Nothing more was mentioned of the practical side of the engagement, for Mrs. Grey, Monica and Margaret were all too delightfully enthralled with the progress of an idyll that was to each of them her own secret poem of Pauline in love; while as for the Rector he remained outwardly oblivious of the whole matter. March came crashing into this peace without disturbing the simple pattern into which the existence of Guy and Pauline had now resolved itself--a pattern, moreover, that belonged to Pauline's mother and sisters for their own pleasure in embroidery, so that the lovers were, as it might be, carried about from room to room. Sometimes indeed, when Guy came to the Rectory, there was a pretence of leaving him and Pauline alone; but mostly they were in the company of the others, and Guy was now as deep in the family life as if he were a son of the house. Since he and Pauline never went for walks together, perhaps Wychford speculation had died down--at any rate there was no gossip to disturb Mrs. Grey; although, as she had by now given up the theory of a sort of engagement, yet without consenting to anything in the shape of a final announcement, it might not have mattered much. Meanwhile, it began to dawn on Guy that the time was coming when he would have to make up his mind to do something definite, and on these bleak mornings of early March, as he watched the scanty snowflakes withering against the panes, he asked himself if there was any justification for staying on at Plashers Mead in the new circumstances of his life there. At night, however, when the wind piped and whistled round the house, he used to dream upon the firelight and shrink from the idea of abandoning all that Plashers Mead had stood for and all that now still more it must stand for in the future. If only a plan could be devised by which the house were secured against sacrilege; and half-fantastically he began to imagine a monastic academy for poets, of which he would be Warden. Perhaps Michael Fane would like this idea, and since he had money he might come forward with an offer of endowment. Then he and Pauline could be married; for £150 a year would be an ample income, if there were no rent to pay and no wages. He of course would earn his living as superintendent of the academic discipline; and really, as he dreamed over his plan, such an establishment would be an admirable corollary to Oxford. It might gain even a sort of official recognition from the University. Plainly some sort of institution was wanted where in these commercial days young writers could retreat to learn their craft less suicidally than by journalism. What should he call his academy? With marriage as the reason for inventing this economy he could hardly give it too monastic a complexion. The louder the wind beat against the house, the more feasibly in the lamplit quiet within did the scheme present itself; and Michael Fane, who was always