"Oh! George! What a shame it was!" As usual, not a trace of reproach from her: an absolute conviction that he was entirely blameless. "What shall you do? You'll have to sit again."
"Sit again? Me?" he exclaimed haughtily. "I never shall! I've done with exams." He meant it.
"But—shall you give up architecture, then?"
"Certainly not! My dear girl, what are you thinking of? Of course I shan't give up architecture. But you needn't pass any exams, to be an architect. Anybody can call himself an architect, and be an architect, without passing exams. Exams. are optional. That's what makes old Enwright so cross with our beautiful profession."
He laughed again harshly. All the time, beneath his quite genuine defiance, he was thinking what an idiot he had been to cheek the examiner, and how staggeringly simple it was to ruin years of industry by one impulsive moment's folly, and how iniquitous was a world in which such injustice could be.
Marguerite was puzzled. In her ignorance she had imagined that professions were inseparably connected with examinations. However, she had to find faith to accept his dictum, and she found it.
"Now about this afternoon," he said. "I vote we take a steamboat down the river. I've made up my mind I must have a look at Greenwich again from the water. And we both need a blow."
"But won't it take a long time?" she mildly objected.
He turned on her violently, and spoke as he had never spoken:
"What if it does?"