He had given God His opportunity—he had prayed to God and besought Him; he had tried very hard at the beginning of this term to go right and to be agreeable to people and to keep the other Mr. Perrin in the distance, but everything had been very hard, and that was God's fault for making it so hard. He thought that he would surprise God by killing Traill. God would not be expecting that. Still more would he surprise the place—Moffatt's—that place that had treated him so cruelly all these years. It would be a grand, big thing to kill his enemy! On that Wednesday, half an hour before the midday dinner, he walked slowly, with his hands behind his bent back, through the long dining-hall. The long, black tables were laid for dinner, and beside every round, shining plate there lay two knives. These knives made a long, glittering line right down the table, and the sun caught their gleaming steel and flashed from knife to knife. The sight of them fascinated Mr. Perrin—it was with a knife that he would kill Traill—he would cut Traill's throat. He picked them up, one after the other, and felt their edges—they were all wonderfully sharp. There were a great many of them—you could cut a great many throats with all those knives, but he did not want to cut anyone else's throat except Traill's—Traill was his enemy. At dinner that day he was pleasant and cheerful. He joked with the boys on either side of him and asked where they were going for the holidays. “Ah! Cromer—um—yes, very pleasant. Our little friend will amuse himself hugely at Cromer, no doubt. Sure to over-eat on Christmas Day. Um, yes—and you, Larkin, where do you go?... Ah! Whitby—long way. Yes, able to read your holiday task in the train.” He sent the servant out to sharpen the carving-knife, and when it was brought back he attacked the mutton in the most furious way, scattering the gravy over the cloth. After dinner he stood above the playing-fields, watching the clouds sail across the sky. It was a very gray-colored day, but there was the light of the sun behind it, so that everything shone without color but with a transparency as though one should be able to see other lights and colors behind it. Perrin thought that he had never seen the clouds assume such curious shapes—perhaps they were not clouds at all, but rather creatures of the sky that only his eye could see, just as it was only his eye that could see the other Mr. Perrin. There were birds with long, bending necks, and fat, round-faced animals with only one eye, and stiff, angular creatures with wings and legs like sticks, and then again there were splendid galleons with sails unfurled, and cathedral towers and trees and mountain ranges—they were all very strange and beautiful, and perhaps this was the last time that he would see them.