May waited within the gates of the Lodgings for some moments. She did not open the door and enter the house. She walked up and down on the gravelled court. She wanted to be alone, to speak to no one just now; her heart was full of weariness and loneliness. When she felt certain that Boreham was safely away, she went to the gates and out into the narrow street again, where she could hear subdued sounds of the evening traffic of the city. The dusky streets had grown less dim; the shining overhead was more luminous as the moon rose. The old buildings, as she passed them on her solitary walk, looked mysterious and aloof, as if they had been placed there magically for some secret purpose and might vanish before the dawn. This was the ancient Oxford, the Oxford of the past, the Oxford that was about to pass away, leaving priceless memories of learning and romance behind it, something that could never be again quite what it had been. Before dawn would it vanish and something else, still called Oxford, would be standing there in its place? May was tempted to let her imagination wander thus, and to see in this mysterious Oxford the symbol of the personality of a single man, a personality that haunted her when she was alone, a personality which, when it stood before her in flesh and blood, seemed to fill space and obliterate other objects. She had, in the chapel, re-affirmed over and over again her resolution to overcome this obsession, and now, as she walked that evening, her heart cried out for indulgence just for one brief moment, for permission to think of this personality, and to read details of it in every moonlit façade of old Oxford, in every turn of the time-worn lanes and passages. The temptation had come upon her, because it was so dreary to be loved by Boreham. His talk seemed to mark her spiritual loneliness with such poignant insistence; it made it so desperately plain to her that those sharp cravings of her heart could not be satisfied except by one man. It had made her see, for the first time, that the sacred dead, to whom she had raised a shrine, was a memory and not a present reality to her; and this thought only added to her confusion and her grief. What was there to hold on to in life? "O, put thy trust in God!" came the answer. "Help me to make the mischance of my life a motive for greater moral effort. Help me to be a willing sacrifice and not an unwilling victim." And as she uttered these words she moved with more rapid steps. Shadows were visible on the roadway; roofs glimmered and the edges of the deep window recesses were tinged with a dark silver. She passed under the walls of All Souls and emerged again into the High. A figure she recognised confronted her. She tried to pass it without appearing to be aware of it, and she hurried on with bent head. But it turned, and Bingham's voice spoke to her. "Mrs. Dashwood," he called softly.