“I say, Lidderdale,” said Emmett, when they came out of the lecture room where the examination was being held.  “I had a tremendous piece of luck this afternoon.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I’ve just been reading the fourth Georgics last term, and I don’t think I made a single mistake in that unseen.”

“Good work,” said Mark.

“I wonder when they’ll let us know who’s got the scholarship,” said Emmett.  “But of course you’ve won,” he added with a sigh.

“I did very badly both yesterday and to-day.”

“Oh, you’re only saying that to encourage me,” Emmett sighed.  “It sounds a dreadful thing to say and I ought not to say it because it’ll make you uncomfortable, but if I don’t succeed, I really think I shall kill myself.”

“All right, that’s a bargain,” Mark laughed; and when his rival shook hands with him at parting he felt that poor Emmett was going home to Rutland convinced that Mark was just as hard-hearted as the rest of the world and just as ready to laugh at his misfortune.

It was Saturday when the examination was finished, and Mark wished he could be granted the privilege of staying over Sunday in college.  He had no regrets for what he had done; he was content to let this experience be all that he should ever intimately gain of Oxford; but he should like to have the courage to accost one of the tutors and to tell him that being convinced he should never come to Oxford again he desired the privilege of remaining until Monday morning, so that he might crystallize in that short space of time an impression which, had he been successful in gaining the scholarship, would have been spread over four years.  Mark was not indulging in sentiment; he really felt that by the intensity of the emotion with which he would live those twenty-four hours he should be able to achieve for himself as much as he should achieve in four years.  So far as the world was concerned, this experience would be valueless; for himself it would be beyond price.  So far as the world was concerned, he would never have been to Oxford; but could he be granted this privilege, Oxford would live for ever in his heart, a refuge and a meditation until the grave.  Yet this coveted experience must be granted from without to make it a perfect experience.  To ask and to be refused leave to stay till Monday would destroy for him the value of what he had already experienced in three days’ residence; even to ask and to be granted the privilege would spoil it in retrospect.  He went down the stairs from his room and stood in the little quadrangle, telling himself that at any rate he might postpone his departure until twilight and walk the seven miles from Shipcot to Wych-on-the-Wold.  While he was on his way to notify the porter of the time of his departure he met the Principal, who stopped him and asked how he had got on with his papers.  Mark wondered if the Principal had been told about his lamentable performance and was making inquiries on his own account to find out if the unsuccessful candidate really was a lunatic.