He had meant to have sought her at Easter. To put a lesser interval than that which stretches from Christmas to Easter between the decent interment of the old love and the proclamation of the new would have seemed to him a disrespect--a disloyalty to that now dead but once so living passion. Why, by showing such an overhaste to take upon himself another tie than hers, should he cut to the quick her who, not so long ago, was all earth, and all heaven too to him? But when Easter comes, it brings with it the news, borne on the breath of common fame, of the serious illness of that old love; and again his loyalty forbids him--while she, who for five years made sunshine or storm in his life, lies on what may perhaps be her death-bed--to go courting another than she. And before the tidings of her recovery reach him his holiday has been long over. He will have no other worth the name until Whitsun. But to Whitsun there are now only twenty-one days. 'Only twenty-one days!' he says to himself under his breath, still looking up at the pinnacle. He could of course have written to her; but from that he has shrunk with unconquerable repugnance. To put a cold proposition in cold black and white upon cold paper? What could she do but say 'No' to it? He will ask her by word of mouth; if possible under the Judas-tree, with Minky lying on her gown, so that she can't rise up hastily and flee from him. Will ask her by word of mouth, eye to eye; and with such a compelling urgency of look and speech that she shall say 'Yes' to him--if out of nothing else, out of sheer pity for his great and utter need of her. 'Twenty-one days and twenty-one nights!' he repeats to himself once again. The choristers stand surpliced, looking eastwards to where the sun is rearing his red shoulder. The crowd on the old lead roof is thickening. Undergraduates in cap and gown; fat Fellows, thin Fellows; young ladies, old ladies--every moment a new head, with an expression of relief upon its features at having come to the end of its corkscrew scramble, appears at the head of the ladder that closes the climb. Talbot is not paying much attention to any of them, least of all, perhaps, to his own party, when a voice that has surely a familiar ring in it brings him back to the present. 'You see, dear, you need not have been in such a fuss; we are in plenty of time. The sun has waited for us, as I told you he would.'