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"Suprema a Situ

Shades of Mae West and Evangeline Booth!" He stopped and leaned against the rail. "Do you call that ..."

A bus tore explosively down Salamanca Road and cut short the comment of my Christchurch friend. It was some minutes before he attempted to speak again.

"Do you call that architecture?" he asked disdainfully. "Who on earth was responsible?"

I stared mutely at him. Though I was dimly aware of the shortcomings of Victoria's pile, it was so familiar to me that I had come to consider it as an unquestionable part of the landscape.

"No wonder the Prof. Board banned sex and religion debates."

"Why?" I asked blankly.

"Perpetual entombment in that morgue would be enough to make anyone lose their reason" he replied feelingly. "At the same time they may have seen as through a glass darkly, that such an environment was likely to give birth in the student mind to anything in the way of revolutionary ideas from free milk to free love. As for an anti-war movement in that place, it is absolutely superfluous. It is quite beyond the powers of comprehension that anyone would raise a finger to defend such an atrocity."

"Well, it is not so bad when you come up by cable-car," I demurred, while wondering what invective would be drawn forth by the sight of the back of the building. Anything further I could say in reply seemed futile, so I merely murmured, "After all, it doesn't matter how the building looks, for most of us come up here at night when all we see is a punctured silhouette."

"Some people are lucky," was the rejoinder. We had now reached the end of the tennis courts.

"That oriel window and the steps aren't bad-rather a good entrance, in fact; but why a transplanted church for a north wing, and an indescribable conglomeration for the south?"

We entered the hall, and I decided on a quick visit to the library in place of a personally conducted tour of the whole building. As we climbed the stairs, my friend was saying in a guide-book voice: "Victoria College—well named, as it is a good example of Victorian architecture at its worst, with a resulting air of Victorian smugness pervading the whole." The inspection of the library was very brief. We came out. "What a wonderful idea that window was. A perfect example of florid patriotism expensively perpetuated in stained glass. And what a fine sense of irony—the modern soldier alongside the futile crusader!"

I hurried down the stairs, through the hall, and was just going to run down the steps when I realised that my friend had stopped. I turned to see what new object he had found on which to heap his scorn. He was, however, standing in the doorway, and the cynical curve had gone from his mouth; he was gazing out over the harbour and seemed to have suddenly forgotten me.

"Boy, what a view!" he said slowly, with a wealth of appreciation. I turned again and looked at the level expanse of the harbour, ruffled by the wind into varying shades of grey and blue. Its vastness accentuated the aloofness of the Tararuas and the loneliness of Somes Island; its quiet colour threw into relief the gilded houses on the Petone foreshore, standing like children's blocks on the edge of a deep purple carpet, while the slow flicker of the waves emphasised the stillness of the shadowed hills. I was just beginning to wish the sun would never sink any lower, when my friend's voice broke in on my reverie. It was not hard and staccato as it had been before—it was almost tender as he murmured:

"And it will last forever."

—O.A.E.H.