The Combined Maze

e week and four on Saturdays. Three evenings for the Poly. Gym. One for the Swimming Bath. One for sprinting. One (Saturday) for rest or r

pring of nineteen-two, was the harmony of Ransome's being that the pulse of the unborn thing was one with all his other pulses; it was one, indistinguishably, with the splendor of life, the madness of running, and the joy he took in his own remarkable performances on the h

he Young Ladies of the Poly. Gym. He was not aware how aware he was of their coming, nor how his he

he young men and the young women of the Gy

ry nearly (though not quite) everything that he could, leaving him little besides his pre-eminence on the horizontal bar. And yearly the regiment of girls who could "do

things, girls, for they seemed, incomprehensibly, to like it. Their liking it, their businesslike assumption of equality, their incessant appearance (authorized, it is true, by business) at the railings of his pen, the peculiar disenchanting promiscuity of it all, preser

eared in the March Past of Section I of the Women's Gymnasium; before he had followed W

ue knickerbockers, and in tunics that reached to the knee, red-belted and trimmed

pparition the March Past had been somewhat of a shock to him. He had his ideas, and he was not prepared for th

ted breasts and flying shoulders, the limbs, the hips, the questing face that recalled some fugitive soul of the woods and mountains; long-nosed, sallow, nervous Jewish girls; English girls with stolid, colorless faces; here and t

fall of their black-stockinged legs, the arching and pointing of the feet; all deliciously alike in their air of indestructible propriety. Here you caught one leashing an iniqui

press young Ransome's ind

ll those long black stockings, it was for the sake and on acc

upposed you would call beautiful. She was not one of

ht, an altogether indescribable sense of tenderness and absurdity. She stood out for him simply by the fact that, of all the young ladies of the Po

irst, to become Miss Dymond's cavalier. Maudie, also at Booty's passionate appeal, had for six months shared with Winny Dymond a room off Wandsworth High Street, so that, as he put it, he might feel that she was near him; with the desolating result that they weren't by any means, no, not by a long chalk, so near. For Maudie, out of levity or sheer exuberant kindness of the heart, had persuaded Winny Dymond to join the Polytechnic. In

with him in the mahogany pen when the senior clerks were at their tea. "I say," he said, "there's so

orst. And you could trust Boots to pay up any day. So that he was properly floored when Boots, in a thick, earnest voice, explained the nature of the service

ked Ransome, "wal

ize of it. She was a Wandsworth girl, and they'd

s and only see her of an evenin' and then not be able to get any nearer her, because of havin' to make polite remarks to that wretched kid she was always cartin' round. At that rate he might just as well not be engaged at all-to Maudie; better engage himself to the bloomin' kid at once. It wasn't as if he had a decent chance of bein' spliced f

t, so terrible to him, so terrible to the Polytechnic, so terrible to Booty, and so palpable a sign of h

l airiness. "Oh," he threw

as far as Ransome could remem

ut Winny Dymond. It was Booty, driven by love to that extremity, who collared Maudie and walked off with her

oo, in their long black stockings), strove and struggled, as if her life depended on it, to overtake

hen, as they were going toward Wandswor

aid, "you needn't

aid. "Leastways-that is-"

decision, "if you think

ess of the hour and the loneliness of the scen

company mysel

as a word for it; Ransome thought the word was "cock-a-tree." But Winny Dymond didn't say those things-the least like that. She said them with the utmost gravity and determination. You might almost have thought she was offended but for the absence in her tone of any annoyance or embarrassment. Her tone, indeed, suggested serene

also that there was a kind of fascination abou

ose of her skin, and her mouth which might have been too large if it had not been so firm and fine. He liked, vaguely, without knowing that he liked it, the quietness of her brown eyes and the faint, half-wondering arch above them; and quite definitely he liked the way she parted her brown h

the same pavement; and then he could have sworn that Winny's face

id, "you needn't talk

oud, a blazing and enormous moon. It tickled him. He called her attention to it, and said he didn't remember that he'd ever seen such a proper whopper of a moon and with such a shine on him. They hadn'

etimes; they came on him all of a sudden, like that, and he couldn't help it; he couldn't stop them; he got them all the worse, all the more ungovernably, when Boot

ter that like

h. Once he pursued her down Oxford Street, coming up with her as she boarded a bus in full flight; and they sat in it in gravity and silence, as strangers to each other. But nearly always she was too quick for him; she got away. And never (he thanked Heaven f

ncertainty; it had all the agitation and allurement of pursuit and capture; if she had wanted to allure and

eportment at the Poly.; in her shy essaying of the parallel bars; in the incredible swiftness with which she ran before him in the Maze; in the way her hair, tied up with an immense black bow in a door-k

e; and he was finding it all over aga

se by the railings of the Parish Church in Wandsworth High Street, in the very moment of parting from he

e a regular nuisance, night

id. "I like it. But loo

M

th a simple, n

s,

almost

n't. What

n't, that settle

it