In the middle of Rotten Row! with still so many pretty creatures on so many fine horses cantering past, and even what was more wonderful, Brunson, that inevitable competitor, the substance of solid success to Warrender's romance of shadowy glory, walking along with his arm in that of another scholar, and pointing to the man of dreams who saw them not. "He is working out that passage in the Politics that your tutor makes such a pother about," said the other. "Not a bit of it," cried Brunson, "for that would pay." But they gave him credit, at all events, for some classic theme, and not for the discoveries he was making in that other subject which is not classic, though universal; whereas the only text that entered into his dreams was that past tense, opening up so many vistas of thought which he had not realised before. Was there ever a broken sentence of Aristotle that moved so much the scholar to whom a new reading has suddenly appeared? There is no limiting the power of human emotion which can flow in almost any channel, but enthusiastic indeed must be the son of learning in whose bosom the difference of the past and the present tense would raise so great a ferment. "I wondered if you remarked." It lit up heaven and earth with new lights to Warrender. He wanted no more to raise his musings into ecstasy. He pictured her standing looking out upon the changing sky, feeling perhaps a loneliness about her, wanting to say her word, but with no one near whose ear was fit to receive it. "I wondered"--and he all the while unconscious, like a dolt, like a clod, with his dim windows already full of twilight, his mossy old trees hanging over him, his back turned, even, could it have penetrated through dead walls and heavy shade, to the glow in the west! While he thought of it his countenance too glowed with shame. He said to himself that never, should he live a hundred years, would he again be thus insensible to that great and splendid ceremonial which ends the day. For that moment she had wanted him, she had need of him: and not even in spirit had he been at hand, as her knight and servant ought to be. And all this, as we have said, in the middle of Rotten Row! He remembered the spot afterwards, the very place where that revelation had been made to him: but never was aware that he had met Brunson, who was passing through London on his way to join a reading party, and was in the meantime, in passing, making use of all the diversions that came in his way, in the end of the season, as so reasonable and practical a person naturally would do.