Donning cap and gown (for the hour grew late), the two friends descended into the quadrangle, and out into the noisy swirl of Broad Street. In a moment Gaveston found his imagination kindled by his novel surroundings, and, with all the enchanting ardour of adolescence, began to explain to David what Oxford really meant to the world, what ideals its architecture symbolized, and in what respects its traditions needed revision; gracefully, too, he sketched his own tremendous projects, and the methods he planned to achieve them, nor was he slow to advise on the right way of dealing with fourth-year men, dons, scouts, clergymen, proctors, shopkeepers and freshmen. David listened with astonished admiration on every contour of his superb profile. “What a wonderful chap you are, Gavvy!” he said affectionately. “Oh, nothing to what I shall be!” came the laughing answer. Already Gav could feel the keen Oxford air whetting that wit of his which had been the fear and admiration of Eton. “Oh, how I wish I were clever--really clever, I mean, like you, Gav!” and David sighed as he marvelled yet again at his friend’s uncanny perspicacity. “But you are, David, without knowing it.” “What nonsense! What’s the good of being just a crack cricketer or a----” Gaveston was quick as a flash. “Why, then you can catch people out!” he riposted, with a peal of laughter which, with David’s answering carillon, woke age-long echoes from the mouldering walls of Queen’s Lane. How magnificent it was just to be alive and young and in Oxford! “‘Midnight and Youth and Love and Italy, Love in the Land where Love most lovely seems!’” he quoted felicitously, and suddenly they emerged on to the glorious vista of the High Street, bent like a bow and flowing majestically between the steep cliff-like colleges. His voice hushed before this imminence of ineluctable beauty, and he went on. “Oh, David! Don’t you understand? This is the most miraculous moment of all! Here one stands in the very heart of one’s Mater Almissima, with all these crowds about one, and not one of them knows one’s name. And yet to-morrow--why, one feels like a sky before a sudden dawn!” “This is Carfax,” David interrupted. Their progress was checked by the sauntering couples and the circumambient motor-’buses, and all around glittered the windows of the tobacconists in all the glamour of their gaudy seductiveness. “One must buy a pipe,” cried Gaveston impulsively. “A pipe is a Man’s smoke!”