That night Mr. Sandys finished up his princely progress by dining in Hall with the Fellows, and going to the Combination Room afterwards.  He was not voluble, as Howard had expected.  He was overcome with deference, and seized with a desire to bow in all directions at the smallest civility.  He sat next to the Vice-Master, and Mr. Redmayne treated him to an exhibition of the driest fireworks on record.  Mr. Sandys assented to everything, and the number of times that he exclaimed “True, true! admirably said!” exceeded belief.  He said to Howard afterwards that the unmixed wine of intellect had proved a potent beverage.  “One must drink it down,” he said, “and trust to assimilating it later.  It has been a glorious week for me, my dear Howard, thanks to you!  Quite rejuvenating indeed!  I carry away with me a precious treasure of thought—­just a few notes of suggestive trains of inquiry have been scribbled down, to be dealt with at leisure.  But it is the atmosphere, the rarefied atmosphere of high thought, which has braced and invigorated me.  It has entirely obliterated from my mind that odious escapade of Jack’s—­so judiciously handled!  The kindness of these eminent men, these intellectual giants, is profoundly touching and inspiring.  I must not indeed hope to trespass on it unduly.  Your Master—­what a model of self-effacing courtesy—­your Vice-Master—­what a fine, rugged, uncompromising nature; and the rest of your colleagues”—­with a wave of his hand—­ “what an impression of reserved and restrained force it all gives one!  It will often sustain me,” said the good Vicar in a burst of confidence, “in my simple labours, to think of all this tide of unaffected intellectual life ebbing and flowing so tranquilly and so systematically in old alma mater!  The way in which you have laid yourself out to entertain me is indeed gratifying.  If there is a thing I reverence it is intellect, especially when it is framed in modesty and courtesy.”

Howard went with him to his lodgings, and just went in to say good-bye to Maud.  Jack had been dining with her, but he was gone.  He and Guthrie were going to the station to give them a send-off.  “A charming young fellow, Guthrie!” said Mr. Sandys.  “He has been constantly with us, and it is very pleasant to find that Jack has such an excellent friend.  His father is, I believe, a man of wealth and influence?  You would hardly have guessed it!  That a young man of that sort should have given up so much time to entertaining a country parson and his daughter is really very gratifying—­a sign of the growing humanity of the youth of England.  I fear we should not have been so tolerant at dear old Pembroke.  I like your young men, Howard.  They are unduly careless, I think, about dress; but in courtesy and kindness, irreproachable!”

Howard only had a few words with Maud, of a very commonplace kind.  She had enjoyed herself very much, and it was good of him to have given up so much time to them.  She seemed to him reserved and preoccupied, and he could not do anything to restore the old sense of friendship.  He was tired himself; it had been a week of great strain.  Far from getting any nearer to Maud, he felt that he had drifted away from her, and that some intangible partition kept them apart.  The visit, he felt, had been a mistake from beginning to end.