Gleed of Trinity, a third-year man, was in his turn a vast improvement upon the private scholar who had seldom addressed a syllable to Gwynneth in his holidays, but had gone past whistling with his dogs. He was now a really handsome little man, with a clear brown skin and a moustache as mature as his manner; looked and spoke like a man of thirty; and could be amusing enough with his sly satire and his ready repartee. Cynical this youth must always be, but the cynicism was more good-humoured and less ill-natured than formerly, and not abhorrent in the man as it had been in the boy. At all events it amused Gwynneth, who was furthermore surprised and excited to find that Sidney had read quite a number of great books, and rather entertained than otherwise by his blasphemous opinions of many of them. So they had something in common after all; and Sidney was certainly very attentive and gay and nice-looking. It was in the drawing-room in Hyde Park Place, during an hour which went very quickly, that Gwynneth made these discoveries; she was still too simple to remark, much less read, the calculating droop of Sidney's eyelids or the veiled preoccupation of the hereditary stare. "I wonder if you'd care to have a look at Cambridge," at last said Sidney, in the purely speculative tone. "Like to? I'd love it!" cried Gwynneth at once. Sidney paused, without relaxing his stare. She was certainly very animated. Sidney was not sure that he cared for quite so much animation with so little cause. "I shouldn't wonder if you did rather like it," he proceeded, "in May-week--which never is in May, you know." "Oh? When is it?" "The week after next. There'll be heaps going on. Races every afternoon----" "And don't you steer your boat?" interrupted Gwynneth, a partisan on the spot. Sidney smiled. "I cox it, Gwynneth; and if we aren't head of the river we shall not be very far off. But it isn't only the races; there are all sorts of other things, a good match, garden-parties galore, and a dance every night." "You dance there!" "Yes," said Sidney; "do you?" "Rather!" "Get some in Leipzig?" "All that there was to get." "They dance well out there?" "I don't know." "But you do, of course?" Gwynneth saw the drift of this examination, and showed that she saw it, but Sidney liked her the better for her dry reply: "You'd better try me." "You'd better try _me_," he rejoined adroitly. "Very well," said Gwynneth. "Here?" "Come on," said Sidney, his eyes sparkling, his brown skin a warmer hue; and in an instant they were threading their way between the cumbrous chairs and tiny tables of the big room, ploughing through its heavy pile, he in patent leather boots, she in her walking shoes, and not so much as a piano-organ in the street to set the time. Yet, even under these conditions, a turn was enough for Sidney, though he did not want to stop, and was very quick in asking whether he would do.