extreme
absorption, he watched it move its little inquiring head, feeling it all
the time with his short, broad fingers, as though to discover exactly
how it was made. It was mighty hard in the back! No wonder poor old
Aeschylus felt a bit sick when it fell on his head! The ancients used
it to stand the world on--a pagoda world, perhaps, of men and beasts and
trees, like that carving on his guardian's Chinese cabinet. The Chinese
made jolly beasts and trees, as if they believed in everything having
a soul, and not only being just fit for people to eat or drive or make
houses of. If only the Art School would let him model things 'on his
own,' instead of copying and copying--it was just as if they imagined it
would be dangerous to let you think out anything for yourself!

He held the tortoise to his waistcoat, and let it crawl, till, noticing
that it was gnawing the corner of his essay, he put it back into his
pocket. What would his tutor do if he were to know it was there?--cock
his head a little to one side, and say: "Ah! there are things, Lennan,
not dreamed of in my philosophy!" Yes, there were a good many not
dreamed of by 'old Stormer,' who seemed so awfully afraid of anything
that wasn't usual; who seemed always laughing at you, for fear that you
should laugh at him. There were lots of people in Oxford like that. It
was stupid. You couldn't do anything decent if you were afraid of being
laughed at! Mrs. Stormer wasn't like that; she did things because--they
came into her head. But then, of course, she was Austrian, not English,
and ever so much younger than old Stormer.

And having reached the door of his tutor's house, he rang the bell....

II

When Anna Stormer came into the study she found her husband standing
at the window with his head a little on one side--a tall, long-legged
figure in clothes of a pleasant tweed, and wearing a low turn-over
collar (not common in those days) and a blue silk tie, which she had
knitted, strung through a ring. He was humming and gently tapping the
window-pane with his well-kept finger-nails. Though celebrated for the
amount of work he got through, she never caught him doing any in this
house of theirs, chosen because it was more than half a mile away from
the College which held the 'dear young clowns,' as he called them, of
whom he was tutor.

He did not turn--it was not, of course, his habit to notice what was not
absolutely necessary--but she felt that he was aware o