This defection disgusted Maskew, who, in his hard, capable way, believed in moderation in all things—even in vice. He considered W.G.’s conduct “a bit thick”; principally because he was deprived of his company in the dissecting room; but to Edwin the big man’s debauch seemed in some ways heroic and in keeping with his titanic physical nature: a spectacle rather for awe than for reproof. It was even impressive to see W.G. returning like a giant refreshed with vice, throwing his huge energies into the pursuits that he had abandoned as readily as he had lately squandered them in an atmosphere of patchouli. In this line Edwin would have found it constitutionally impossible to compete with W.G., but, for all that, he could not deny that he felt better, more confident, and more complete for the pantomime experience. It even flattered him to find himself regarded as something of a blood by the humbler members of his year who had witnessed his adventure on the Queen’s Theatre stage, though he could not conceal from himself the fact that Martin, more absorbed than ever in blameless but exacting relations with the eligible young ladies of Alvaston, was a little supercilious as to his attainments. With the approach of the summer and the first examination he found little time for anything but work. The preparation for the exam. was so much of a scramble that he had no time to realise the imaginative significance of the subjects in which he was engaged. He did not guess that the little fat professor of Physics who lectured so drily on the elements of his science was actually employing his leisure in the tremendous adventure of weighing the terrestrial globe, or that certain slender aerials stretched like the web of a spider from a mast at the top of the university buildings were actually receiving the first lispings of wireless telegraphy, an achievement to which that bearded dreamer, the Principal, had devoted twenty years of his life.