There came a tap at the door, and one of his shyest pupils entered--a solitary youth, poor and unfriended, who was doing all he could to get a degree good enough to launch him in the world. He came to ask some advice about work. Howard entered into his case as well as he could, told him it was important that he should get certain points clear, gave him an informal lecture, distinctly and emphatically, and made a few friendly remarks. The man beamed with unexpressed gratitude. "What solemn nonsense I have been talking!" thought Howard to himself as the young man slipped away. "Of course he must learn all this--but what for? To get a mastership, and to retail it all over again! It's a vicious circle, this education which is in touch with nothing but the high culture of a nation which lived in ideas; while with us culture is just a plastering of rough walls--no part of the structure! Why cannot we put education in touch with life, try to show what human beings are driving at, what arrangements they are making that they may live? It is all arrangements with us--the frame for the picture, the sheath for the sword--and we leave the picture and the sword to look after themselves. What a wretched dilettante business it all is, keeping these boys practising postures in the anteroom of life! Cannot we get at the real thing, teach people to do things, fill their minds with ideas, break down the silly tradition of needless wealth and absurd success? And I must keep up all this farce, simply because I am fit for nothing else--I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed. Oh, hold your tongue, you ass!" said Howard, apostrophising his rebellious mind. "Don't you see where you are going? You can't do anything--it is all too big and strong for you. You must just let it alone." II RESTLESSNESS A few days later the term drew to an end, and both dons and undergraduates, whose tempers had been wearing a little thin, got suddenly more genial, like guests when a visit draws to a close, and disposed to think rather better of each other. Howard had made no plans; he did not wish to stay on at Cambridge, but he did not want to go away: he had no relations to whose houses he naturally drifted; he did not like the thought of a visit; as a rule he went off with an undergraduate or two to some lonely inn, where they fished or walked and did a little work. But just now he had a vague feeling that he wanted to be alone; that he had something to face, some reckoning to cast up, and yet he did not know what it was.