ainly seen. The High Street was full
of carriages, and on the immaculate grass of the great quadrangle,
groups of the guests, the men in academic costume, the women in the
airiest and gayest of summer dresses, stood to watch the arrivals. The
evening was clear and balmy; moonrise and dying day disputed the sky;
and against its pale blue still scratched over with pale pink shreds and
wisps of cloud, the grey college walls, battlemented and flecked with
black, rose warmed and transfigured by that infused and golden summer in
which all, Oxford lay bathed. Through open gateways there were visions
of green gardens, girdled with lilacs and chestnuts; and above the
quadrangle towered the crocketed spire of St. Mary's, ethereally
wrought, it seemed, in ebony and silver, the broad May moon behind it.
Within the hall, the guests were gathering fast. The dais of the high
table was lit by the famous candelabra bequeathed to the college under
Queen Anne; a piano stood ready, and a space had been left for the
college choir who were to entertain the party. In front of the dais in
academic dress stood the Vice-Chancellor, a thin, silver-haired man,
with a determined mouth, such as befitted the champion of a hundred
orthodoxies; and beside him his widowed sister, a nervous and rather
featureless lady who was helping him to receive. The guest of the
evening had not yet appeared.

Mr. Sorell, in a master's gown, stood talking with a man, also in a
master's gown, but much older than himself, a man with a singular
head--both flat and wide--scanty reddish hair, touched with grey, a
massive forehead, pale blue eyes, and a long pointed chin. Among the
bright colours of so many of the gowns around him--the yellow and red of
the doctors of law, the red and black of the divines, the red and white
of the musicians--this man's plain black was conspicuous. Every one who
knew Oxford knew why this eminent scholar and theologian had never
become a doctor of divinity. The University imposes one of her few
remaining tests on her D.D's; Mr. Wenlock, Master of Beaumont, had never
been willing to satisfy it, so he remained undoctored. When he preached
the University sermon he preached in the black gown; while every
ambitious cleric who could put a thesis together could flaunt his red
and black in the Vice-Chancellor's procession on Sundays in the
University church. The face was one of mingled irony and melancholy, and
there came from it sometimes the strang