I gave him my two hands and pulled him out of his chair.

"Can you foretell the future?" I asked with a scepticism worthy of Nigel Rawnsley. "What time shall I breakfast to-morrow? What shall I have for supper to-night? What tie shall I wear next Friday fortnight?"

The Seraph shook his head without answering.

"Very well, then," I said decisively.

"But you don't know either."

Of course he was right.

"I may not know _now_," I said, "but I shall make up my mind in due course, and do whatever I've made up my mind to do--whether it's choosing a tie or...."

"Proposing to Joyce. Exactly. I've never pretended to tell you more than what's in your own mind."

"You talked about the woman X. was going to _marry_, not merely propose to. The last word doesn't lie with X."

"True. But if I know what's passing in Joyce's mind?"

"Does she know herself?"

"No! That's the wonderful thing about a woman's mind, it's so disconnected. She's none of a man's faculty of taking a resolve, seeing it, acting on it.... That's why I said she might not accept you at once."

"You know her mind better than she does?"

As my interest rose, the Seraph became studiedly vague.

"I know nothing," he answered. "I merely suggest the possibility that a woman may form a subconscious resolution and not recognise it as part of her mental stock-in-trade for weeks, months, years.... If you wait for her to recognise it, you may find you come too late; if you come before she recognises it, you may find you've come too early."

I helped him into his coat as the three girls descended the stairs.

"Not a very cheerful prospect for X.," I suggested.

"X. had better help her to recognise her sub-conscious ideas," he answered.

I felt a boy of twenty as we drove down St. Aldates, hurried across Tom Quad, shed our wraps and struggled into the hall. The place was half full already, and the orchestra, with every instrument duplicated and Lorino thundering away at a double grand, had started an opening extra. Youthful stewards, their shirt-fronts crossed with blue and white ribbons of office, hurried to and fro in excessive, callow zeal; bright among the black coats shone the full regimentals of the Bullingdon; while stray followers of Pytchley, Bicester and V.W.H.

contributed their colour to the rainbow blaze.

My charges dutifully spilt a drop from their cups in my honour, but at the end of an hour they were free to follow their own various inclinations. There was no sign of Joyce in the ball-room, but I found her at length by the stair-head, gratefully drinking in the fresh air, flushed--or so I fancied--and occasionally passing a hand across eyes that looked tired and strained. I gave her some champagne and led her to her brother's room. Two armchairs that I had purchased in the luxury-loving twenties seemed somehow to have withstood seven undergraduate generations.

"You were quite the last person I expected to find here," I said, after telling her of my meeting with Dick.

"I was quite the last person a lot of people expected to find here,"

she answered.

"Dick has a lot to be thankful for. So--for that matter--have others."

"Dear old Dick! he has a lot to put up with, if that's what you mean.

If he hadn't been a steward, they wouldn't have admitted me. Oh, the staring and the glaring and the pointing and the whispering!"

I now appreciated the reason of the bright eyes and pink cheeks.

"If you _will_ espouse unpopular political causes," I began.

"I'm not complaining! _This_ was nothing to what I've been through in the past. It's all in the day's work. What are you doing in Oxford?"

I helped myself to one of Dick's cigarettes. He kept them just where I used to keep mine. On second thoughts I put it back and ran my hand along the under-side of the mantelpiece to the hidden shelf where I used to keep cigars maturing. Dick had followed my admirable precedent. I commandeered a promising Intimidad, feeling all the while like the ghost of my twenty-year-old self revisiting the haunts of my affection.

"At the moment I met you, I was feeling very old and miserable," I said, when I had told her of the party committed to my charge. "Time was when I counted for something in this place, porters touched their hats to me, I could be certain of an apple in the back of the neck as I walked through the Quad. Now the hall is filled with young kings who know not Joseph. There are not twelve men or maidens who recognise me."

"Perhaps they don't know you."

"That," I said, "is not very helpful."

"I'm sorry. There are about two hundred people in that hall who know me, but only four recognised me. You were one. I'm grateful."

"But what did you expect?"

"I wasn't sure. You came with the enemy."

It was time for me to define my attitude of political isolation. I told her--what was no more than the truth--that I owed no allegiance to king, country, church, or party. I have never been interested in politics, and twenty years' absence from England have made me nothing if not a citizen of the world. I cared nothing for the great franchise question, it was a matter of indifference to me whether the vote was granted or withheld. On the other hand, I have a great love of peace and comfort, and resent any effort to force me into a position of hostility.

"You won't convert me, Joyce," I said. "No more will the Rodens. I refuse to mix myself up in the miserable business. Friends and enemies, indeed! I have no enemies, but as a friend I wish I could persuade you to accept the _fait accompli_. You're up against _force majeure_, you'll have to give in sooner or later. Why not sooner?"

"Why give up at all?"

"You're striking at an immovable body."

"What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body?"

"Is it an irresistible force?"

"Have you seen Mavis Rawnsley the last few weeks?"

The question was asked with fearless, impudent abruptness.

"I don't know her to speak to," I said. "You remember we caught sight of her that night the Seraph took us to the theatre."

"The night I undertook to convert the idlest man in the northern hemisphere? Yes."

"The night that same idler undertook to re-convert you. I've not seen her since."

"Has her father?"

"You must ask him."

"I will. In fact, I have already. 'Where is Miss Rawnsley? A rumour reaches us as we are going to press....' You'll find it all in this week's _New Militant_, I had such fun writing it."

"What was the rumour?"