“You are an extraordinary chap. You were always grumbling when you were up that you didn’t know what you ought to do, and now when it’s perfectly obvious you won’t make the slightest attempt to do it.”
“Used I to grumble?” asked Michael.
“Well, not exactly grumble. But you were always asking theoretical questions which had no answer,” said Alan severely.
“What if I told you I’d found an answer to a great many of them?”
“Ever since I’ve been engaged to Stella you’ve found it necessary to be very mysterious. What are you playing at, Michael?”
“It’s imaginable, don’t you think, that I might be making up my mind to do something which I considered more vital for me than a fellowship at All Souls?”
“But it seems so obvious after your easy first that you should clinch it.”
“I tell you it was a fluke.”
“My third wasn’t a fluke,” said Alan. “I worked really hard for it.”
“Thirds and firsts are equally unimportant in the long run,” Michael argued. “You have already fitted into your place with the most complete exactitude. There’s no dimension in your future that can possibly trouble you. Supposing I get this fellowship? It will either be too big for me, in which case I shall have to be perpetually puffing out my frills and furbelows to make a pretense of filling it, or it will be too small, and I shall have to pare down my very soul in order to squeeze into it most uncomfortably.”