o it."

Thursday and Friday Lewisham passed in exceedingly high spirits. No
consciousness of the practical destruction of the Career seems to have
troubled him at this time. Doubt had vanished from his universe for a
space. He wanted to dance along the corridors. He felt curiously
irresponsible and threw up an unpleasant sort of humour that pleased
nobody. He wished Miss Heydinger many happy returns of the day,
_apropos_ of nothing, and he threw a bun across the refreshment room
at Smithers and hit one of the Art School officials. Both were
extremely silly things to do. In the first instance he was penitent
immediately after the outrage, but in the second he added insult to
injury by going across the room and asking in an offensively
suspicious manner if anyone had seen his bun. He crawled under a table
and found it at last, rather dusty but quite eatable, under the chair
of a lady art student. He sat down by Smithers to eat it, while he
argued with the Art official. The Art official said the manners of the
Science students were getting unbearable, and threatened to bring the
matter before the refreshment-room committee. Lewisham said it was a
pity to make such a fuss about a trivial thing, and proposed that the
Art official should throw his lunch--steak and kidney pudding--across
the room at him, Lewisham, and so get immediate satisfaction. He then
apologised to the official and pointed out in extenuation that it was
a very long and difficult shot he had attempted. The official then
drank a crumb, or breathed some beer, or something of that sort, and
the discussion terminated. In the afternoon, however, Lewisham, to
his undying honour, felt acutely ashamed of himself. Miss Heydinger
would not speak to him.

On Saturday morning he absented himself from the schools, pleading by
post a slight indisposition, and took all his earthly goods to the
booking office at Vauxhall Station. Chaffery's sister lived at
Tongham, near Farnham, and Ethel, dismissed a week since by Lagune,
had started that morning, under her mother's maudlin supervision, to
begin her new slavery. She was to alight either at Farnham or Woking,
as opportunity arose, and to return to Vauxhall to meet him. So that
Lewisham's vigil on the main platform was of indefinite duration.

At first he felt the exhilaration of a great adventure. Then, as he
paced the long platform, came a philosophical mood, a sense of entire
detachment from the world. He saw a bundl