He sat thus for he did not know how long, the sunshine of the August afternoon getting round the corner and streaming straight in, inquisitive and troublesome. What were they doing now at the inn? Sir William had been very gentle; he had not said a word of blame. His tone, his looks, his very weakness had been conciliatory. Paul, when he covered his eyes with his hands, seemed to see that scene again, and twinges came to his heart, sudden impulses to get up and go to them--to go at least to the place and ask after his father. There are temptations to do right as well as to do wrong. Impulses came to him like little good angels pulling at his sleeve, entreating him to come; but alas! it is always more easy to resist temptations to do well than to do ill. Once or twice he was so far moved that he got up from his chair; but always sat down again after a blank look from the window over the deserted quadrangle and the parched trees. Why should he go? It would but raise vain hopes in them that he meant to yield: and he did not mean to yield. This kept him a prisoner in his room; for if he did not go _there_, where should he go? He paid no attention to the hour of dinner. He could not, he felt, have gone to Hall where there was the little dinner for the scanty summer contingent, the “men” who were “staying up to read.” Even these heroes were dropping away daily, and at the best of times the little group in a place which held so many was depressing; and Paul did not want to dine--the common offices of life were disgusting and distasteful to him. He roused himself to go out at last when the daylight had begun to wane. There was to be a meeting that night in the shop of Spears, of the people who were going with them to found the new colony--for to this their plan of emigration had grown; but it was still too early for that. The shadows were lengthening, the light almost level, when Paul came out. He did not know where to go; he wandered through the streets where the townspeople were all about enjoying the beautiful evening, and strolled heedlessly, not caring where he went, towards the inn. He could not get out of his mind the recollection of the little party who would get no good of the beautiful evening. His mother and Alice, like most mothers and sisters, had always imagined themselves to be “very fond of Oxford.” They had liked to hear of all its habits, and foolish, youthful ways--the nightly flights from the proctors, the corners where some hairbreadth ’scape had been made, the “High” and the “Broad,” and all that innocent slang which a happy boy pours forth on his first introduction to these delights. It had always been an excitement, a delight to them to come here. Now he could not but think of them shut up in that bare, gloomy room, with the high, pale walls, and long green curtains. Oh, how they plucked at his sleeve and at his heart, those persuading angels! How he was tempted to go back