It helped René a little to know for certain that the Professor had once been a boy, but Mrs. Smallman he remembered as a lady of a gentleness and kindness almost terrifying, so kind that she had a way of not seeming to hear you when you were stuttering out some preposterously foolish remark. Everything was so easy for her; she was so sure of the strength of her position as a good hostess and the wife of a popular and important man; and there were the children, who were allowed to look down from the nursery window at the garden party. You could not talk to Mrs. Smallman long without having your eyes drawn to them, and then, if you were a sensitive person like René, you felt that this house was full of an intimacy jealous of its beauty, so that it repelled strangers. Friendliness there was, but it ended abruptly; the wife's eyes lighting on the husband, the husband's on the wife, or the eyes of both meeting and turning to the children at the window could bring it to a cruel and sudden close. René could not explain to himself the uneasiness that came over him at the garden parties, or the dread of it that overwhelmed him as he pushed open the gate and rang the bell on that Sunday. There was a bright green parasol in the hall table, and by it were two bowler hats. From the drawing-room came a faint buzz of chatter, and he saw that it contained the Professor and his wife; Blease, the Jewish Professor of English; M'Elroy, the great man of the University, captain of the cricket eleven, President of the Union--it would take a page to enumerate his distinctions; a little man who looked like an unsuccessful attempt to repeat the Professor; and a young lady in a bright green costume. René observed at once that the other men were wearing black boots, and became dreadfully conscious of his own new brown pair. "I'm so glad you could come," said Mrs. Smallman, and she introduced him to Blease. "Seen you about," said the Jew. "Third-year man, aren't you?" "Just beginning my third year," said René miserably. Blease had made his remark sound friendly, and acute. Rather clever of a Professor to be able to place a man outside his own subject! "We stand for something, you know," continued Blease. "Culture! A handful of men upholding the standard. Good for us to be kept in touch with working life. Don't you think so, M'Elroy?" "Yes. That's where we score over Oxford and Cambridge, though they can never understand that." Their talk was above René. He remembered Cambridge as a place of enthralling beauty, but to compare this and that was rather too sweeping for him, and he found it baffling, and to regard himself as standing for anything was entirely foreign to his temper. The talk shot to and fro above him, and he found his eyes being engaged by the bright green. The young lady was sparkling, easy, gay, a little figure of energy and charm. "She is beautiful," said René to himself.