"Yes she has. She has unsettled you from the work that you came to Oxford to do; and the play in her rooms has caused you to run into debt that you don't know how to get out of: it's nearly as much harm as she can do you." "Is it?" "As much as she can do any honest fellow. Tod, if you were to lapse into crooked paths, you'd break the good old pater's heart. There's nobody in the world he cares for as he cares for you." Tod sat twitching his whiskers. I could not understand his mood: all the carelessness and the fierceness had quite gone out of him. "It's the thought of the father that pulls me up, lad. What a cross-grained world it is! Why should a bit of pleasure be hedged in with thorns?" "If we don't go to bed we shall not be up for chapel." "_You_ can go to bed." "Why do you drive her out, Tod?" "Why does the sun shine?" was the lucid answer. "I saw you with her in that gig to-day." "We only went four miles. Four out and four in." "You may be driving her rather too far some day--fourteen, or so." "I don't think she'd be driven. With all her simplicity, she knows how to take care of herself." Simplicity! I looked at him; and saw he spoke the word in good faith. _He_ was simple. "She has a husband, Tod." "Well?" "Do you suppose he would like to see you driving her abroad?--and all you fellows in her rooms to the last minute any of you dare stop out?" "That's not my affair. It's his." "Any way, Everty might come down upon the lot of you some of these fine days, and say things you'd not like. _She's_ to blame. Why, you heard what that old lady in the brown bonnet said--that her husband must think Sophie was staying with her." "The fire's low, and I'm cold," said Tod. "Good-night, Johnny." He went into his room, and I to mine. A few years ago, there appeared a short poem called "Amor Mundi."[1] While reading it, I involuntarily recalled this past experience at Oxford, for it described a young fellow's setting-out on the downward path, as Tod did. Two of life's wayfarers start on their long life journey: the woman first; the man sees and joins her; then speaks to her. [1] Christina G. Rossetti. "Oh, where are you going, with your love-locks flowing, And the west wind blowing along the narrow track?" "This downward path is easy, come with me, an it please ye; We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back." So they two went together in the sunny August weather; The honey-blooming heather lay to the left and right: And dear she was to dote on, her small feet seemed to float on The air, like soft twin-pigeons too sportive to alight. And so they go forth, these two, on their journey, revelling in the summer sunshine and giving no heed to their sliding progress; until he sees something in the path that startles him. But the syren accounts for it in some plausible way; it lulls his fear, and onward they go again. In time he sees something worse, halts, and asks her again: