"I suppose this is absolutely the end," sighed Sinclair. "Shall I see you at Lord's, Jim?"
As the party began to break up, a chill of collective wistfulness descended upon it, too strong for even O'Rane to dispel.
"Yes, if you don't want me to watch the play. But I'll look intelligent."
It was still so early when the straggling escort convoyed Oakleigh and Loring into the safety of their hotel that an hour was agreeably spent by each in accompanying every one else home. Jack and Eric reached the Broad, only to turn back and take Deganway to Grove Street, and from Grove Street they all proceeded by Boar Lane to St. Aldates. Here O'Rane protested that he could not go to bed until he had disposed of Sinclair in comfort. At a quarter to twelve the whole party, intact and a little bored, found itself on Magdalen Bridge; Jack and Eric broke away at a run up Long Wall, and the others, led by O'Rane, traversed the High for the fourth time that night.
The familiar rooms at the corner of the Turl were bare and disordered with the signs of coming departure. The undulating floor of the sitting-room was littered with paper and straw, with cases of books and half-filled crates of pictures; on a dusting-sheet in one corner was gathered a miscellany of broken pipes and perished pouches, tattered note-books and sprung rackets, torn photographs, old shoes and a policeman's helmet. Overflowing trunks and yawning Gladstone bags projected from the bedrooms on to the narrow, gas-lit landing.
"Nice, comfortable quarters," observed Jack, as he looked for somewhere to sit. "It was quite a good evening, you know. The part I liked best was when it was all over. Oxford looks quite decent at night."
Eric had been trained to economy of enthusiasm in talking to Jack, who would not have understood him if he had said that the Meadows on a May morning or the Bodleian from All Souls, or the Trinity limes in leaf or a pack of low, grey clouds racing across the sky behind Magdalen Tower made him drunk with the consciousness of physical beauty. And he wondered what he could ever have said to betray to O'Rane his secret yearning for self-expression.
"Our last night in Oxford," he murmured.
"Oh, I think I shall come up occasionally and dine with the lads."
Eric said nothing; but the sense of incongruity with his surroundings still oppressed him, and he privately resolved that he would not revisit Oxford until he had done something to put himself at least on the level of his friends, perhaps above them. That night he lulled himself to sleep with a vision in which he burst on the world as a new Byron and took London by storm in a night. Comely heads turned and whispered his name, as he strode down Bond Street; the windows were full of his photograph; when he entered a room there was a hush of reverence for the new novelist, the rising playwright, the last wit and latest fashion. All his day-dreams led him to the stage. There, after twisting the house to laughter and tears, he would nonchalantly allow himself to be called before the curtain; after three gossamer epigrams, he would retire with a perfunctory bow. And there would follow supper on the stage for George Oakleigh, who was only a subordinate minister, and Loring, who was only governor of a colony, and Jack, who was only a successful barrister, and Knightrider, who was only a subaltern in the Guards, and Summertown, who was only a third secretary on leave from a distant legation, and Pentyre, who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had done nothing.... The vision was so stimulating that he resolved to conjure it up again whenever he felt depressed.