ite shadow; the other was in vivid light. The air seemed to be
full of bells--a murmurous voice--the voice of Oxford; as though the
dead generations were perpetually whispering to the living--"We who
built these walls, and laid this turf for you--we, who are dead, call
to you who are living--carry on our task, continue our march:

"On to the bound of the waste--
On to the City of God!"

A silence fell upon Constance as she walked beside the Master. She was
thinking involuntarily of that absent word dropped by her
uncle--"_Oxford is a place of training_"--and there was a passionate and
troubled revolt in her. Other ghostly wills seemed to be threatening
her--wills that meant nothing to her. No!--her own will should shape her
own life! As against the austere appeal that comes from the inner heart
of Oxford, the young and restless blood in her sang defiance. "I will
ride with him to-morrow--I will--I will!"

But the Master merely thought that she was feeling the perennial spell
of the Oxford beauty.

"You are going to like Oxford, I hope?"

"Yes--" said Constance, a little reluctantly. "Oh, of course I shall
like it. But it oppresses me--rather."

"I know!" he said eagerly--always trying to place himself in contact
with the young mind and life, always seeking something from them in
which he was constantly disappointed. "Yes, we all feel that! We who are
alive must always fight the past, though we owe it all we have. Oxford
has been to me often a witch--a dangerous--almost an evil witch. I
seemed to see her--benumbing the young forces of the present. And the
scientific and practical men, who would like to scrap her, have
sometimes seemed to me right. And then one changes--one changes!"

His voice dropped. All that was slightly grotesque in his outer man,
the broad flat head, the red hair, the sharp wedge-like chin,
disappeared for Constance in the single impression of his eyes--pale
blue, intensely melancholy, and most human.

"Take up some occupation--some study--" he said to her gently. "You
won't be long here; but still, ask us for what we can give. In Oxford
one must learn something--or teach something. If not, life here
goes sour."

Constance repeated Sorell's promise to teach her Greek.

"Excellent!" said the Master. "You will be envied. Sorell is a capital
fellow! And one of the ablest of our younger scholars--though of
course"--the speaker drew himself up with a slight acerbity--"he and I
belo