A clock struck
ten in the moonlight without, and Mark rose to go. He felt a pang as he
walked from the cloudy room and looked for the last time at that tall
remote scholar, who had forgotten his guest's existence at the moment he
ceased to shake his hand and who by the time he had reached the doorway
was lost again in the deeps of the crabbed volume resting upon his
knees. Mark sighed as he closed the library door behind him, for he knew
that he was shutting out a world. But when he stood in the small silver
quadrangle Mark was glad that he had not given way to the temptation of
confiding in the Principal. It would have been a feeble end to his first
denial of self. He was sure that he had done right in surrendering his
place to Emmett, for was not the unexpected opportunity to spend these
few more hours in Oxford a sign of God's approval? _Bright as the
glimpses of eternity to saints accorded in their mortal hour._ Such was
Oxford to-night.
Mark sat for a long while at the open window of his room until the moon
had passed on her way and the quadrangle was in shadow; and while he sat
there he was conscious of how many people had inhabited this small
quadrangle and of how they too had passed on their way like the moon,
leaving behind them no more than he should leave behind from this one
hour of rapture, no more than the moon had left of her silver upon the
dim grass below.
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