He took her back to the lodgings where they were staying.  She shook hands with him, smiled faintly, almost tearfully, and went in without a word.  Howard went back in a very agitated frame of mind.  He did not understand what was in the girl’s mind at all.  She was different, utterly different.  Some new current of thought had passed through her mind.  He fancied that the girl, after her secluded life, with so many richly perceptive faculties half starved, had awakened almost suddenly to a sense of the crowded energies and joys of life, that youth and delight had quickened in her; that she foresaw new relations, and guessed at wonderful secrets.  But it troubled him to think that she had not seemed to wish to revive their former little intimacy; she had seemed half unconscious of his presence, and all alive with new pleasures and curiosities.  The marvellous veil of sex appeared to have fallen between them.  He had made friends with her, as he would have made friends with some ingenuous boy; and now something wholly new, mysterious, and aloof had intervened.

The rest of the visit was uneventful enough.  Maud was different—­ that was plain—­not less delightful, indeed even more so, in her baffling freshness; but Howard felt removed from her, shut out from her mind, kept at arm’s length, even superseded.

The luncheon with the Master as guest was a success.  He was an old bachelor clergyman, white-haired, dainty, courteous, with the complexion of a child.  He was very gracious to Mr. Sandys, who regarded him much as he might have regarded the ghost of Isaiah, as a spirit who visited the earth from some paradisiacal retreat, and brought with him a fragrance of heaven.  The thought of a Doctor of Divinity, the Head of a College, full of academical learning, and yet perfectly courteous and accessible, filled Mr. Sandys’ cup of romance to the brim.  He seemed to be storing his memory with the Master’s words.  The Master was delighted with Maud, and treated her with a charming and indulgent gaiety, which Howard envied.  He asked her opinion, he deferred to her, he made her come and sit next to him, he praised Jack and Howard, and at the end of the luncheon he filled Mr. Sandys with an almost insupportable delight by saying that the next time he could visit Cambridge he hoped he would stay at the Lodge—­“but not unless you will promise to bring Miss Sandys as well—­Miss Sandys is indispensable.”  Howard felt indeed grateful to the gallant and civil old man, who had so clear an eye for what was tender and beautiful.  Even Jack, when the Master departed, was forced to say that he did not know that the old man had so much blood in him!