The prophecy, delivered with apparent sincerity in the mellow atmosphere of dinner to a score of men between the optimistic ages of twenty and twenty-five, was, on the face of it, discouraging. He who achieved fame and he who amassed a fortune were condemned, with the rest, to pass through the contemplation of suicide or, at least, the prayerful expectation of death. And the moment for the forecast was undoubtedly ill-chosen. Seventeen of the twenty members of the Phoenix had spent the last week wrestling with examiners in their final schools; O'Rane spoke with the subconscious triumph of one who was not bidding farewell to Oxford for another year; and, if a vote had been taken, nine-tenths of his friends would have accorded him the scant portion of worldly success with which Providence in his grudging prophecy would crown their ambitions. "Dry up, Raney," growled Jack Waring. "It's all very well for you----" "It's a twenty-to-one chance I'm giving you," O'Rane pointed out. "You might bring off the double event. And get a wife thrown in. It would be no fun, if we all leaped to the top. 'When everybody's somebody, then no one's anybody.'" Waring jumped up and turned to the president. "I have to report Mr. O'Rane for singing at dinner, sir. A good, thumping fine, Sinks," he added. Jack Summertown intercepted the ruling. "On a point of order, sir; was that singing? If it was--oh, my Lord!" Sinclair rose majestically from the presidential chair and turned his eyes from one disputant to the other. "The accused is acquitted, but he's not to do it again," he ruled diplomatically. "I have to censure Lord Summertown for addressing the Chair without rising." Ten suspended conversations were resumed, as he sat down; and Waring reverted to his own gloomy thoughts. Unaccustomed to look more than a day ahead, he was only beginning to recognize that in twenty-four hours he would have gone down from Oxford for the last time and that within four months he would have to begin reading for the bar. He had interrupted his dressing an hour before to stare out of the window, sprawling on the sill and dangling a collar and tie with idle hand.