Both were extremely silly things to do.  In the first instance he was penitent immediately after the outrage, but in the second he added insult to injury by going across the room and asking in an offensively suspicious manner if anyone had seen his bun.  He crawled under a table and found it at last, rather dusty but quite eatable, under the chair of a lady art student.  He sat down by Smithers to eat it, while he argued with the Art official.  The Art official said the manners of the Science students were getting unbearable, and threatened to bring the matter before the refreshment-room committee.  Lewisham said it was a pity to make such a fuss about a trivial thing, and proposed that the Art official should throw his lunch—­steak and kidney pudding—­across the room at him, Lewisham, and so get immediate satisfaction.  He then apologised to the official and pointed out in extenuation that it was a very long and difficult shot he had attempted.  The official then drank a crumb, or breathed some beer, or something of that sort, and the discussion terminated.  In the afternoon, however, Lewisham, to his undying honour, felt acutely ashamed of himself.  Miss Heydinger would not speak to him.

On Saturday morning he absented himself from the schools, pleading by post a slight indisposition, and took all his earthly goods to the booking office at Vauxhall Station.  Chaffery’s sister lived at Tongham, near Farnham, and Ethel, dismissed a week since by Lagune, had started that morning, under her mother’s maudlin supervision, to begin her new slavery.  She was to alight either at Farnham or Woking, as opportunity arose, and to return to Vauxhall to meet him.  So that Lewisham’s vigil on the main platform was of indefinite duration.

At first he felt the exhilaration of a great adventure.  Then, as he paced the long platform, came a philosophical mood, a sense of entire detachment from the world.  He saw a bundle of uprooted plants beside the portmanteau of a fellow-passenger and it suggested a grotesque simile.  His roots, his earthly possessions, were all downstairs in the booking-office.  What a flimsy thing he was!  A box of books and a trunk of clothes, some certificates and scraps of paper, an entry here and an entry there, a body not over strong—­and the vast multitude of people about him—­against him—­the huge world in which he found himself!  Did it matter anything to one human soul save her if he ceased to exist forthwith?  And miles away perhaps she also was feeling little and lonely....

Would she have trouble with her luggage?  Suppose her aunt were to come to Farnham Junction to meet her?  Suppose someone stole her purse?  Suppose she came too late!  The marriage was to take place at two....  Suppose she never came at all!  After three trains in succession had disappointed him his vague feelings of dread gave place to a profound depression....

But she came at last, and it was twenty-three minutes to two.  He hurried her luggage downstairs, booked it with his own, and in another minute they were in a hansom—­their first experience of that species of conveyance—­on the way to the Vestry office.  They had said scarcely anything to one another, save hasty directions from Lewisham, but their eyes were full of excitement, and under the apron of the cab their hands were gripped together.