And it was in this spirit of resignation, held more fully than before, that she met him again at breakfast. She was in the breakfast-room first and seized the paper, determined to behave as cheerfully as if she had arrived, and not as if she was going away. She was going to make a successful effort to start her new life at once, her life with Oxford behind her. She was not going to be found by him, when he entered, silent and reminiscent of last evening.
When the Warden came in she put down the paper with the air of one who has seen something that suggests conversation.
"I suppose," she said, starting straight away without any preliminary but a smile at him and an inclination of her head in answer to his old-fashioned courteous bow as he entered—"I suppose when I come back to Oxford—say in ten years' time, if any one invites me—I shall find things changed. The New Oxford we talked of with Mr. Bingham will be in full swing. You will perhaps be Vice-Chancellor."
The Warden did not smile. "Ah, yes!" he remarked, and he looked abstractedly at the coffee-pot and at the chair that May was about to seat herself in. "Ah, yes!" he said again; then he added: "Have I kept you waiting?"
"Not a bit," said May.
"I ran in to see Lena," he explained.
May took her place opposite the coffee. He watched her, and then went and sat down at the opposite end of the table in his own seat. Then he got up and went to the side table.
Try as they would they were painfully conscious of each other's movements. Everything seemed strangely, cruelly important at that meal. May poured out the Warden's cup, and that in itself was momentous. He would come and take it, of course! She moved the cup a little. He waited on her from the side table and then looked at his coffee.