"Nothing but human vanity--the vanity of the dead and the vanity of the living." "Thanks," Sylvia said. "I thought that was probably the explanation." Mabel, who had long ago admitted that Philip was just as funny as Sylvia had described him, often used to ask her what they found to talk about. "He can't be interested in Earl's Court, and you're such a kid. I can't understand it." "Well, we talked about religion to-day," Sylvia told her. "Oh, that's it, is it?" Mabel said, very knowingly. "He's one of those fellows who ought to have been a clergyman, is he? I knew he reminded me of some one. He's the walking image of the clergyman where we used to live in Clapham. But you be careful, Sylvia. It's an old trick, that." "You're quite wrong. He hates clergymen." "Oh," Mabel exclaimed, taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovering herself. "Oh, well, people always pretend to hate what they can't get. And I dare say he wanted to be a clergyman. But don't let him try to convert you. It's an old trick to get something for nothing. And I know, my dear." July passed away into August, and Sylvia, buried for so many hours in the airless Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, was flagging visibly. Philip used to spend nearly every afternoon and evening in the inner room where she worked--so many, indeed, that Mr. Woolfe protested and told her he would really have to put her back into the outer hall, because good customers were being annoyed by her admirer's glaring at them through his glasses. Philip was very much worried by Sylvia's wan looks, and urged her more insistently to leave her job, and let him provide for her. But having vowed to herself that never again would she put herself under an obligation to anybody, she would not hear of leaving the Exhibition. One Sunday in the middle of August Philip took Sylvia to Oxford, of which he had often talked to her. She enjoyed the day very much and delighted him by the interest she took in all the colleges they visited; but he was very much worried, so he said, by the approach of age. "You aren't so very old," Sylvia reassured him. "Old, but not very old." "Fifteen years older than you," he sighed. "Still, you're not old enough to be my father," she added, encouragingly. In the afternoon they went to St. Mary's Walks and sat upon a bench by the Cherwell. Close at hand a Sabbath bell chimed a golden monotone; Philip took Sylvia's hand and looked right into her face, as he always did when he was not wearing his glasses: "Little delightful thing, if you won't let me take you away from that inferno of Earl's Court, will you marry me? Not at once, because it wouldn't be fair to you and it wouldn't be fair to myself. I'm going to make a suggestion that will make you laugh, but it is quite a serious suggestion. I want you to go to school." Sylvia drew back and stared at him over her shoulder. "To school?" she echoed. "But I'm sixteen."