The interim between the death of Peter\'s father and Peter\'s ascent into Oxford was filled with small events which impertinently buzzed about him. Even his father\'s funeral left no deep impression. It was formal and necessary. Peter was haunted, as the ceremony dragged on, with a reproachful sense that he was not, as he should, responding to its solemnity. Passion, of love or grief or adoration, came to Peter by inspiration. He could not punctually answer. He marvelled how easily at the graveside the tears of his friends and neighbours were able to flow. He himself had buried his father upon the night of his father\'s death, and had started life anew. The funeral was for him no more than the ghost of a dead event.

Next came the removal of Mrs. Paragon into the well-appointed house of Uncle Henry. Henry had arranged that henceforth his sister should live with him; that Peter should look to him as a guardian, and think of himself as his uncle\'s inheritor. All these new arrangements passed high over Peter\'s head. They were a background of rumour and confusion to days of exquisite sensibility and peace. Only one thing really mattered. Uncle Henry\'s house was in the fashionable road that ran parallel to that in which Peter was born,[Pg 65] so that Peter could reach Miranda by way of the garden, which met hers at the wall\'s end.

Adolescence carried him high and far, winging his fancy, giving to the world forms and colours he had never yet perceived. His passion, unaware of its physical texture, had almost disembodied him. Miranda focussed the rays of his soul, and drew his energy to a point. He was pure air and fire. Standing on the high balcony of his new room, he felt that, were he to leap down, he must float like gossamer. Or, as he lay in the grass beside Miranda, staring almost into the eye of the sun, he acknowledged a kinship with the passing birds, imagined that he heard the sap of the green world ebb and flow; or, pressing his cheeks to the cool earth, he would seem to feel it spinning enormously through space.

They talked hardly at all, and th............