I
THEY arrived at the college gates on a late September afternoon, and stood to look across the green at the "Norman pile" which was "'Varsity." Its walls, romantically ivied, rested, as if without foundations, on the perfect level of the lawn; it was flanked, on either wing, by large and solemn oaks; its towers rode in an autumn sunlight that mellowed them with a warm tone—like an old landscape painter's transparent "glaze"—as if rich with culture and ripe with ease; and against the background of the raw civilization around it, that artful imitation of an English University had the effect on Don of the first sight of Rome on a pilgrim. Surprised, in a sort of eager reverence, his lips parted, flushed under the eyes, he looked at it as if he were a young novice come to the studious quiet of a cloister. There was suddenly something beautiful in his face, for although his cheekbones were high and his lips thin, he had that transparent paleness—as clear as fine porcelain—which seems to light up from within at the first glow of enthusiasm; and his eyes, under a boyish wide forehead, were the speaking eyes of a poet.
His cousin—browner, sturdier, his feet firmer on the ground—looked the buildings over with a shadow of distaste. For him, there was something alien and
62
