Oh, hold your tongue, you
ass!" said Howard, apostrophising his rebellious mind. "Don't you
see where you are going? You can't do anything--it is all too big
and strong for you. You must just let it alone."
II
RESTLESSNESS
A few days later the term drew to an end, and both dons and
undergraduates, whose tempers had been wearing a little thin, got
suddenly more genial, like guests when a visit draws to a close,
and disposed to think rather better of each other.
Howard had made no plans; he did not wish to stay on at Cambridge,
but he did not want to go away: he had no relations to whose houses
he naturally drifted; he did not like the thought of a visit; as a
rule he went off with an undergraduate or two to some lonely inn,
where they fished or walked and did a little work. But just now he
had a vague feeling that he wanted to be alone; that he had
something to face, some reckoning to cast up, and yet he did not
know what it was.
One afternoon--the spring was certainly advancing, and there was a
touch of languor in the air, that heavenly languor which is so
sweet a thing when one is young and hopeful, so depressing a thing
when one is living on the edge of one's nervous force--he paid a
call, which was not a thing he often did, on a middle-aged woman
who passed for a sort of relation; she was a niece of his aunt's
deceased husband, Monica Graves by name. She was a woman of
independent means, who had done some educational work for a time,
but had now retired, lived in her own little house, and occupied
herself with social schemes of various sorts.
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