While she busied herself preparing a small meal he found himself watching her continually as she moved about the room, and wondering, in the calmest and most aloof manner, whether he was really glad that he had won. Eventually he decided that he was. She was his wife and he loved her. If they were careful to avoid misunderstandings no doubt they would get along tolerably well in the future. The future! The vision came to him again of the term that was in front of him; a vision that was somehow frightening. Yet, above all else, he was tired--dead tired. The last thing she said to him that night was a soft, half-whimpered: "Kenneth, I believe you do want Clare." He said sleepily, and without any fervour: "My dear, I assure you I don't." And he fell asleep wondering very vaguely what it would be like to want Clare, and whether it would ever be possible for him to do so. CHAPTER TWO I Term began on the Wednesday in the third week in January. Once again, the first few days were something of an ordeal. Constant anticipations had filled Speed's mind with apprehensions; he was full of carefully excogitated glooms. Would the hostility of the Masters be more venomous? Would the prefects of his own house attempt to undermine his discipline? Would the rank and file try to "rag" him when he took preparation in the Big Hall? Somehow, all his dreams of Millstead and of Lavery's had turned now to fears; he had slipped into the position when it would satisfy him merely to avoid danger and crush hostility. No dreams now about Lavery's being the finest House in Millstead, and he the glorious and resplendent captain of it; no vision now of scouring away the litter of mild corruptions and abuses that hedged in Lavery's on all sides; no hopes of a new world, made clean and wholesome by his own influence upon it. All his desire was that he should escape the pitfalls that were surrounding him, that he should, somehow, live through the future without disaster to himself. Enthusiasm was all gone. Those old days when he had plunged zestfully into all manner of new things, up to his neck in happiness as well as in mistakes--those days were over. His one aim now was not to make mistakes, and though he did not know it, he cared for little else in the world. That first night of term he played the beginning-of-term hymn in the chapel. "Lord, behold us with Thy blessing, Once again assembled here ..." The words fell on his mind with a sense of heavy, unsurmountable gloom. He looked into the mirror above his head and saw the choir-stalls and the front rows of the pews; the curious gathering of Millsteadians in their not-yet-discarded vacation finery; Millsteadians unwontedly sober; some, perhaps, a little heart-sick. He saw Ervine's back, as he read the lesson from the lectern, and as he afterwards stood to pronounce the Benediction. "The grace of God, which passeth--um--understanding, and the--um--fellowship of the--um--the Holy Spirit ..."