"Does she know herself?"
"No! That's the wonderful thing about a woman's mind, it's so disconnected. She's none of a man's faculty of taking a resolve, seeing it, acting on it.... That's why I said she might not accept you at once."
"You know her mind better than she does?"
As my interest rose, the Seraph became studiedly vague.
"I know nothing," he answered. "I merely suggest the possibility that a woman may form a subconscious resolution and not recognise it as part of her mental stock-in-trade for weeks, months, years.... If you wait for her to recognise it, you may find you come too late; if you come before she recognises it, you may find you've come too early."
I helped him into his coat as the three girls descended the stairs.
"Not a very cheerful prospect for X.," I suggested.
"X. had better help her to recognise her sub-conscious ideas," he answered.
I felt a boy of twenty as we drove down St. Aldates, hurried across Tom Quad, shed our wraps and struggled into the hall. The place was half full already, and the orchestra, with every instrument duplicated and Lorino thundering away at a double grand, had started an opening extra. Youthful stewards, their shirt-fronts crossed with blue and white ribbons of office, hurried to and fro in excessive, callow zeal; bright among the black coats shone the full regimentals of the Bullingdon; while stray followers of Pytchley, Bicester and V.W.H. contributed their colour to the rainbow blaze.
My charges dutifully spilt a drop from their cups in my honour, but at the end of an hour they were free to follow their own various inclinations. There was no sign of Joyce in the ball-room, but I found her at length by the stair-head, gratefully drinking in the fresh air, flushed—or so I fancied—and occasionally passing a hand across eyes that looked tired and strained. I gave her some champagne and led her to her brother's room. Two armchairs that I had purchased in the luxury-loving twenties seemed somehow to have withstood seven undergraduate generations.