keen individual consciousness which naturally accompanies the first
entrance into manhood. Here, on this soil, steepest in memories,
_his_ problems, _his_ struggles, were to be fought out in their
turn, 'Take up thy manhood,' said the inward voice, 'and show what
is in thee. The hour and the opportunity have come!'

And to this thrill of vague expectation, this young sense of an
expanding world, something of pathos and of sacredness was added
by the dumb influences of the old streets and weather-beaten stones.
How tenacious they were of the past! The dreaming city seemed to
be still brooding in the autumn calm over the long succession of
her sons. The continuity, the complexity of human experience; the
unremitting effort of the race; the stream of purpose running through
it all; these were the kind of thoughts which, in more or less
inchoate and fragmentary shape, pervaded the boy's sensitive mind
as he rambled with his mother from college to college.

Mrs. Elsmere, too, was fascinated by Oxford. But for all her eager
interest, the historic beauty of the place aroused in her an
under-mood of melancholy, just as it did in Robert. Both had the
impressionable Celtic temperament, and both felt that a critical
moment was upon them, and that the Oxford air was charged with fate
for each of them. For the first time in their lives they were to
be parted. The mother's long guardianship was coming to an end.
Had she loved him enough? Had she so far fulfilled the trust her
dead husband had imposed upon her? Would her boy love her in the
new life as he had loved her in the old? And would her poor craving
heart bear to see him absorbed by fresh interests and passions, in
which her share could be only, at the best, secondary and indirect?