lad I came here with you. I
shall never forget this as long as I live--it is quite beyond words."

He took her back to the lodgings where they were staying. She shook
hands with him, smiled faintly, almost tearfully, and went in without a
word. Howard went back in a very agitated frame of mind. He did not
understand what was in the girl's mind at all. She was different,
utterly different. Some new current of thought had passed through her
mind. He fancied that the girl, after her secluded life, with so many
richly perceptive faculties half starved, had awakened almost suddenly
to a sense of the crowded energies and joys of life, that youth and
delight had quickened in her; that she foresaw new relations, and
guessed at wonderful secrets. But it troubled him to think that she had
not seemed to wish to revive their former little intimacy; she had
seemed half unconscious of his presence, and all alive with new
pleasures and curiosities. The marvellous veil of sex appeared to have
fallen between them. He had made friends with her, as he would have
made friends with some ingenuous boy; and now something wholly new,
mysterious, and aloof had intervened.

The rest of the visit was uneventful enough. Maud was different--that
was plain--not less delightful, indeed even more so, in her baffling
freshness; but Howard felt removed from her, shut out from her mind,
kept at arm's length, even superseded.

The luncheon with the Master as guest was a success. He was an old
bachelor clergyman, white-haired, dainty, courteous, with the
complexion of a child. He was very gracious to Mr. Sandys, who regarded
him much as he might have regarded the ghost of Isaiah, as a spirit who
visited the earth from some paradisiacal retreat, and brought with him
a fragrance of heaven. The thought of a Doctor of Divinity, the Head of
a College, full of academical learning, and yet perfectly courteous and
accessible, filled Mr. Sandys' cup of romance to the brim. He seemed to
be storing his memory with the Master's words. The Master was delighted
with Maud, and treated her with a charming and indulgent gaiety, which
Howard envied. He asked her opinion, he deferred to her, he made her
come and sit next to him, he praised Jack and Howard, and at the end of
the luncheon he filled Mr. Sandys with an almost insupportable delight
by saying that the next time he could visit Cambridge he hoped he would
stay at the Lodge--"but not unless you will promise to brin