She laughed; the hard lines softened about her mouth. Talking about Oxford made her think of her girlhood, when to be the daughter of a don was to be something akin to an aristocrat. Those days were sufficiently far removed for her to have forgotten their dread of spinsterhood, and for her to remember only their glamour. “You must never use tongs to your sugar,” she said; “only freshers do that--you must help yourself with your fingers. And, let me see! You must never wear your cap and gown unless it's positively necessary. You mustn't speak to a second or third-year man unless he speaks to you first.--Oh, there are so many _mustn'ts_ at Oxford; it would take all evening.” And then, “Did your mother ever tell you the story of how we first met Billy? It had been raining, and we were waiting to go on the river. I put my head out of the window to see if the storm was over, and there was your father looking up at me. I used to tease your mother by pretending that I was in love with him. I shouldn't wonder--I expect she still believes I wanted him. You see, Nan and I were inseparable as girls. We used to be horribly scared of not marrying--we didn't know as much about marriage then. We used to think that girls were born on a raft and that only a man could come to their rescue. Funny idea, wasn't it?” “And if the man didn't come?” “Why, if the man didn't come, we believed girls missed everything--believed they got blown out to sea, out of sight of land and starved with thirst. That was what made your mother so jealous, when I pretended to be in love with Billy. She was afraid she'd lose her one and only chance of getting safe ashore to the land of matrimony.” That was Jehane's public version of how love had miscarried between herself and Barrington. So she ran on, remembering and remembering, as they walked the garden path from the mulberry to the pear trees, forth and back, back and forth, while the sunset reddened the creepers on the walls and the loft-window, from which Ocky had watched in vain for her coming, looked down on them emptily. When it was time for her to be getting on her way, Peter volunteered to accompany her to the station. They chose the Lowbury Station instead of the Topbury, because it would take longer and they could continue their conversation about Oxford, her Promised Land of the past. “You must have had good times as a girl.” Good times! Hadn't she? She painted for him the joys of Eights' Week, the excitement of the Toggers, the tremendous elations of a young and vivid 'Varsity world. She painted them for him as romantic realities which she had lived to the full and lost. And the odd thing was that she believed that she had been happy then. All her life it had been _then_ that she had been happy. Her Eldorados had always been behind her--never in the To-days or the To-morrows. When she pitied herself, her otherwise barren nature blossomed into a tragic luxuriance that was almost noble, and entirely picturesque.