"Very well."

And she followed Douglas Falloden through the panelled passage outside
the hall leading to the garden. Sorell, who had hurried up to find her,
arrived in time to see her disappearing through the lights and shadows
of the moonlit lawn.

* * * * *

"We can do this sort of thing pretty well, can't we? It's banal because
it happens every year, and because it's all mixed up with salmon
mayonnaise, and cider-cup--and it isn't banal, because it's Oxford!"

[Illustration: _Constance sat in the shadow of a plane-tree with
Falloden at her feet_]

Constance was sitting under the light shadow of a plane-tree, not yet
fully out; Falloden was stretched on the grass at her feet. Before her
ran a vast lawn which had taken generations to make; and all round
it, masses of flowering trees, chestnuts, lilacs, laburnums, now
advancing, now receding, made inlets or promontories of the grass,
turned into silver by the moonlight. At the furthest edge, through the
pushing pyramids of chestnut blossom and the dim drooping gold of the
laburnums, could be seen the bastions and battlements of the old city
wall, once a fighting reality, now tamed into the mere ornament and
appendage of this quiet garden. Over the trees and over the walls rose
the spires and towers of a wondrous city; while on the grass, or through
the winding paths disappearing into bosky distances, flickered white
dresses, and the slender forms of young men and maidens. A murmur of