Alan got a third in Greats and Michael a first in History. Michael’s immediate emotion was of gladness that Alan had no reason now to feel the disappointment. Then he began to wonder how on earth he had achieved a first. Many letters of congratulation arrived; and one or two of the St. Mary’s dons suggested he should try for a fellowship at All Souls. The idea occupied his fancy a good deal, for it was attractive to have anything so remote come suddenly within the region of feasibleness. He would lose nothing by trying for it, and if he succeeded what a congenial existence offered itself. With private means he would be able to divide his time between Oxford and London. There would really be nothing to mar the perfect amenity of the life that seemed to stretch before him. Since he apparently had some talent (he certainly had not worked hard enough to obtain a first without some talent) he would prosecute the study of history. He would make himself famous in a select sort of way. He would become the authority of a minor tributary to the great stream of research. A set of very scholarly, very thorough works would testify to his reputation. There were plenty of archaic problems still to be solved. He cast a proprietary glance over the centuries, and he had almost decided to devote himself to the service of Otto I and Sylvester II, when in a moment the thought of Lily, sweeping as visibly before his mind as the ghost in an Elizabethan play, made every kind of research into the past seem a waste of resolution. He tore up the congratulatory letters and decided to let the future wait a while. This pursuit of Lily was a mad business, no doubt, but to come to grips with the present called for a certain amount of madness. Alan remonstrated with him, when he heard that he had no intention of trying for All Souls. “You are an extraordinary chap. You were always grumbling when you were up that you didn’t know what you ought to do, and now when it’s perfectly obvious you won’t make the slightest attempt to do it.” “Used I to grumble?” asked Michael. “Well, not exactly grumble. But you were always asking theoretical questions which had no answer,” said Alan severely. “What if I told you I’d found an answer to a great many of them?” “Ever since I’ve been engaged to Stella you’ve found it necessary to be very mysterious. What are you playing at, Michael?” “It’s imaginable, don’t you think, that I might be making up my mind to do something which I considered more vital for me than a fellowship at All Souls?” “But it seems so obvious after your easy first that you should clinch it.” “I tell you it was a fluke.” “My third wasn’t a fluke,” said Alan. “I worked really hard for it.”