to do it at all, if they really cared.  Some of them, no doubt, were men of great hearts, and they have their place and work.  But to claim to see all the highest spirits together is as absurd as if you called on a doctor in London at eleven o’clock and expected to meet all the great physicians at his house, intent on general conversation.  Some of the great people, indeed, you have met, and they were very simple persons on earth.  The greatest person you have hitherto seen was a butler on earth—­the master of your College.  And if it does not shock your aristocratic susceptibilities too much, the President of this place kept a small shop in a country village.  But one of the teachers here was actually a marquis in the world!  Does that uplift you?  He teaches the little girls how to play cricket, and he is a very good dancer.  Perhaps you would like to be introduced to him?”

“Don’t treat me as a child,” I said, rather pettishly.

“No, no,” said Amroth, “it isn’t that.  But you are one of those impressible people; and they always find it harder to disentangle themselves from the old ideas.”

I spent a long and happy time in the school.  I was given a little teaching to do, and found it perfectly enchanting.  Imagine children with everything greedy and sensual gone, with none of the crossness or spitefulness that comes of fatigue or pressure, but with all the interesting passions of humanity, admiration, keenness, curiosity, and even jealousy, emulation, and anger, all alive and active in them.  They were not angelic children at all, neither meek nor mild.  But they were generous and affectionate, and it was easy to evoke these feelings.  The one thing absent from the whole place was any touch of sentimentality, which arises from natural affections suppressed into a giggling kind of secrecy.  They expressed affection loudly and frankly, just as they expressed indignation and annoyance.  All the while I kept Cynthia in my heart; she was ever before me in a thousand sweet postures and with innumerable glances.  But I saw much of my sturdy and wholesome-minded old friend; and the sore pain of parting faded away out of my heart, and left me with nothing but the purest and deepest love, which helped me in all I did or said, and made me patient and tender-hearted.  And thus the period sped not unhappily away, though I had my times of agony and despair.

XXXII

I became aware at this time, very gradually and even solemnly, that some crisis of my life was approaching.  How the monition came to me I hardly know; I felt like a man wandering in the dark, with eyes strained and hands outstretched, who is dimly aware of some great object, tree or haystack or house, looming up ahead of him, which he cannot directly see, but of which he is yet conscious by the vibration of some sixth sense.  The wonder came by degrees to overshadow my thoughts with a sense of expectant awe, and to permeate all the urgent concerns of my life with its shadowy presence.  Even the thought of Cynthia, who indeed was always in my mind, became obscured with the dimness of this obscure anticipation.