Chapter V: Part I: he is allowed to proceed farther; he is allowed to go in for

Honours. There could be no doubt about Wyatt Edgell being 'through' in the 'first part.' He was quite safe in going back to work for Honours. There is a week between the end of one examination and the beginning of another. There is time to pick one's self up and prepare afresh for the fight--the real fight this time.

Wyatt Edgell went back to his room and 'sported' his oak. It was open just for a minute after Hall, and Eric Gwatkin came in.

Eric had been working at his Special--he took theology, about as stiff a Special as a man can take--all the week, and he had just come to the end of his exam. There would be Hebrew on the Monday, about which he knew very little; if he should make a stray shot it would count, but the real work of the exam. was over. He was looking limp, and used up, and dejected. His eyes were dull, and his cheeks were flabby, and his hair, which he wore long, hung down in a spiritless way. He was the greatest possible contrast to Edgell.

'Well, Wattles,' he said, looking up when Eric came into the room--'well, have you floored the examiners?'

Eric didn't exactly turn green, but his flabby cheeks turned a shade paler.

'It's all over, dear fellow,' he said with a gulp--he hadn't got anything to swallow. He had just come in from Hall, but he gulped down something. 'The examiners have floored me. I'm ploughed, to a certainty.'

He sat down as he spoke on the couch where Edgell had lain on that day, and tried to look cheerful.

'Nonsense, old man! it isn't so bad as that. You are through, for certain.'

'No; I don't think I am through.'

'Well, suppose the worst, if it gives you much pleasure to anticipate it; you can come up again in October.'

'No; I shall not come up again. I shall go down and try something else. Remember, I have already tried two professions. I shall take it, if I fail, that--that the Church is closed to me. I have an offer of something in the City, and I should have to go abroad for a time, and then settle down to work. Perhaps it's the right thing for me, after all.'

'Nonsense, Wattles! What would you do stuck on a high stool in the City? You'd be getting off it half a dozen times a day to go on your knees. It's no use your choosing a profession that isn't very near the ground, where you could be on your knees all day long. That's the only profession you've got any chance in, Wattles.'

Eric smiled, and if Edgell hadn't been looking straight before him in that way he had of not seeing anything within a hundred miles he might have seen that his eyes were red, and that there was something very suspiciously like a tear in the corner of one of them.

'You are working in earnest,' he said presently, nodding towards the table where Edgell was seated, which was covered with books and papers.

'Ye--es,' said the other with a smile, still looking out of the window at the patch of sunset sky over the gray battlements of the college--'ye--es; I've got something to work for. I didn't do half well in the first part; I wasn't sure--quite sure--but it's all right now, and I shall go in and do my best. You have never seen me do my best, Wattles; you will see me do it now--for--for Lucy's sake.'

His face was very noble and tender. It was an ideal man's face--strong, and self-reliant, and masterful, and inexpressibly tender. It moved Eric watching him from that couch, and knowing so much about him.

'It is settled, then?' he said presently, again swallowing something unsatisfactory that seemed to stick.

'Yes; it is settled. She has given me an antidote, a charm, against that accursed thing. She has told me to think of her.'

He was thinking of her now as he lay back in his chair watching the sunlight steal along the roof, and up, up, up the spire of the college chapel. He was thinking of Lucy's sweet eyes, and her blushing cheeks, and the golden ripples of her hair, and he was telling himself that the thought of her would be a tower of strength to him in the future, that he would never, never fall again. When the old temptation came, let it take what form it would, he should be able to meet it. He would only have to think of Lucy.

Eric watched him as he sat on the couch opposite. He guessed what was passing in his mind. His own mind travelled over the ground with him, and presently he paused and sighed. He had come to a _cul-de-sac_.

'Well,' Edgell said, looking round like one aroused from a day-dream, 'what are you croaking at, Wattles?'

Eric made a feeble attempt to smile; it was a very poor attempt, and it only made his poor tired face look more ghastly.

'I only hope, dear fellow, it will answer,' he said huskily.

'Of course it will answer. It is the only thing in the world for me, and for such as me. There is nothing but the love of a woman that can hold a fellow back when--when he has gone so far as I have; there is nothing but a woman's love that could reach down, down--God only knows how deep--and pick a fellow up who has fallen into the pit, that can drag a man out, wounded and maimed, from under the very wheels of Juggernaut at the risk of her own life and reason. There is only one kind of love that can do this.'

Eric looked at him with a strange pity in his eyes.

'You think it is right to put her to such a test?' he said.

'I do not think anything about it. If she loves me, she will not think any trial too hard. Tush, man! you know nothing about love if you do not know that love delights in sacrifice. It must have its altar--the rites could not be celebrated without an altar--and it must have its offering--its free-will offering--its victim. It withholds not its dearest--how should it? Love has no self.'

Eric groaned. He knew nothing about a woman's love. He didn't believe that little Lucy could ever love a man like that.

'My dear fellow,' he said, 'you judge a woman's nature by your own. All women would not rise to such heights.'

'The woman that I loved would,' said the other confidently. 'You will have a chance of putting it to the test before long. If--if I am kept, it will be Lucy's love that will keep me; but if--if it happens again, it will be as you say--I shall have judged a woman's nature by my own.'

The smile had faded from his face, and his eyes were cold and hard, and his lips were pressed tight together. It was not the same face that had smiled upon Eric when he came into the room.

Eric was ashamed of himself, and hung his head. He ought not to have questioned Lucy's love. Nobody had ever loved him, nobody but Pamela, and she was always bullying him. He ought to have been silent until he had found out for himself what a woman will do for the man she loves.

'It must never happen again, dear old man,' he said, laying his hand affectionately on Edgell's shoulder. 'Remember, you have vowed----'

'I know all that,' Edgell interrupted impatiently. 'Do you think all the vows in the world would hold me back, when--when that accursed thing came upon me? You have never been tried yourself----'

'No, no, no, thank God!'

'You may well thank God. I tell you, if the breaking the oath I have sworn--the oaths I have sworn--I have sworn dozens--hundreds--would lose heaven itself, I should still break it--I should not be able to resist when the temptation came upon me.'

'You are right to mistrust yourself,' Eric said sadly. 'Oh, my dear fellow, if you would only trust Him who is the unfailing Strength of all them that put their trust in Him, and who would be a Strong Tower to you in the face of the enemy!'

'Dear old Wattles!' Edgell said good-humouredly. 'I knew you only wanted an excuse for going on your knees. I'm awfully busy now, old man. I'm going to work till daylight--and--and if the Enemy, as you are pleased to call him, should come--I'll think of Lucy!'

He looked past Gwatkin to the blue sky over the roof of the chapel. The sun had all but set, and the vane at the top of the spire had caught the last remnant of fleeting sunshine and rent it in twain.