As Martin lingered in the passage it began to occur to him that he was a silly fool, that boys of eighteen shouldn't fall in love with married women of twenty-five or even more, and that, even if they did, there was no point in being tongue-tied and nervous. But what was the good of self-reproach? He wasn't to blame if she was perfect. And she was perfect. To-morrow he would have to go up to Oxford. He would scarcely see her again. There was nothing left of her now, nothing except the boots which stood outside her door, their strong brown leather stained with the peat of Bear Down and Devil's Tor. At last he moved quickly to his room and undressed. As he lay half naked on his bed he recalled the glories of the moor and the way they had talked. God, how she had talked! They had defied that leaping wind from whose onslaught his cheeks still burned. It had been a day of days. Then he heard Godfrey Cartmell come up and again the door closed. The sound of it hurt him. How could she waste herself on that correct, that unutterably correct, young Liberal? Why was life so full of silliness, of waste and bungling? Why ... but one thing was certain--he would never, never forget her. BOOK TWO UNIVERSITY I "These 'ere deemagogues ... it's them as battens on the worker." Martin woke with a start. He looked round his slovenly 'bedder' vaguely. His scout, Mr Algernon Galer, was slowly pouring out cold water into a bath and continuing last night's conversation. It was typical of Galer that he never dropped a conversation until he considered it completed, until, that is to say, by his fiendish ability to bore he had reduced the other side to silence. At present Martin had no other acquaintance in King's, for he had only come up on the previous evening. On reaching his rooms he found that the cupboard had been filled with a quantity of jam and pickles and other kinds of food, all carefully opened, so that they could not be returned if disliked by the purchaser. Galer pointed them out with pride as though they testified his devotion to Martin's welfare. There was nothing Galer did not know about the ways of looking after a fresher.