who had been the rallying-point of a hundred struggles, and a centre
of influence over thousands of English lives.

And then followed the proud moment when Robert, in his exhibitioner's
gown, took her to service in the chapel on Sunday. The scores of
young faces, the full unison of the hymns, and finally the Provost's
sermon, with its strange brusqueries and simplicities of manner and
phrase--simplicities suggestive, so full of a rich and yet disciplined
experience, that they haunted her mind for weeks afterward--completed
the general impression made upon her by the Oxford life. She came
out, tremulous and shaken, leaning on her son's arm. She, too,
like the generations before her, had launched her venture into the
deep. Her boy was putting out from her into the ocean; henceforth
she could but watch him from the shore. Brought into contact with
this imposing University organization, with all its suggestions of
virile energies and functions, the mother suddenly felt herself
insignificant and forsaken. He had been her all, her own, and now
on this training-ground of English youth, it seemed to her that the
great human society had claimed him from her.



CHAPTER V.

In his Oxford life Robert surrendered himself to the best and most
stimulating influences of the place, just as he had done at school.
He was a youth of many friends, by virtue of a natural gift of
sympathy, which was no doubt often abused, and by no means invariably
profitable to its owner, but wherein, at any rate, his power over
his fellows, like the power of half the potent men in the world's