But by noon on Sunday she was much less happy, and was wishing that she had had the foresight to invent a luncheon engagement in Larborough and so remove herself out of the area of the explosion that was coming. She had always hated explosions, literal and metaphorical; people who blew into paper bags and then burst them had always been regarded by Lucy with a mixture of abhorrence and awe. And the paper bag that was going to be burst after lunch was a particularly nasty affair; an explosion whose reverberations would be endless and unpredictable. At the back of her mind was the faint hope that Henrietta might have changed her mind; that the silent witness of those tell-tale lists on the notice-board might have proved more eloquent than her own poor words. But no amount of encouragement could make this hope anything but embryonic. She remembered only too clearly that a shaking of Henrietta’s faith in Rouse would not mean a corresponding access of belief in Innes as a candidate. The best that could be hoped for was that she might write to the Head at Arlinghurst and say that there was no Leaving Student good enough for so exalted a post; and that would do nothing to save Innes from the grief that was coming to her. No, she really should have got herself out of Leys for Sunday lunch and come back when it was all over. Even in Larborough, it was to be supposed, there were people that one might conceivably be going to see. Beyond those over-rich villas of the outskirts with their smooth sanded avenues and their pseudo everything, somewhere between them and the soot of the city there must be a belt of people like herself. Doctors, there must be, for instance. She could have invented a doctor friend — except that doctors were listed in registers. If she had thought in time she could have invited herself to lunch with Dr Knight; after all, Knight owed her something. Or she could have taken sandwiches and just walked out into the landscape and not come home till bed-time.

Now she sat in the window-seat in the drawing-room, waiting for the Staff to assemble there before going down to the dining-room; watching the students come back from church and wondering if she had sufficient courage and resolution to seek out Miss Joliffe even yet and ask for sandwiches; or even just walk out of College with no word said — after all, one didn’t starve in the English country even on a Sunday. As Desterro said, there were always villages.

Desterro was the first to come back from church; leisured and fashionable as always. Lucy leant out and said: “Congratulations on your knowledge of the clavicle.” For she had looked at the board on the way to bed last night.

“Yes, I surprised myself,” said The Nut Tart. “My grandmother will be so pleased. A ‘first’ sounds so well, don’t you think? I boasted about it to my cousin, but he said that was most unseemly. In England one waits to be asked about one’s successes.”

“Yes,” agreed Lucy, sadly, “and the worst of it is so few people ask. The number of lights under bushels in Great Britain is tragic.”

“Not Great Britain,” amended Desterro. “He says — my cousin — that it is all right north of the river Tweed. That is the river between England and Scotland, you know. You can boast in Dunbar but not in Berwick, Rick says.”

“I should like to meet Rick,” Lucy said.

“He thinks you are quite adorable, by the way.”

“Me?”

“I have been telling him about you. We spent all the intervals talking about you.”

“Oh you went to the theatre, did you?”

“He went. I was taken.”

“Did you not enjoy it, then?” asked Lucy, mentally applauding the young man who made The Nut Tart do anything at all that she did not want to do.

“Oh, it was as they say, ‘not too bad.’ A little of the grand manner is nice for a change. Ballet would have been better. He is a dancer manqué, that one.”

“Edward Adrian?”

“Yes.” Her mind seemed to have strayed away. “The English wear all one kind of hat,” she said reflectively. “Up at the back and down in front.”

With which irrelevance she trailed away round the house, leaving Lucy wondering whether the remark was occasioned by last night’s audience or Dakers’ advent up the avenue. Dakers’ Sunday hat was certainly a mere superior copy of the hat she had worn at school, and under its short brim her pleasant, waggish, pony’s face looked more youthful than ever. She took off the hat with a gesture when she saw Miss Pym, and loudly expressed her delight in finding Lucy alive and well after the rigours of the night before. This was the first morning in all her college career, it seemed, when she had positively failed to eat a fifth slice of bread and marmalade.

“Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins,” she observed, “so I had need of shriving this morning. I went to the Baptist place because it is nearest.”

“And do you feel shriven?”

“I don’t know that I do, now you come to mention it. It was all very conversational.”

Lucy took it that a shamed soul demanded ritual.

“Very friendly, though, I understand.”

“Oh, frightfully. The clergyman began his sermon by leaning on one elbow and remarking: ‘Well, my friends, it’s a very fine day.’ And everyone shook hands with everyone coming out. And they had some fine warlike hymns,” she added, having thought over the Baptist good points. She looked thoughtful for a moment longer and then said: “There are some Portsmouth Brothers on the Larborough road —”

“Plymouth.”

“Plymouth what?”

“Plymouth Brethren, I suppose you mean.”

“Oh, yes; I know it had something to do with the Navy. And I’m Pompey by inclination. Well, I think I shall sample them next Sunday. You don’t suppose they’re private, or anything like that?”

Miss Pym thought not, and Dakers swung her hat in a wide gesture of burlesque farewell and went on round the house.

By ones and twos, and in little groups, the students returned from their compulsory hour out of College. Waving or calling a greeting or merely smiling, as their temperaments were. Even Rouse called a happy “Good morning, Miss Pym!” as she passed. Almost last came Beau and Innes; walking slowly, serene and relaxed. They came to rest beneath the window looking up at her.

“Heathen!” said Beau, smiling at her.

They were sorry they missed the party, they said, but there would be others.

“I shall be giving one myself when the Dem. is over,” Beau said. “You’ll come to that, won’t you?”

“I shall be delighted. How was the theatre?”

“It might have been worse. We sat behind Colin Barry.”

“Who is he?”

“The All–England hockey ‘half.’”

“And I suppose that helped Othello a lot.”

“It helped the intervals, I assure you.”

“Didn’t you want to see Othello?”

“Not us! We were dying to go to Irma Ireland’s new film —Flaming Barriers. It sounds very sultry but actually, I believe, it’s just a good clean forest fire. But my parents’ idea of a night out is the theatre and a box of chocolates for the intervals. We couldn’t disappoint the old dears.”

“Did they like it?”

“Oh, they loved it. They spent the whole of supper talking about it.”

“You’re a fine pair to call anyone ‘heathen,’” Lucy observed.

“Come to tea with the Seniors this afternoon,” Beau said.

Lucy said hastily that she was going out to tea.

Beau eyed her guilty face with something like amusement, but Innes said soberly: “We should have asked you before. You are not going away before the Dem., are you?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Then will you come to tea with the Seniors next Sunday?”

“Thank you. If I am here I should be delighted.”

“My lesson in manners,” said Beau.

They stood t............