This fortnight, when she was so prodigal with her beauty and when her graciousness was a rich balm to the ordeal she had lately exacted, was not so poignant as Michael had expected. Indeed, it was scarcely poignant at all so far as human farewells went, though there was about it such an underlying sadness as deepens the mellow peace of a fine autumn day. It seemed to Michael that in after years he would always think of Oxford dowered so with Summer, and brooding among her trees. Matthew Arnold had said she did not need June for beauty’s heightening. That was true. Her beauty was not heightened now, but it was displayed with all the grave consciousness of an unassertive renown. Michael dreaded more the loss of this infoliated calm than of any of the people who were enjoying its amenity. There were indeed groups upon the lawns that next year would not form themselves, that forever indeed would be irremediably dispersed; but the thought of himself and other members scattered did not move him with as much regret as the knowledge that next year himself would have lost the assurance that he was an organic part of this tutelary landscape. The society of his contemporaries was already broken up: the end of the third year had effected that. This farewell to Oxford herself was harder, and Michael wished that from the very first moment of his arrival he had concentrated upon the object of a Fellowship. Such a life would have suited him well. He would not have withered like so many dons: he would each year have renewed his youth in the stream of freshmen. He would have been sympathetic, receptive, and worldly enough not to be despised by each generation in its course. Now, since he had not aimed at such a career, he must go. The weather opulently fine mocked his exit.