enough with these apologia. My work got more and more spiritless, my
behaviour degenerated, my punctuality declined; I was more and more
outclassed in the steady grind by my fellow-students. Such supplies of
moral energy as I still had at command shaped now in the direction of
serving Marion rather than science.

I fell away dreadfully, more and more I shirked and skulked; the humped
men from the north, the pale men with thin, clenched minds, the intent,
hard-breathing students I found against me, fell at last from keen
rivalry to moral contempt. Even a girl got above me upon one of the
lists. Then indeed I made it a point of honour to show by my public
disregard of every rule that I really did not even pretend to try.

So one day I found myself sitting in a mood of considerable astonishment
in Kensington Gardens, reacting on a recent heated interview with the
school Registrar in which I had displayed more spirit than sense. I was
astonished chiefly at my stupendous falling away from all the militant
ideals of unflinching study I had brought up from Wimblehurst. I had
displayed myself, as the Registrar put it, "an unmitigated rotter." My
failure to get marks in the written examination had only been equalled
by the insufficiency of my practical work.

"I ask you," the Registrar had said, "what will become of you when your
scholarship runs out?"

It certainly was an interesting question. What was going to become of
me?

It was clear there would be nothing for me in the schools as I had once
dared to hope; there seemed, indeed, scarcely anything in the world