While all these things were happening to Yetta, Walter was settling down into the rut of University life easily--almost contentedly. He was employed to be a scholar rather than a teacher. And while conducting classes is always a dismal task, study--to one with any bent that way--is a pleasant occupation. He was not dependent on his salary, and so escaped from the picturesque discomfort of the quarters assigned to him in the mediæval college building, to a "garden cottage." There was a lodge in front and a lawn running down to the river behind. He had found an excellent cook, who was married to an indifferent gardener. And, although his lawn was not so smooth nor his grape crop so plentiful as his neighbors', he was very pleasantly installed. Sometimes, of course, he thought regretfully of the might-have-been life in New York. But the more he studied the Haktites, the more interesting they became. He had also revived his project of a Synthetic Philosophy. On his return from the Christmas holidays of his second year at Oxford, he found a book in the mail which was waiting him. It was a novel--_The Other Solution_, by Beatrice Maynard. It had been sent to his old New York address. On the fly-leaf she had written, "Merry Xmas." It was an unexpected pleasure to have some one remember him at this holiday season. He had not received a Christmas present in years. He hurried through his supper to begin it. Beyond occasionally filling his pipe he did not stop until the end. It was, he decided, just such a book as he would have expected her to write! There was the patience of real art in the way it was done. Not a great book, but packed full of keen observation, and its finish was like a cameo. It was a simple story of a very rich girl in New York. One hardly realized that it was about the Smart Set. Beatrice knew her people too well to have any illusion about their nobility or their special depravity. The men changed their clothes rather too often, but were on the whole a kindly meaning lot. The women were a bit burdened with their jewellery, but very human, nevertheless. They were all bored by their uselessness. There was a cynical old bachelor uncle, who gave the Girl epigrammatical advice about the virtue of frivolity and the danger of taking things seriously. There was a maiden aunt--the romance of whose life had been shot to pieces at Gettysburg--who had sought solace in a morbid religious intensity. She was always warning the Girl, in the phraseology of Lamentations, against light-mindedness and the Wrath to Come. The "Other Solution" proved to be a very modern kind of nerve specialist, whose own nerves were going to pieces because of overwork and the cooking of an absinthe-drinking Frenchwoman. He was just on the point of beginning to take cocaine, when Beatrice persuaded him to take the Girl, instead. "Good work," Walter said as he closed it.