‘Oh, it might have been worse.’
Girls really should be trained to be less obviously female students. It only needed a little discipline.
There was Mabel to be looked after. She was grateful, passive: she drank much coffee but refused food. She broke the heavy silence once to say with a quiet smile: ‘Of course I see now I shan’t pass—It seems a pity, after all that work—My memory is practically gone——’
Back to the vault now for another three hours.
Suddenly round the corner came a slender, dark, sallow boy. He walked with an idle grace, leaning slightly forward. His faint likeness to Roddy made the heart leap; and his expression was dejected and obstinate, just as Roddy’s would be if he were forced to spend an afternoon scribbling infernal rubbish.
Judith paused at the entrance of the vault and looked back. His eyes were eagerly fixed on her: and she smiled at him.
He was delighted. His funny boy face lost its heaviness and broke up with intimate twinklings; and flashed a shyly daring inquiry at her before he vanished round the corner.
It was like a message from Roddy, sent forward to meet her from the new life, to say: ‘Remember I am coming.’
That day passed smoothly; and the next. The days sinking to evenings drenched with the smell of honeysuckle and draining to phantasmal and translucent twilights of blossom and tree-tops and starry skies, flowed imperceptibly to their end.
Suddenly there were no answers to be written from nine till twelve, from two till five—no lectures, no coachings, no notes, no fixed working hours. Instead, a great idleness under whose burden you felt lost and oppressed. The academic years were gone for ever.