Should he not even now advise the boy to stay? One word just then might effect much. Falk trusted him. He was the only human being in Polchester to whom the boy perhaps had come. Years afterwards he was to look back to that moment, see it crystallised in memory, see the books, piled row upon row, gleam down upon him, see the blue curtain and hear the crackling fire...a crisis perhaps to himself as well as to Falk. He went across to the boy and put his hands on his shoulders. "Yes," he said, "I think it's better for you to go." "And about God and Beauty?" Falk said, staring for a moment into Ronder's eyes, smiling shyly, and then turning away. "It's a long search, isn't it? But as long as there's something there, beyond life, and I know there is, the search is worth it." He looked rather wistfully at Ronder as though he expected him to confirm him again. But Ronder said nothing. Falk went to the door: "Well, I must go. I'll show them that I was right to go my own way. I want father to be proud of me. This will shock him for a moment, but soon he'll see. I think you'll like to know, sir," he said, suddenly turning and holding out his hand, "that this little talk has meant a lot to me. It's just helped me to make up my mind." When he had gone Ronder sat in his chair, motionless, for a while; he jumped up, went to the shelves, and found a book. Before he sat down again he said aloud, as though he were answering some accuser, "Well, I told him nothing, anyway." Falk had, from the moment he left Ronder's door, his mind made up, and now that it _was_ made up he wished to act as speedily as possible. And instantly there followed an appeal of the Town, so urgent and so poignant that he was taken by surprise. He had lived there most of his days and never seen it until now, but every step that he took soon haunted him. He made his plans decisively, irrevocably, but he found himself lingering at doors and at windows, peering over walls, hanging over the Pol bridge, waiting suddenly as though he expected some message was about to be given to him. The town was humming with life those days. The May weather was lovely, softly blue with cool airs and little white clouds like swollen pin- cushions drifting lazily from point to point. The gardens were dazzling with their flowers, the Cathedral Green shone like glass, and every door- knob and brass knocker in the Precincts glittered under the sun. The town was humming with the approaching Jubilee. It seemed itself to take an active part in the preparations, the old houses smiling to one another at the plans that they overheard, and the birds, of whom there were a vast number, flying from wall to wall, from garden to garden, from chimney to chimney, with the exciting news that they had gathered.