As often as not, it is mere chance that provides the most essentially important moments in our lives. It is easy to talk of the inevitable march of Fate, but more usually a chance word or look alters our entire outlook on life. And so it was that the course of Gordon's whole career was suddenly changed into a different channel, at a moment when he was drifting placidly on the stream of a lax conventionality, and was frittering away all his opportunities for sheer lack of anything that would spur him on to a clearer conception of what life means.

During the whole of the term, Tester and Gordon had done their early morning preparation on the V. A green. As they had answered their names at roll, they would take out deck-chairs and cushions and luxuriously pass the three quarters of an hour before breakfast reclining back, putting the finishing touches to the evening's work. It is a very beautiful spot, the V. A green. On three sides it is flanked with buildings; on the fourth is a low wall, which is used as an exit for nocturnal expeditions. It was under the V. A class-room that Gordon and Tester put their chairs. Opposite them was the grey library; beyond rose the Abbey, solemn and austere; on the left was the chapel and the long cloister leading to big school. In the early morning a great hush pervaded the place. The only sound was the faint tolling of the Almshouse bell. Between the Abbey and the library the sun rose in a blaze of glory.

On the last morning of the term Gordon and Tester lolled back in their comfortable chairs. Gordon was trying to learn his rep. for the exam. that morning. Tester was reading The Oxford Book of English Verse; the exams for the Sixth were over.

"Oh, damn this," said Gordon. "I can't learn the stuff."

He flung the book down, and lay back watching the first rays of the sun flicker on the cold bronze of the Abbey.

"This has been a rotten term, you know," he said at last.

"Yes?" said Tester. He was engrossed in poetry.

"Well, I got into the deuce of a row with Chief, and I never got my House cap, and I've broken it off with Jackson."

Tester put down his book and sat up.

"Caruthers, you know you are wasting your time. Here are you with all your brilliance and your personality worrying only about House caps and petty intrigues, and little things like that. What you want to realise is that there is something beyond the aim of a Fernhurst career. You are clever enough; but poetry and art mean nothing to you."

"Oh poetry, that's all right for Claremont and asses like that, but what's the use of it?"

"Oh, use, use! Nothing but this eternal cry about the use of a thing. Poetry is the sort of beacon-light of man. What's wrong with you is that you've read the wrong stuff. It is all very well for a middle-aged man to worship Wordsworth and calm philosophy. But youth wants colour, life, passion, the poetry of revolt. Now look here, let me read you this, and then tell me what you think of it."

"Oh, all right. Is it long?"

"No, not very."

In a low, clear voice, Tester began to read the great spring Chorus in Atalanta, into which Swinburne has crowded all that he ever knew of joy and happiness. In everyone there lies the love of beauty—"we needs must love the highest when we see it"—but the pity is that so few of us are ever brought face to face with the really lovely, or perhaps, if we are, we come to it too late. Our power of appreciation has lain too long dormant ever to be aroused. And at school it is the common thing for boys to pass through their six years' traffic without ever realising what beauty is. They are told to read Vergil, Tennyson and Browning, the philosophers, the comforters of old age, poets who "had for weary feet the gift of rest." But boys never hear of Byron, Swinburne and Rossetti, men with big flaming hearts that cried for physical beauty and the loveliness of tangible things. As a result they drift out into the world, to take their place with the dull, commonplace Philistine who has made the House of Commons what it is.

But as Gordon heard Tester reading the wonderful riot of melody, which conjures up visions of rainbows, and far-receding sunsets, of dew gleaming like crystals in the morning, of water gliding like forgotten songs, a strange peace descended on him. He had not known that there could be anything so intensely beautiful. Over the great Abbey the sun was rising heavenwards; down the street past the Almshouses he heard the happy sound of a young girl laughing. The world was full of strange new things; there was a new meaning in the song of the blackbird, in the rustle of the leaves, in the whispering of the warm wind. And suddenly there came over him a sensation of how far he himself was below the splendour of it all. He had walked through life with blinded eyes; with dulled senses he had stared at the ground, while all the time the great ideal of beauty was shining from the blue mountains of man's desire.

Tester had finished reading.

"Well what do you think of it?"

"Oh, it's wonderful. I never dreamt of such music."

"Yes, you see, masters grow old; they forget what it was like to be young; they want us to look at life through their spectacles, and, of course, we can't. Youth and age is an impossible combination; we have to cut a way for ourselves, Caruthers, sometimes we fail, sometimes we succeed. I've made a pretty fair mess of things, because I have gone on my own way; because I have had no one to guide me. I found little consolation in mature thought, and I am not one of the fools who has just taken things for granted; I strike out by myself. I want to find what beauty really is, and I shall find it by sifting out everything first. I have probed a good many things one way and another, some ugly, some beautiful. I have followed the course of Nature. After all, Nature is more likely to be right than an artificial civilisation. I follow where my inclinations lead me. I hate laws and regulations. As I've often said, I did not ask to come into this world, so I shall do as I please, and I think that I shall reach home all right in the end. Literature is a great sign-post!"

"Yes," said Gordon simply. "I never imagined it before. Who wrote that, by the way?"

"Swinburne, the great pagan who was sick of the sham and pretence of his day, and cried for the glories of Rome. Look here, Caruthers, come down to Gisson's afterwards, and as a memento of our year together in Study 1, just let me give you Swinburne's Poems and Ballads. It's great stuff; you'll like it, and you'll find there something a bit better than your caps and pots."

Gordon did not answer. The sun had now risen high above the Abbey. Across the silence was wafted the cracked notes of the School House bell; there was a rush of feet from the studies. For a few minutes Gordon lay back in his chair quite quiet. A new day had broken on his life. The future opened out with wide promises, with possibilities of great things. For he had heard at last the call which, if ever a man hears it, he casts away the nets and follows after—the call of beauty—"which is, after all, only truth, seen from another side."