In 1914 he became the Spanish "lector" at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris until 1917, when he received his Doctorate. He had married Margarita Bonmarti, a Spanish girl of Algerian descent whom he had met on his summer holidays in Santa Pola, Alicante, in December 1915. She had been born in 1884. They had two children, Soledad (always referred to as Solita) born in 1920 and Jaime born in 1925. His academic life seemed to act as a model for his slightly younger contemporary Jorge Guillén with whom he struck up a friendship in 1920.