And as it was, he could not pretend that he had kept the faith, that he was inviolably holding his Schedule unspotted from the world. No, he himself had outraged and deflowered the Schedule. Klinker's Exercises and the _Post_ were deliberate impieties. And he could not say that they had the sanction of his reason. The exercises had only a partial sanction; the _Post_ no sanction at all. Both were but sops to wounded pride. Here, then, was a pretty situation: he, the triumphant rationalist, the toy of utterly irrational impulses--of an utterly irrational instinct. And this new impulse tugging at his inside, driving him to heed the irrational advice of his critics--what could it be but part and parcel of the same mysterious but apparently deep-seated instinct? And what was the real significance of this instinct, and what in the name of Jerusalem was the matter with him anyway? * * * * * He was twenty-four years old, without upbringing, and utterly alone in the world. He had raised himself, body and soul, out of printed books, and about all the education he ever had was half an hour's biting talk from Charles Weyland. Of course he did not recognize his denied youth when it rose and fell upon him, but he did recognize that his assailant was doughty. He locked arms with it and together they fell into undreamed depths. Buck Klinker, returning from some stag devilry at the hour of two A.M., and attracted to the Scriptorium by the light under the door, found the little Doctor pacing the floor in his stocking feet, with the gas blazing and the shade up as high as it would go. He halted in his marchings to stare at Buck with wild unrecognition, and his face looked so white and fierce that honest Buck, like the good friend he was, only said, "Well--good-night, Doc," and unobtrusively withdrew. XVI _Triumphal Return of Charles Gardiner West from the Old World; and of how the Other World had wagged in his Absence._ Many pictured post-cards and an occasional brief note reminded Miss Weyland during the summer that Charles Gardiner West was pursuing his studies in the Old World with peregrinative zest. By the trail of colored photographs she followed his triumphal march. Rome knew the president-elect in early June; Naples, Florence, Milan, Venice in the same period. He investigated, presumably, the public school systems of Geneva and Berlin; the higher education drew him through the château country of France; for three weeks the head-waiters of Paris (in the pedagogical district) were familiar with the clink of his coin; and August's first youth was gone before he was in London with the lake region a tramped road behind him. From the latter neighborhood (picture: Rydal Mount) he wrote Sharlee as follows: Sailing on the 21st, after the most glorious trip in history. Never so full of energy and enthusiasm. Running over with the most beautiful plans.