Alix had a sudden vision of Toppie in the rainy High Street. Yes, even dear Toppie would sink, she felt, into the fatal sameness, embody the type. She could see her, slender, in her wet grey tweed, speeding on a bicycle in just such a velour hat. They, too, were perhaps Toppies if one could have a careful look at them. “Do you intend to live in Oxford, Giles?” she inquired. “I’d like to.—Here is Magdalen and the tower. Let’s cross the bridge so that you can see the tower.—It’s where I want to live.” They crossed the bridge and he told her about the tower and the May morning ceremony. “It must be very charming, very gay,” said Alix. “And would you care to marry soon?” The question, she knew, was academic, merely. There could be no hope of marriage for Giles as long as Toppie thought only of Captain Owen. But they could both pretend. “I couldn’t marry soon.” Giles was still laughing, though evidently a little disconcerted by her lack of appreciation. “I’ve no money.” He led her off to Christ Church meadows. “None at all, Giles?” “Well, only enough to have a very dowdy wife. To buy her a better hat and a smarter _costume tailleur_ I’d need a great deal more.” “But Captain Owen was to marry.” Alix ventured it. It was all so remote. Giles felt it so. He elucidated the financial differences of the family. “We’ve all got a little. He went into the city, into stock-broking, and was making a very good thing of it. He could very well afford to marry.” “And do you not care for stock-broking?” “No; I care for philosophy. Unlucky for my wife, isn’t it, Alix?” “I do not know. Perhaps not if she had taste. One can do so much with very little money if one has taste. But would they know—the others—if she had to live in Oxford, that her hats and dresses were different?” “Oh—I expect women always know that—even the wives of philosophers!” laughed Giles. In spite of her æsthetic deficiencies, she felt that she kept up his spirits. For tea they went to a professor friend—a real professor this time—who had known Mrs. Bradley’s father. Everybody seemed to have known Mrs. Bradley’s father. He lived in the Banbury Road with two unmarried daughters, and was old but robust and bearded and jovial, and he kept a hand on Giles’s shoulder for a long time and promised Mrs. Bradley good things of him. Giles stood and smiled and promised nothing. She had an impression of his strength and self-knowledge.