"Are you going back to Garside?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because I am going with you. Moncrief won't listen to you. He will listen to me."
"No, no!" said Paul firmly. "It is very kind of you, but I would rather not. If Stanley Moncrief and I are ever to be friends again, he will have to find out for himself that I'm not the cur he thinks me. I've tried to explain, but he would not hear. I shall never try again, unless he comes round and asks me."
"I think you are right," said Wyndham, after a pause. "None the less, I'm sorry—deeply sorry—that you should have lost your friend through me."
"Oh, things will work round presently," said Paul lightly. "I suppose, after that affair at the sand-pit, you were quite the hero of your school?"
"I don't know about hero. They made a lot of fuss over me, because, as you know well enough, there's no love lost between us and Garside. But if anybody deserves to be the hero of a school, it is you."
"Nonsense!"
"It is easy enough to flow with the tide, but awfully hard to struggle against it. That's what you're doing just now, Percival."
He walked with Percival for some distance on the road to Garside, and when they separated they shook hands, unaware of the fact that they had been seen by one of the Third Form. After Wyndham's explanation, how was it possible for Paul to refuse the hand held out to him?