It was whispered at length that his commentary on the first book of the Deipnosophists was all but ready.  All through a golden summer and a quiet Long Vacation it had been maturing, and on the first night of the October term he arranged his piles of notes about him, set a quire of clean manuscript paper on his table, dipped pen in inkpot, and began to muse on the first sentence.

An hour passed, and the page was not soiled.  Across the still garden came the sound of cab-wheels rattling over the distant streets.  The undergraduates were coming up for a fresh term.  He had heard the sound a hundred times, almost; and it did not concern him.  He had no lectures to prepare.

Another hour passed, and another.  The noise of the cabs had died out, and over him was creeping a sick fear, a certainty, that he could not write a word.  The subject was too immense.  He had given his life to Athenaeus, and now Athenaeus was a monster that one man’s life and knowledge would not suffice for.  Having withheld his pen till he might write adequately, he awoke to find that writing was impossible.  A horror took him as he pushed back his chair among the litter of note-books, and, stepping to the window, threw the sash open.

Many stars were shining; and between them and the sleeping garden echoed the clamour of a distant supper-party.  He heard no words, only the noise; but it filled his brain with a sense of the many thousand supper-parties that the garden had listened to, of the generations that had come and gone since his own first term, of the boys who had grown into men while he was working at Athenaeus—­always Athenaeus.  His forehead was burning, and as he pushed his hand across it, he seemed to read in the darkness under the laburnum-tree, “Jesus have mercy on Miles Tonken, Fellow.  Anno 1545,” and found a new meaning—­an irony—­in the words.

Then, because more and more the task of his life became a hopeless weight, he gave a look at his notebooks and escaped out of the room, downstairs into the fresh air of the quad, and across it towards the porter’s lodge.  He found the porter napping, and, having a private key, he let himself through the big gate and out into the street.  No soul was abroad:  only the gas-lamps threw queer shadows of him on the pavement, and the night-breeze struck coldly into him as he hurried along, hating whatever he saw.

Soon, under a window in St. Giles’s, he pulled up.  There was a party of young men inside—­perhaps the same supper-party whose voices he had heard just now.  The light from the room flared across the street; but by keeping close under the sill he stood in darkness, and he paused, listening eagerly.  Above, they were singing a chorus, noted in those days—­

It was pale dawn, and the sun was touching St. Mary’s spire into flame when the heavy-eyed porter heard a key turn in the wicket.  It was the Senior Fellow, and in about half an hour he appeared again at the lodge, carrying a small bag, and handed the porter a letter addressed to the President of the College.  He then stepped out into the street, and hurried off towards the railway station.