During the next three weeks I led a solitary enough life, in the woods and by the sea. I read a good deal, and dreamed still more. In the mornings, and often in the afternoons as well, I went for long swims, and, coming back, lay in the sun on the rocks, sometimes for hours at a time, so that the skin all over my body had been tanned to a deep golden brown. And I was growing stronger. I could feel it; I could even see it in my limbs, which were becoming more muscular. And with my increasing physical strength I suppose other alterations took place――alterations in my outward appearance, marking the passage from boyhood to adolescence. Annie Breen, for instance, had spoken to me several times of late in a way that betokened a consciousness of this change; and more than one girl whom I met on the road in the evenings, when wishing me good-night, had put something into her greetings which made it quite different from what it would have been last year. Several of the village boys, no older than I, had already sweethearts, and I knew I had but to give a sign to any of these girls to have a sweetheart also; and while I held myself aloof, and responded with the barest politeness, I none the less felt flattered. I received news of my examination. I had done better than I had expected, getting first place in the school and third in Ireland. Owen, too, had not done badly; at all events he had retained his exhibition. CHAPTER XLII I met Owen at the station, and, as he jumped out of the carriage, he cried, “I’ve got the letter. It was waiting for me when I reached home.” He waved it triumphantly in my face, beaming with the delight of it and with the pleasure of showing it to me. “I can’t possibly read it here,” I said, grasping his bag. “And I say, you know, you did rippingly in the exams. I knew you would.” He had come down by the first train, and I wanted to take him for a bathe, but he was so excited that he could hardly listen to me. I had brought our towels, and I delivered Owen’s bag to a carman outside to take up to the house. “Where are we going now? It was jolly decent of him writing, wasn’t it?” “Who? Tolstoy? Not bad. But we’re going to bathe: I waited for you. It’s some distance away, unless you would rather wade in off the shore; there’s plenty of time, however.” “I’ll do whatever you like.” “Then I think we’ll go round to Maggie’s Leap.” As we went we talked of his precious letter. “You won’t like it, I daresay,” he said. “It’s not much in your line.” “I wish you would tell me what my line is. I’ve been trying to discover during the last fortnight.” “I know very well.... There’s one thing he says that I can’t quite――――” “Well?” “Well, it’s this: He says everything is in the Gospels. What people have got to do is to read over the words of Christ, and mark with a red pencil everything that is perfectly clear to them.” “A red pencil?”