"Yes, sir."
"There's a type of man we're proud of," said Le Baron. "Came here from Exeter, waited at Commons first two years; every one likes him. He has a tough proposition here this year, though—supposing we dig out."
In the room the laughter was rising, and all the little nervous noises of the clash of plate and cutlery. Stover would have liked to stay, to yield to the contagion, to watch with eager eyes the opposite types, all under the careless spell of the beginning year.
The city was black about them as they stepped forth, the giant elms flattened overhead against the blurred mists of the night, like curious water weeds seen from below.
They went in silence directly toward the campus. Once or twice Le Baron started to speak and then stopped. At length he said:
"Come this way."
They passed by Osborne Hall, and the Brick Row with the choked display of the Coöp below, and, crossing to the dark mass of the Old Library, sat down on the steps.
Before Stover stretched all the lighted panorama of the college and the multiplied strewn lights against the mysteries of stone and brick—lights that drew him to the quiet places of a hundred growing existencies—affected him like the lights of the crowded restaurant and the misty reflections of the glassy streets. It was the night, the mysterious night that suddenly had come into his boyish knowledge.
It was immense, unfathomable—this spectacle of a massed multitude. It was all confounded, stirring, ceaseless, feverish in its brilliant gaiety, fleeting, transitory, mocking. It was of the stage, theatric. It brought theatric emotions, too keenly sensitized, too sharply overwhelming. He wished to flee from it in despair of ever conquering, as he wished to conquer, this world of stirring ambitions and shadowy and fleeting years.