“I never feel that a comfort,” said Alix. “I think it most sad of all; that happiness should end.”
To this Giles found no answer.
“And have you taken your degree, Giles?” Alix inquired, with the air of leaving an untimely subject. “Are you now a distinguished philosopher?”
“Well, I’ve taken my First all right,” said Giles. “I’ve done pretty well. Next term will see me settled in Oxford. But it will need a great many years, I am afraid, to make me distinguished.”
“And where will you live?” Alix inquired. “Still in the same rooms, high up, looking at those rather sad grey stones?”
“Oh, I shall be a Fellow of my College and have rather beautiful rooms; quite a vast sitting-room looking on a beautiful garden. I’ll be rather a swell. You’ll be surprised when you see.”
“Oh, I am glad of that,” said Alix, smiling and passing by his allusion to her return. “And there, in the beautiful rooms, you’ll teach philosophy for the rest of your life?”
“Well, I expect I shall. And write it, you know; and play cricket, and sing in the Bach choir. Sometimes I’ll go up to London and see pictures and a play; in the Summers I’ll walk round the Cornish coast or climb Welsh mountains. It’s just the life that suits me.”
“Yes. It will suit you admirably,” said Alix.
André, white against the blue, drove in front of them and, turning his head, smiling, he now observed: “Alix has been reading philosophy of late. She must tell you. She has been reading Bergson.”