He hurried from the school to his lodging.  He wanted very urgently to be alone.  He went upstairs to his little room and sat before the upturned box on which his Butler’s Analogy was spread open.  He did not go to the formality of lighting the candle.  He leant back and gazed blissfully at the solitary planet that hung over the vicarage garden.

He took out of his pocket a crumpled sheet of paper, smoothed and carefully refolded, covered with a writing not unlike that of Frobisher ii., and after some maidenly hesitation pressed this treasure to his lips.  The Schema and the time-table hung in the darkness like the mere ghosts of themselves.

Mrs. Munday called him thrice to his supper.

He went out immediately after it was eaten and wandered under the stars until he came over the hill behind the town again, and clambered up the back to the stile in sight of the Frobishers’ house.  He selected the only lit window as hers.  Behind the blind, Mrs. Frobisher, thirty-eight, was busy with her curl-papers—­she used papers because they were better for the hair—­and discussing certain neighbours in a fragmentary way with Mr. Frobisher, who was in bed.  Presently she moved the candle to examine a faint discolouration of her complexion that rendered her uneasy.

Outside, Mr. Lewisham (eighteen) stood watching the orange oblong for the best part of half an hour, until it vanished and left the house black and blank.  Then he sighed deeply and returned home in a very glorious mood indeed.

He awoke the next morning feeling extremely serious, but not clearly remembering the overnight occurrences.  His eye fell on his clock.  The time was six and he had not heard the alarum; as a matter of fact the alarum had not been wound up.  He jumped out of bed at once and alighted upon his best trousers amorphously dropped on the floor instead of methodically cast over a chair.  As he soaped his head he tried, according to his rules of revision, to remember the overnight reading.  He could not for the life of him.  The truth came to him as he was getting into his shirt.  His head, struggling in its recesses, became motionless, the handless cuffs ceased to dangle for a minute....

Then his head came through slowly with a surprised expression upon his face.  He remembered.  He remembered the thing as a bald discovery, and without a touch of emotion.  With all the achromatic clearness, the unromantic colourlessness of the early morning....

Yes.  He had it now quite distinctly.  There had been no overnight reading.  He was in Love.

The proposition jarred with some vague thing in his mind.  He stood staring for a space, and then began looking about absent-mindedly for his collar-stud.  He paused in front of his Schema, regarding it.

CHAPTER IV.

RAISED EYEBROWS.

“Work must be done anyhow,” said Mr. Lewisham.