e frame for the picture, the sheath for the
sword--and we leave the picture and the sword to look after themselves.
What a wretched dilettante business it all is, keeping these boys
practising postures in the anteroom of life! Cannot we get at the real
thing, teach people to do things, fill their minds with ideas, break
down the silly tradition of needless wealth and absurd success? And I
must keep up all this farce, simply because I am fit for nothing
else--I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed. Oh, hold your tongue, you
ass!" said Howard, apostrophising his rebellious mind. "Don't you see
where you are going? You can't do anything--it is all too big and
strong for you. You must just let it alone."

II

RESTLESSNESS

A few days later the term drew to an end, and both dons and
undergraduates, whose tempers had been wearing a little thin, got
suddenly more genial, like guests when a visit draws to a close, and
disposed to think rather better of each other.

Howard had made no plans; he did not wish to stay on at Cambridge, but
he did not want to go away: he had no relations to whose houses he
naturally drifted; he did not like the thought of a visit; as a rule he
went off with an undergraduate or two to some lonely inn, where they
fished or walked and did a little work. But just now he had a vague
feeling that he wanted to be alone; that he had something to face, some
reckoning to cast up, and yet he did not know what it was.

One afternoon--the spring was certainly advancing, and there was a
touch of languor in the air, that heavenly languor which is so sweet a
thing when one is young and hopeful, so depressing a thing when one is
living on the edge of one's nervous force--he paid a call, which was
not a thing he often did, on a middle-aged woman who passed for a sort
of relation; she was a niece of his aunt's deceased husband, Monica
Graves by name. She was a woman of independent means, who had done some
educational work for a time, but had now retired, lived in her own
little house, and occupied herself with social schemes of various
sorts. She was a year or two older than Howard. They did not very often
meet, but there was a pleasant camaraderie between them, an almost
brotherly and sisterly relation. She was a small, quiet, able woman,
whose tranquil manner concealed great clear-headedness and
decisiveness. Howard always said that it was a comfort to talk to her,
because she always knew what her own opinio