“I wish some one would give me the chance of ‘overdoing it’!  Do set me to work—­hard work!  The sun never shines here.”

Her eyes wandered petulantly to the rainy sky outside, and the high-walled college opposite.

“Southerner!  Wait till you see it shining on the Virginia creeper in our garden quad.  Oxford is a dream in October!—­just for a week or two, till the leaves fall.  November is dreary, I admit.  All the same—­try and be happy!”

He looked at her gravely and tenderly.  She coloured a little as she withdrew her hands.

“Happy?  That doesn’t matter—­does it?  But perhaps for a change—­one might try—­”

“Try what?”

“Well!”—­she laughed, but he thought there were tears in her eyes—­“to do something—­for somebody—­occasionally.”

“Ask Mrs. Mulholland!  She has a genius for that kind of thing.  Teach some of her orphans!”

“I couldn’t!  They’d find me out.”

Sorell, rather puzzled, suggested that she might become a Home Student like Nora, and go in for a Literature or Modern History Certificate.  Connie, who was now sitting moodily over a grate with no fire in it, with her chin in her hands, only shook her head.

“I don’t know anything—­I never learnt anything.  And everybody here’s so appallingly clever!”

Then she declared that she would go and have tea with the Master of Beaumont, and ask his advice.  “He told me to learn something”—­the tone was one of depression, passing into rebellion—­“but I don’t want to learn anything!—­I want to do something!”

Sorell laughed at her.

“Learning is doing!”

“That’s what Oxford people think,” she said defiantly.  “I don’t agree with them.”

“What do you mean by ’doing’?”

Connie poked an imaginary fire.

“Making myself happy”—­she said slowly, “and—­and a few other people!”

Sorell laughed again.  Then rising to take his leave, he stooped over her.

“Make me happy by undoing that stroke of yours at Boar’s Hill!”

Connie raised herself, and looked at him steadily.

Then gravely and decisively she shook her head.

“Not at all!  I shall keep an eye on it!—­so must you!”

Then, suddenly, she smiled—­the softest, most radiant smile, as though some hope within, far within, looked out.  It was gone in a moment, and Sorell went his way; but as one who had been the spectator of an event.

* * * * *

After his departure Connie sat on in the cold room, thinking about Sorell.  She was devoted to him—­he was the noblest, dearest person.  She wished dreadfully to please him.  But she wasn’t going to let him—­well, what?—­to let him interfere with that passionate purpose which seemed to be beating in her, and through her, like a living thing, though as yet she had but vaguely defined it even to herself.

* * * * *