As yet he had scarcely begun to be faintly conscious of a vague sense of elation and triumph; but as he reached the open air, which freshened and revived him, it occurred to him all at once that now he was really to all practical intents and purposes an Oxford undergraduate, one of those very people whose gorgeous striped blazers and lordly manners had of late so overawed him. Would he ever himself wear such noble neckties? Would he sport a straw hat with a particoloured ribbon? He looked up at the big window of that beautiful chapel, with its flamboyant tracery, and felt forthwith a proprietary interest in it. By the door Faussett was standing. As Dick passed he looked up and recognised 'the dark horse,' the rank outsider. He came forward and took his hand, which he wrung with unfeigned admiration. 'By Jove, Plantagenet,' he cried, 'you've licked us; you've fairly licked us! It's wonderful, old man. I didn't think you'd have done it. The Poet's such an extraordinary dab, you know, at history. But you must be a dabber. Look here, I say, what a pity you didn't take me the other day when I offered even money on Trev against the field! You simply chucked away a good chance of a fiver.' A little further on, Gillingham himself strolled up to them. His manner was pure gold. There was no trace of jealousy in the way he seized his unexpected rival's hand. To do him justice, indeed, that smallest and meanest of the human passions had no place at all in the Born Poet's nature. 'Well, I congratulate you,' he said with a passing pang of regret--for he, too, had wished not a little to get that Scholarship; 'as Sir Philip Sidney said, your need was the greater. And even for myself I'm not wholly dissatisfied. It's been a disappointment to me--and I don't very often secure the luxury of a disappointment. The true poet, you see, ought to have felt and known every human passion, good, bad or indifferent. As pure; experience, therefore, I'm not sorry you've licked me. It will enable me to throw myself henceforth more dramatically and realistically into the position of the vanquished, which is always the more pathetic, and therefore the more poetical.' They parted a little further down on the way towards the High Street. After they'd done so, the Philistine turned admiringly towards his schoolfellow, whom no loyal Rugby boy could for a moment believe to have been really beaten in fair fight by a creature from a place called Chiddingwick Grammar School. 'By George! Trev,' he exclaimed with a glow of genuine admiration, 'I never saw anything like that. It was noble, it was splendid of you!' The Born Poet hardly knew what his companion meant; but if it meant that he thought something which he, Trevor Gillingham, had done was noble and splendid, why, 'twas certainly not the Born Poet's cue to dispute the point with him. So he smiled a quiet non-committing sort of smile, and murmured in a gentle but distant voice: 'Aha! you think so?'