody and
forgotten."

Thus it came about that for the second time Mark dined with the
Principal, who disconcerted him by saying when he arrived:

"I remember now that you dined with me the night before last. You should
have told me. I forget these things. But never mind, you'd better stay
now you're here."

The Principal read second-hand book catalogues all through dinner just
as he had done two nights ago, and he only interrupted his perusal to
inquire in courtly tones if Mark would take another glass of wine. The
only difference between now and the former occasion was the absence of
poor Emmett and his paroxysms. After dinner with some misgivings if he
ought not to leave his host to himself Mark followed him upstairs to the
library. The principal was one of those scholars who live in an
atmosphere of their own given off by old calf-bound volumes and who
apparently can only inhale the air of the world in which ordinary men
move when they are smoking their battered old pipes. Mark sitting
opposite to him by the fireside was tempted to pour out the history of
himself and Emmett, to explain how he had come to make such a mess of
the examination. Perhaps if the Principal had alluded to his papers Mark
would have found the courage to talk about himself; but the Principal
was apparently unaware that his guest had any ambitions to enter St.
Osmund's Hall, and whatever questions he asked related to the ancient
folios and quartos he took down in turn from his shelves. A clock struck
ten in the moonlight without, and Mark rose to go. He felt a pang as he
walked from the cloudy room and looked for the last time at that tall
remote scholar, who had forgotten his guest's existence at the moment he
ceased to shake his hand and who by the time he had reached the doorway
was lost again in the deeps of the crabbed volume resting upon his
knees. Mark sighed as he closed the library door behind him, for he knew
that he was shutting out a world. But when he stood in the small silver
quadrangle Mark was glad that he had not given way to the temptation of
confiding in the Principal. It would have been a feeble end to his first
denial of self. He was sure that he had done right in surrendering his
place to Emmett, for was not the unexpected opport