But now that his time had come, his thoughts were very different from what he had imagined. He felt the sorrow that is inevitable to anyone who is putting a stage of his life clean out of sight behind him; but for all that he had come to the conclusion that he was not really sad at leaving. Fernhurst was for him too full of ghosts; so many dreams were buried there. His feelings were mixed. He felt himself that he had failed, but he knew that he was hailed a success. He half wished that in the light of experience he could go through his four years again; but if he did, he saw that in outward show, at any rate, he could never eclipse the glory that was his for the moment. He remembered that sermon over three years back in which the Chief had asked each boy to imagine himself passing his last hours at school. "_How will it feel,_" the Chief had said, "_if you have to look back and think only of shattered hopes and bright unfulfilled promises?... To the pathos of human sorrow there is no need to add the pathos of failure._" What was he to think?--he whose career had so curiously mingled failure and success. The service slowly drew to its end. The final hymn was shouted by small boys, happy at the thought of seven weeks' holiday. The organ boomed out _God Save the King_; there was a moment's silence. Then the school poured out into the cloisters. Gordon hardly realised his last service was over. He had been so long a spectator of these partings that he could not grasp the fact that he was himself a participator in them. He felt very tired, and was glad when bed-time came. He experienced the same sensations that he had known as a new boy--a physical and mental weariness that longed for the ending of the day. For a few hours silence hung round the ghostly Abbey; then, tremendous in the east, Gordon's last whole day at Fernhurst dawned. As far as the Sixth were concerned, work was over. The rest of the school had to go in for two hours for the rep. exam. The drowsy atmosphere of a hot summer morning overhung everything. The studies were very quiet. Gordon took a deck-chair on to the Sixth Form green and settled down to read _Endymion_.