The first five days of her Cambridge visit were resolutely spent by Marjorie in sight-seeing. It was well for her, she said, to come under the external influences of the Alma Mater, watch the cheerful flow of undergraduate life, look at Newnham and Girton from without, before delivering her letters of introduction.... It was well for her, while she still stood uncommitted to the future, to run a last forlorn chance of meeting the man she loved! Here was the truth, unrecognised, perhaps, as truth, even in Marjorie Bartrand’s moments of sternest self-questioning. Day after day, however, slipped vainly by. A dozen times in each twenty-four hours her heart would leap, her pulses throb as men of Geoffrey’s height or build went past her in the crowded streets. Geoffrey Arbuthnot appeared not. She fell to quarrelling with herself over her own folly. Geoffrey might be at the other side of the world--married--contented: in every case must have learnt long ago to live his life, to do his work without _her_. Happily, there were reprisals.... On the morning of the sixth day she determined to put her sweetheart away from her remembrance for ever. ‘I have come to the end of my sight-seeing.’ This she told the Pouchées at breakfast. ‘I have heard a University sermon and the services at King’s and Trinity. We have visited Trumpington churchyard and the Backs. I have seen Milton’s tree and Gray’s fire-escape, and--and the Girton girls playing tennis. When I have gone over your house, Madame Pouchée, when I know what kind of rooms reading gentlemen inhabit, my experience will be complete.’ The speech fell from her idly. Small curiosity in the affairs of others was never a sin to be reckoned among the Bartrand qualities. But Mademoiselle Pouchée’s manner gave it purpose. Mademoiselle changed colour, fidgeted with her coffee-spoon, contradicted herself. ‘The rooms were the plainest rooms in Cambridge. No knowing at what time our gentleman went out or might return. For herself, she seldom entered his part of the house, and----’ ‘Pouchée,’ exclaimed Marjorie, the old spirit of contradiction taking possession of her, ‘there is a mystery about our excellent lodger which I mean to solve. You seldom enter his part of the house, you say? You were in his rooms last evening. I saw you enter through the baize door, as I have seen you do pretty often already. I heard your voice as you talked to him. Explain these things.’ ‘Enfin! It would be better if the truth were told,’ said old Madame Pouchée in her own language. ‘Our gentleman is an enemy of the sex. What will you have! When he heard a young lady was coming to visit us----’