great university still ringing in his ears, he looked about and asked
himself disconsolately if this were all. Had he plumbed the
possibilities of the place in so short a time? And, if so, what was
left for him in the year to come?

An answer to this question was suggested by his present occupation. If
he could now and again leave the rarefied atmosphere of the hill for
some such diversion as the one in prospect, he would return better able
to make good use of that solitude in which real achievement is shaped.

As yet there seemed small chance that such diversions would become
sufficiently numerous to interfere with his work. He had met the other
nine members of the faculty, and while he found them courteous, he
became at once aware that their attitude toward him as a newcomer was
one of indifference. The smallness of their number did not operate to
draw them more closely together, as might have been supposed. Each
returned to the city at the end of his day's work, and was lost to view
in his own peculiar circle. Some time, no doubt, their social
obligation to the new professor in the tower would become imperative,
but the time was not yet. Meanwhile, he felt himself regarded warily,
an attitude which to his friendly Western nature seemed to betoken a
vague disapprobation. He did not realise that there was nothing
personal in this aloofness, except in so far as he personified a larger
life, whose hopeful outlook stirred in more cabined natures an
unacknowledged resentment. Here he found no remnant of the traditional
hospitality of the borderland. The conditions of this old community of
specialised interests were the opposite of those he had encountered in
the West, where a stranger was welcomed on the slim credentials of his
appearance.