initial commit of ebook 2072HEADmain

2 files changed, 12178 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/mikel10.txt b/old/mikel10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fcdee29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/mikel10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12178 @@
+****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Michael, by E. F. Benson****
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+Michael
+
+by E. F. Benson
+
+February, 2000  [Etext #2072]
+
+
+****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Michael, by E. F. Benson****
+*****This file should be named mikel10.txt or mikel10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, mikel11.txt.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, mikel10a.txt.
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
+files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1997 for a total of 1000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 100 billion Etexts given away.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only 10% of the present number of computer users.  2001
+should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
+will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email
+(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
+
+******
+If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
+FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
+[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
+
+ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
+login:  anonymous
+password:  your@login
+cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
+or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET INDEX?00.GUT
+for a list of books
+and
+GET NEW GUT for general information
+and
+MGET GUT* for newsletters.
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
+
+
+
+
+
+MICHAEL
+
+by E. F. Benson
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Though there was nothing visibly graceful about Michael Comber, he
+apparently had the art of giving gracefully.  He had already told
+his cousin Francis, who sat on the arm of the sofa by his table,
+that there was no earthly excuse for his having run into debt; but
+now when the moment came for giving, he wrote the cheque quickly
+and eagerly, as if thoroughly enjoying it, and passed it over to
+him with a smile that was extraordinarily pleasant.
+
+"There you are, then, Francis," he said; "and I take it from you
+that that will put you perfectly square again.  You've got to write
+to me, remember, in two days' time, saying that you have paid those
+bills.  And for the rest, I'm delighted that you told me about it.
+In fact, I should have been rather hurt if you hadn't."
+
+Francis apparently had the art of accepting gracefully, which is
+more difficult than the feat which Michael had so successfully
+accomplished.
+
+"Mike, you're a brick," he said.  "But then you always are a brick.
+Thanks awfully."
+
+Michael got up, and shuffled rather than walked across the room to
+the bell by the fireplace.  As long as he was sitting down his big
+arms and broad shoulders gave the impression of strength, and you
+would have expected to find when he got up that he was tall and
+largely made.  But when he rose the extreme shortness of his legs
+manifested itself, and he appeared almost deformed.  His hands hung
+nearly to his knees; he was heavy, short, lumpish.
+
+"But it's more blessed to give than to receive, Francis," he said.
+"I have the best of you there."
+
+"Well, it's pretty blessed to receive when you are in a tight
+place, as I was," he said, laughing.  "And I am so grateful."
+
+"Yes, I know you are.  And it's that which makes me feel rather
+cheap, because I don't miss what I've given you.  But that's
+distinctly not a reason for your doing it again.  You'll have tea,
+won't you?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Francis, getting up, also, and leaning his elbow
+on the chimney-piece, which was nearly on a level with the top of
+Michael's head.  And if Michael had gracefulness only in the art of
+giving, Francis's gracefulness in receiving was clearly of a piece
+with the rest of him.  He was tall, slim and alert, with the quick,
+soft movements of some wild animal.  His face, brown with sunburn
+and pink with brisk-going blood, was exceedingly handsome in a
+boyish and almost effeminate manner, and though he was only
+eighteen months younger than his cousin, he looked as if nine or
+ten years might have divided their ages.
+
+"But you are a brick, Mike," he said again, laying his long, brown
+hand on his cousin's shoulder.  "I can't help saying it twice."
+
+"Twice more than was necessary," said Michael, finally dismissing
+the subject.
+
+The room where they sat was in Michael's flat in Half Moon Street,
+and high up in one of those tall, discreet-looking houses.  The
+windows were wide open on this hot July afternoon, and the bourdon
+hum of London, where Piccadilly poured by at the street end, came
+in blended and blunted by distance, but with the suggestion of
+heat, of movement, of hurrying affairs.  The room was very empty of
+furniture; there was a rug or two on the parquet floor, a long, low
+bookcase taking up the end near the door, a table, a sofa, three or
+four chairs, and a piano.  Everything was plain, but equally
+obviously everything was expensive, and the general impression
+given was that the owner had no desire to be surrounded by things
+he did not want, but insisted on the superlative quality of the
+things he did.  The rugs, for instance, happened to be of silk, the
+bookcase happened to be Hepplewhite, the piano bore the most
+eminent of makers' names.  There were three mezzotints on the
+walls, a dragon's-blood vase on the high, carved chimney-piece; the
+whole bore the unmistakable stamp of a fine, individual taste.
+
+"But there's something else I want to talk to you about, Francis,"
+said Michael, as presently afterwards they sat over their tea.  "I
+can't say that I exactly want your advice, but I should like your
+opinion.  I've done something, in fact, without asking anybody, but
+now that it's done I should like to know what you think about it."
+
+Francis laughed.
+
+"That's you all over, Michael," he said.  "You always do a thing
+first, if you really mean to do it--which I suppose is moral
+courage--and then you go anxiously round afterwards to see if other
+people approve, which I am afraid looks like moral cowardice.  I go
+on a different plan altogether.  I ascertain the opinion of so many
+people before I do anything that I end by forgetting what I wanted
+to do.  At least, that seems a reasonable explanation for the fact
+that I so seldom do anything."
+
+Michael looked affectionately at the handsome boy who lounged long-
+legged in the chair opposite him.  Like many very shy persons, he
+had one friend with whom he was completely unreserved, and that was
+this cousin of his, for whose charm and insouciant brilliance he
+had so adoring an admiration.
+
+He pointed a broad, big finger at him.
+
+"Yes, but when you are like that," he said, "you can just float
+along.  Other people float you.  But I should sink heavily if I did
+nothing.  I've got to swim all the time."
+
+"Well, you are in the army," said Francis.  "That's as much
+swimming as anyone expects of a fellow who has expectations.  In
+fact, it's I who have to swim all the time, if you come to think of
+it.  You are somebody; I'm not!"
+
+Michael sat up and took a cigarette.
+
+"But I'm not in the army any longer," he said.  "That's just what I
+am wanting to tell you."
+
+Francis laughed.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked.  "Have you been cashiered or shot or
+something?"
+
+"I mean that I wrote and resigned my commission yesterday," said
+Michael.  "If you had dined with me last night--as, by the way, you
+promised to do--I should have told you then."
+
+Francis got up and leaned against the chimney-piece.  He was
+conscious of not thinking this abrupt news as important as he felt
+he ought to think it.  That was characteristic of him; he floated,
+as Michael had lately told him, finding the world an extremely
+pleasant place, full of warm currents that took you gently forward
+without entailing the slightest exertion.  But Michael's grave and
+expectant face--that Michael who had been so eagerly kind about
+meeting his debts for him--warned him that, however gossamer-like
+his own emotions were, he must attempt to ballast himself over
+this.
+
+"Are you speaking seriously?" he asked.
+
+"Quite seriously.  I never did anything that was so serious."
+
+"And that is what you want my opinion about?" he asked.  "If so,
+you must tell me more, Mike.  I can't have an opinion unless you
+give me the reasons why you did it.  The thing itself--well, the
+thing itself doesn't seem to matter so immensely.  The significance
+of it is why you did it."
+
+Michael's big, heavy-browed face lightened a moment.  "For a fellow
+who never thinks," he said, "you think uncommonly well.  But the
+reasons are obvious enough.  You can guess sufficient reasons to
+account for it."
+
+"Let's hear them anyhow," said Francis.
+
+Michael clouded again.
+
+"Surely they are obvious," he said.  "No one knows better than me,
+unless it is you, that I'm not like the rest of you.  My mind isn't
+the build of a guardsman's mind, any more than my unfortunate body
+is.  Half our work, as you know quite well, consists in being
+pleasant and in liking it.  Well, I'm not pleasant.  I'm not breezy
+and cordial.  I can't do it.  I make a task of what is a pastime to
+all of you, and I only shuffle through my task.  I'm not popular,
+I'm not liked.  It's no earthly use saying I am.  I don't like the
+life; it seems to me senseless.  And those who live it don't like
+me.  They think me heavy--just heavy.  And I have enough
+sensitiveness to know it."
+
+Michael need not have stated his reasons, for his cousin could
+certainly have guessed them; he could, too, have confessed to the
+truth of them.  Michael had not the light hand, which is so
+necessary when young men work together in a companionship of which
+the cordiality is an essential part of the work; neither had he in
+the social side of life that particular and inimitable sort of easy
+self-confidence which, as he had said just now, enables its owner
+to float.  Except in years he was not young; he could not manage to
+be "clubable"; he was serious and awkward at a supper party; he was
+altogether without the effervescence which is necessary in order to
+avoid flatness.  He did his work also in the same conscientious but
+leaden way; officers and men alike felt it.  All this Francis knew
+perfectly well; but instead of acknowledging it, he tried quite
+fruitlessly to smooth it over.
+
+"Aren't you exaggerating?" he asked.
+
+Michael shook his head.
+
+"Oh, don't tone it down, Francis!" he said.  "Even if I was
+exaggerating--which I don't for a moment admit--the effect on my
+general efficiency would be the same.  I think what I say is true."
+
+Francis became more practical.
+
+"But you've only been in the regiment three years," he said.  "It
+won't be very popular resigning after only three years."
+
+"I have nothing much to lose on the score of popularity," remarked
+Michael.
+
+There was nothing pertinent that could be consoling here.
+
+"And have you told your father?" asked Francis.  "Does Uncle Robert
+know?"
+
+"Yes; I wrote to father this morning, and I'm going down to
+Ashbridge to-morrow.  I shall be very sorry if he disapproves."
+
+"Then you'll be sorry," said Francis.
+
+"I know, but it won't make any difference to my action.  After all,
+I'm twenty-five; if I can't begin to manage my life now, you may be
+sure I never shall.  But I know I'm right.  I would bet on my
+infallibility.  At present I've only told you half my reasons for
+resigning, and already you agree with me."
+
+Francis did not contradict this.
+
+"Let's hear the rest, then," he said.
+
+"You shall.  The rest is far more important, and rather resembles a
+sermon."
+
+Francis appropriately sat down again.
+
+"Well, it's this," said Michael.  "I'm twenty-five, and it is time
+that I began trying to be what perhaps I may be able to be, instead
+of not trying very much--because it's hopeless--to be what I can't
+be.  I'm going to study music.  I believe that I could perhaps do
+something there, and in any case I love it more than anything else.
+And if you love a thing, you have certainly a better chance of
+succeeding in it than in something that you don't love at all.  I
+was stuck into the army for no reason except that soldiering is
+among the few employments which it is considered proper for fellows
+in my position--good Lord! how awful it sounds!--proper for me to
+adopt.  The other things that were open were that I should be a
+sailor or a member of Parliament.  But the soldier was what father
+chose.  I looked round the picture gallery at home the other day;
+there are twelve Lord Ashbridges in uniform.  So, as I shall be
+Lord Ashbridge when father dies, I was stuck into uniform too, to
+be the ill-starred thirteenth.  But what has it all come to?  If
+you think of it, when did the majority of them wear their smart
+uniforms?  Chiefly when they went on peaceful parades or to court
+balls, or to the Sir Joshua Reynolds of the period to be painted.
+They've been tin soldiers, Francis!  You're a tin soldier, and I've
+just ceased to be a tin soldier.  If there was the smallest chance
+of being useful in the army, by which I mean standing up and being
+shot at because I am English, I would not dream of throwing it up.
+But there's no such chance."
+
+Michael paused a moment in his sermon, and beat out the ashes from
+his pipe against the grate.
+
+"Anyhow the chance is too remote," he said.  "All the nations with
+armies and navies are too much afraid of each other to do more than
+growl.  Also I happen to want to do something different with my
+life, and you can't do anything unless you believe in what you are
+doing.  I want to leave behind me something more than the portrait
+of a tin soldier in the dining-room at Ashbridge.  After all, isn't
+an artistic profession the greatest there is?  For what counts,
+what is of value in the world to-day?  Greek statues, the Italian
+pictures, the symphonies of Beethoven, the plays of Shakespeare.
+The people who have made beautiful things are they who are the
+benefactors of mankind.  At least, so the people who love beautiful
+things think."
+
+Francis glanced at his cousin.  He knew this interesting vital side
+of Michael; he was aware, too, that had anybody except himself been
+in the room, Michael could not have shown it.  Perhaps there might
+be people to whom he could show it but certainly they were not
+those among whom Michael's life was passed.
+
+"Go on," he said encouragingly.  "You're ripping, Mike."
+
+"Well, the nuisance of it is that the things I am ripping about
+appear to father to be a sort of indoor game.  It's all right to
+play the piano, if it's too wet to play golf.  You can amuse
+yourself with painting if there aren't any pheasants to shoot.  In
+fact, he will think that my wanting to become a musician is much
+the same thing as if I wanted to become a billiard-marker.  And if
+he and I talked about it till we were a hundred years old, he could
+never possibly appreciate my point of view."
+
+Michael got up and began walking up and down the room with his
+slow, ponderous movement.
+
+"Francis, it's a thousand pities that you and I can't change
+places," he said.  "You are exactly the son father would like to
+have, and I should so much prefer being his nephew.  However, you
+come next; that's one comfort."
+
+He paused a moment.
+
+"You see, the fact is that he doesn't like me," he said.  "He has
+no sympathy whatever with my tastes, nor with what I am.  I'm an
+awful trial to him, and I don't see how to help it.  It's pure
+waste of time, my going on in the Guards.  I do it badly, and I
+hate it.  Now, you're made for it; you're that sort, and that sort
+is my father's sort.  But I'm not; no one knows that better than
+myself.  Then there's the question of marriage, too."
+
+Michael gave a mirthless laugh.
+
+"I'm twenty-five, you see," he said, "and it's the family custom
+for the eldest son to marry at twenty-five, just as he's baptised
+when he's a certain number of weeks old, and confirmed when he is
+fifteen.  It's part of the family plan, and the Medes and Persians
+aren't in it when the family plan is in question.  Then, again, the
+lucky young woman has to be suitable; that is to say, she must be
+what my father calls 'one of us.'  How I loathe that phrase!  So my
+mother has a list of the suitable, and they come down to Ashbridge
+in gloomy succession, and she and I are sent out to play golf
+together or go on the river.  And when, to our unutterable relief,
+that is over, we hurry back to the house, and I escape to my piano,
+and she goes and flirts with you, if you are there.  Don't deny it.
+And then another one comes, and she is drearier than the last--at
+least, I am."
+
+Francis lay back and laughed at this dismal picture of the
+rejection of the fittest.
+
+"But you're so confoundedly hard to please, Mike," he said.  "There
+was an awfully nice girl down at Ashbridge at Easter when I was
+there, who was simply pining to take you.  I've forgotten her
+name."
+
+Michael clicked his fingers in a summary manner.
+
+"There you are!" he said.  "You and she flirted all the time, and
+three months afterwards you don't even remember her name.  If you
+had only been me, you would have married her.  As it was, she and I
+bored each other stiff.  There's an irony for you!  But as for
+pining, I ask you whether any girl in her senses could pine for me.
+Look at me, and tell me!  Or rather, don't look at me; I can't bear
+to be looked at."
+
+Here was one of Michael's morbid sensitivenesses.  He seldom forgot
+his own physical appearance, the fact of which was to him
+appalling.  His stumpy figure with its big body, his broad, blunt-
+featured face, his long arms, his large hands and feet, his
+clumsiness in movement were to him of the nature of a constant
+nightmare, and it was only with Francis and the ease that his
+solitary presence gave, or when he was occupied with music that he
+wholly lost his self-consciousness in this respect.  It seemed to
+him that he must be as repulsive to others as he was to himself,
+which was a distorted view of the case.  Plain without doubt he
+was, and of heavy and ungainly build; but his belief in the
+finality of his uncouthness was morbid and imaginary, and half his
+inability to get on with his fellows, no less than with the maidens
+who were brought down in single file to Ashbridge, was due to this.
+He knew very well how light-heartedly they escaped to the geniality
+and attractiveness of Francis, and in the clutch of his own
+introspective temperament he could not free himself from the
+handicap of his own sensitiveness, and, like others, take himself
+for granted.  He crushed his own power to please by the weight of
+his judgments on himself.
+
+"So there's another reason to complain of the irony of fate," he
+said.  "I don't want to marry anybody, and God knows nobody wants
+to marry me.  But, then, it's my duty to become the father of
+another Lord Ashbridge, as if there had not been enough of them
+already, and his mother must be a certain kind of girl, with whom I
+have nothing in common.  So I say that if only we could have
+changed places, you would have filled my niche so perfectly, and I
+should have been free to bury myself in Leipzig or Munich, and
+lived like the grub I certainly am, and have drowned myself in a
+sea of music.  As it is, goodness knows what my father will say to
+the letter I wrote him yesterday, which he will have received this
+morning.  However, that will soon be patent, for I go down there
+to-morrow.  I wish you were coming with me.  Can't you manage to
+for a day or two, and help things along?  Aunt Barbara will be
+there."
+
+Francis consulted a small, green morocco pocket-book.
+
+"Can't to-morrow," he said, "nor yet the day after.  But perhaps I
+could get a few days' leave next week."
+
+"Next week's no use.  I go to Baireuth next week."
+
+"Baireuth?  Who's Baireuth?" asked Francis.
+
+"Oh, a man I know.  His other name was Wagner, and he wrote some
+tunes."
+
+Francis nodded.
+
+"Oh, but I've heard of him," he said.  "They're rather long tunes,
+aren't they?  At least I found them so when I went to the opera the
+other night.  Go on with your plans, Mike.  What do you mean to do
+after that?"
+
+"Go on to Munich and hear the same tunes over, again.  After that I
+shall come back and settle down in town and study."
+
+"Play the piano?" asked Francis, amiably trying to enter into his
+cousin's schemes.
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"No doubt that will come into it," he said.  "But it's rather as if
+you told somebody you were a soldier, and he said: 'Oh, is that
+quick march?'"
+
+"So it is.  Soldiering largely consists of quick march, especially
+when it's more than usually hot."
+
+"Well, I shall learn to play the piano," said Michael.
+
+"But you play so rippingly already," said Francis cordially.  "You
+played all those songs the other night which you had never seen
+before.  If you can do that, there is nothing more you want to
+learn with the piano, is there?"
+
+"You are talking rather as father will talk," observed Michael.
+
+"Am I?  Well, I seem to be talking sense."
+
+"You weren't doing what you seemed, then.  I've got absolutely
+everything to learn about the piano."
+
+Francis rose.
+
+"Then it is clear I don't understand anything about it," he said.
+"Nor, I suppose, does Uncle Robert.  But, really, I rather envy
+you, Mike.  Anyhow, you want to do and be something so much that
+you are gaily going to face unpleasantnesses with Uncle Robert
+about it.  Now, I wouldn't face unpleasantnesses with anybody about
+anything I wanted to do, and I suppose the reason must be that I
+don't want to do anything enough."
+
+"The malady of not wanting," quoted Michael.
+
+"Yes, I've got that malady.  The ordinary things that one naturally
+does are all so pleasant, and take all the time there is, that I
+don't want anything particular, especially now that you've been
+such a brick--"
+
+"Stop it," said Michael.
+
+"Right; I got it in rather cleverly.  I was saying that it must be
+rather nice to want a thing so much that you'll go through a lot to
+get it.  Most fellows aren't like that."
+
+"A good many fellows are jelly-fish," observed Michael.
+
+"I suppose so.  I'm one, you know.  I drift and float.  But I don't
+think I sting.  What are you doing to-night, by the way?"
+
+"Playing the piano, I hope.  Why?"
+
+"Only that two fellows are dining with me, and I thought perhaps
+you would come.  Aunt Barbara sent me the ticket for a box at the
+Gaiety, too, and we might look in there.  Then there's a dance
+somewhere."
+
+"Thanks very much, but I think I won't," said Michael.  "I'm rather
+looking forward to an evening alone."
+
+"And that's an odd thing to look forward to," remarked Francis.
+
+"Not when you want to play the piano.  I shall have a chop here at
+eight, and probably thump away till midnight."
+
+Francis looked round for his hat and stick.
+
+"I must go," he said.  "I ought to have gone long ago, but I didn't
+want to.  The malady came in again.  Most of the world have got it,
+you know, Michael."
+
+Michael rose and stood by his tall cousin.
+
+"I think we English have got it," he said.  "At least, the English
+you and I know have got it.  But I don't believe the Germans, for
+instance, have.  They're in deadly earnest about all sorts of
+things--music among them, which is the point that concerns me.  The
+music of the world is German, you know!"
+
+Francis demurred to this.
+
+"Oh, I don't think so," he said.  "This thing at the Gaiety is
+ripping, I believe.  Do come and see."
+
+
+Michael resisted this chance of revising his opinion about the
+German origin of music, and Francis drifted out into Piccadilly.
+It was already getting on for seven o'clock, and the roadway and
+pavements were full of people who seemed rather to contradict
+Michael's theory that the nation generally suffered from the malady
+of not wanting, so eagerly and numerously were they on the quest
+for amusement.  Already the street was a mass of taxicabs and
+private motors containing, each one of them, men and women in
+evening dress, hurrying out to dine before the theatre or the
+opera.  Bright, eager faces peered out, with sheen of silk and
+glitter of gems; they all seemed alert and prosperous and keen for
+the daily hours of evening entertainment.  A crowd similar in
+spirit pervaded the pavements, white-shirted men with coat on arm
+stepped in and out of swinging club doors and the example set by
+the leisured class seemed copiously copied by those whom desks and
+shops had made prisoners all day.  The air of the whole town,
+swarming with the nation that is supposed to make so grave an
+affair of its amusements, was indescribably gay and lighthearted;
+the whole city seemed set on enjoying itself.  The buses that
+boomed along were packed inside and out, and each was placarded
+with advertisement of some popular piece at theatre or music-hall.
+Inside the Green Park the grass was populous with lounging figures,
+who, unable to pay for indoor entertainment, were making the most
+of what the coolness of sunset and grass supplied them with gratis;
+the newsboards of itinerant sellers contained nothing of more
+serious import than the result of cricket matches; and, as the dusk
+began to fall, street lamps and signs were lit, like early rising
+stars, so that no hint of the gathering night should be permitted
+to intrude on the perpetually illuminated city.  All that was
+sordid and sad, all that was busy (except on these gay errands of
+pleasure) was shuffled away out of sight, so that the pleasure
+seekers might be excused for believing that there was nothing in
+the world that could demand their attention except the need of
+amusing themselves successfully.  The workers toiled in order that
+when the working day was over the fruits of their labour might
+yield a harvest of a few hours' enjoyment; silkworms had spun so
+that from carriage windows might glimmer the wrappings made from
+their cocoons; divers had been imperilled in deep seas so that the
+pearls they had won might embellish the necks of these fair
+wearers.
+
+To Francis this all seemed very natural and proper, part of the
+recognised order of things that made up the series of sensations
+known to him as life.  He did not, as he had said, very
+particularly care about anything, and it was undoubtedly true that
+there was no motive or conscious purpose in his life for which he
+would voluntarily have undergone any important stress of discomfort
+or annoyance.  It was true that in pursuance of his profession
+there was a certain amount of "quick marching" and drill to be done
+in the heat, but that was incidental to the fact that he was in the
+Guards, and more than compensated for by the pleasures that were
+also naturally incidental to it.  He would have been quite unable
+to think of anything that he would sooner do than what he did; and
+he had sufficient of the ingrained human tendency to do something
+of the sort, which was a matter of routine rather than effort, than
+have nothing whatever, except the gratification of momentary whims,
+to fill his day.  Besides, it was one of the conventions or even
+conditions of life that every boy on leaving school "did" something
+for a certain number of years.  Some went into business in order to
+acquire the wealth that should procure them leisure; some, like
+himself, became soldiers or sailors, not because they liked guns
+and ships, but because to boys of a certain class these professions
+supplied honourable employment and a pleasant time.  Without being
+in any way slack in his regimental duties, he performed them as
+many others did, without the smallest grain of passion, and without
+any imaginative forecast as to what fruit, if any, there might be
+to these hours spent in drill and discipline.  He was but one of a
+very large number who do their work without seriously bothering
+their heads about its possible meaning or application.  His
+particular job gave a young man a pleasant position and an easy
+path to general popularity, given that he was willing to be
+sociable and amused.  He was extremely ready to be both the one and
+the other, and there his philosophy of life stopped.
+
+And, indeed, it seemed on this hot July evening that the streets
+were populated by philosophers like unto himself.  Never had
+England generally been more prosperous, more secure, more
+comfortable.  The heavens of international politics were as serene
+as the evening sky; not yet was the storm-cloud that hung over
+Ireland bigger than a man's hand; east, west, north and south there
+brooded the peace of the close of a halcyon day, and the amazing
+doings of the Suffragettes but added a slight incentive to the
+perusal of the morning paper.  The arts flourished, harvests
+prospered; the world like a newly-wound clock seemed to be in for a
+spell of serene and orderly ticking, with an occasional chime just
+to show how the hours were passing.
+
+London was an extraordinarily pleasant place, people were friendly,
+amusements beckoned on all sides; and for Francis, as for so many
+others, but a very moderate amount of work was necessary to win him
+an approved place in the scheme of things, a seat in the slow-
+wheeling sunshine.  It really was not necessary to want, above all
+to undergo annoyances for the sake of what you wanted, since so
+many pleasurable distractions, enough to fill day and night twice
+over, were so richly spread around.
+
+Some day he supposed he would marry, settle down and become in time
+one of those men who presented a bald head in a club window to the
+gaze of passers-by.  It was difficult, perhaps, to see how you
+could enjoy yourself or lead a life that paid its own way in
+pleasure at the age of forty, but that he trusted that he would
+learn in time.  At present it was sufficient to know that in half
+an hour two excellent friends would come to dinner, and that they
+would proceed in a spirit of amiable content to the Gaiety.  After
+that there was a ball somewhere (he had forgotten where, but one of
+the others would be sure to know), and to-morrow and to-morrow
+would be like unto to-day.  It was idle to ask questions of oneself
+when all went so well; the time for asking questions was when there
+was matter for complaint, and with him assuredly there was none.
+The advantages of being twenty-three years old, gay and good-
+looking, without a care in the world, now that he had Michael's
+cheque in his pocket, needed no comment, still less complaint.  He,
+like the crowd who had sufficient to pay for a six-penny seat at a
+music-hall, was perfectly content with life in general; to-morrow
+would be time enough to do a little more work and glean a little
+more pleasure.
+
+It was indeed an admirable England, where it was not necessary even
+to desire, for there were so many things, bright, cheerful things
+to distract the mind from desire.  It was a day of dozing in the
+sun, like the submerged, scattered units or duets on the grass of
+the Green Park, of behaving like the lilies of the field. . . .
+Francis found he was rather late, and proceeded hastily to his
+mother's house in Savile Row to array himself, if not "like one of
+these," like an exceedingly well-dressed young man, who demanded of
+his tailor the utmost of his art; with the prospect, owing to
+Michael's generosity, of being paid to-morrow.
+
+
+Michael, when his cousin had left him, did not at once proceed to
+his evening by himself with his piano, though an hour before he had
+longed to be alone with it and a pianoforte arrangement of the
+Meistersingers, of which he had promised himself a complete perusal
+that evening.  But Francis's visit had already distracted him, and
+he found now that Francis's departure took him even farther away
+from his designed evening.  Francis, with his good looks and his
+gay spirits, his easy friendships and perfect content (except when
+a small matter of deficit and dunning letters obscured the sunlight
+for a moment), was exactly all that he would have wished to be
+himself.  But the moment he formulated that wish in his mind, he
+knew that he would not voluntarily have parted with one atom of his
+own individuality in order to be Francis or anybody else.  He was
+aware how easy and pleasant life would become if he could look on
+it with Francis's eyes, and if the world would look on him as it
+looked on his cousin.  There would be no more bother. . . .  In a
+moment, he would, by this exchange, have parted with his own
+unhappy temperament, his own deplorable body, and have stepped into
+an amiable and prosperous little neutral kingdom that had no
+desires and no regrets.  He would have been free from all wants,
+except such as could be gratified so easily by a little work and a
+great capacity for being amused; he would have found himself
+excellently fitting the niche into which the rulers of birth and
+death had placed him: an eldest son of a great territorial magnate,
+who had what was called a stake in the country, and desired nothing
+better.
+
+Willingly, as he had said, would he have changed circumstances with
+Francis, but he knew that he would not, for any bait the world
+could draw in front of him, have changed natures with him, even
+when, to all appearance, the gain would so vastly have been on his
+side.  It was better to want and to miss than to be content.  Even
+at this moment, when Francis had taken the sunshine out of the room
+with his departure, Michael clung to his own gloom and his own
+uncouthness, if by getting rid of them he would also have been
+obliged to get rid of his own temperament, unhappy as it was, but
+yet capable of strong desire.  He did not want to be content; he
+wanted to see always ahead of him a golden mist, through which the
+shadows of unconjecturable shapes appeared.  He was willing and
+eager to get lost, if only he might go wandering on, groping with
+his big hands, stumbling with his clumsy feet, desiring . . .
+
+There are the indications of a path visible to all who desire.
+Michael knew that his path, the way that seemed to lead in the
+direction of the ultimate goal, was music.  There, somehow, in that
+direction lay his destiny; that was the route.  He was not like the
+majority of his sex and years, who weave their physical and mental
+dreams in the loom of a girl's face, in her glance, in the curves
+of her mouth.  Deliberately, owing chiefly to his morbid
+consciousness of his own physical defects, he had long been
+accustomed to check the instincts natural to a young man in this
+regard.  He had seen too often the facility with which others, more
+fortunate than he, get delightedly lost in that golden haze; he had
+experienced too often the absence of attractiveness in himself.
+How could any girl of the London ballroom, he had so frequently
+asked himself, tolerate dancing or sitting out with him when there
+was Francis, and a hundred others like him, so pleased to take his
+place?  Nor, so he told himself, was his mind one whit more apt
+than his body.  It did not move lightly and agreeably with
+unconscious smiles and easy laughter.  By nature he was monkish, he
+was celibate.  He could but cease to burn incense at such
+ineffectual altars, and help, as he had helped this afternoon, to
+replenish the censers of more fortunate acolytes.
+
+This was all familiar to him; it passed through his head unbidden,
+when Francis had left him, like the refrain of some well-known
+song, occurring spontaneously without need of an effort of memory.
+It was a possession of his, known by heart, and it no longer,
+except for momentary twinges, had any bitterness for him.  This
+afternoon, it is true, there had been one such, when Francis,
+gleeful with his cheque, had gone out to his dinner and his theatre
+and his dance, inviting him cheerfully to all of them.  In just
+that had been the bitterness--namely, that Francis had so
+overflowing a well-spring of content that he could be cordial in
+bidding him cast a certain gloom over these entertainments.
+Michael knew, quite unerringly, that Francis and his friends would
+not enjoy themselves quite so much if he was with them; there would
+be the restraint of polite conversation at dinner instead of
+completely idle babble, there would be less outspoken normality at
+the Gaiety, a little more decorum about the whole of the boyish
+proceedings.  He knew all that so well, so terribly well. . . .
+
+His servant had come in with the evening paper, and the implied
+suggestion of the propriety of going to dress before he roused
+himself.  He decided not to dress, as he was going to spend the
+evening alone, and, instead, he seated himself at the piano with
+his copy of the Meistersingers and, mechanically at first, with the
+ragged cloud-fleeces of his reverie hanging about his brain, banged
+away at the overture.  He had extraordinary dexterity of finger for
+one who had had so little training, and his hands, with their great
+stretch, made light work of octaves and even tenths.  His knowledge
+of the music enabled him to wake the singing bird of memory in his
+head, and before long flute and horn and string and woodwind began
+to make themselves heard in his inner ear.  Twice his servant came
+in to tell him that his dinner was ready, but Michael had no heed
+for anything but the sounds which his flying fingers suggested to
+him.  Francis, his father, his own failure in the life that had
+been thrust on him were all gone; he was with the singers of
+Nuremberg.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The River Ashe, after a drowsy and meandering childhood, passed
+peacefully among the sedges and marigolds of its water meadows,
+suddenly and somewhat disconcertingly grows up and, without any
+period of transition and adolescence, becomes, from being a mere
+girl of a rivulet, a male and full-blooded estuary of the sea.  At
+Coton, for instance, the tips of the sculls of a sauntering
+pleasure-boat will almost span its entire width, while, but a mile
+farther down, you will see stone-laden barges and tall, red-winged
+sailing craft coming up with the tide, and making fast to the grey
+wooden quay wall of Ashbridge, rough with barnacles.  For the reeds
+and meadow-sweet of its margin are exchanged the brown and green
+growths of the sea, with their sharp, acrid odour instead of the
+damp, fresh smell of meadow flowers, and at low tide the podded
+bladders of brown weed and long strings of marine macaroni, among
+which peevish crabs scuttle sideways, take the place of the grass
+and spires of loosestrife; and over the water, instead of singing
+larks, hang white companies of chiding seagulls.  Here at high tide
+extends a sheet of water large enough, when the wind blows up the
+estuary, to breed waves that break in foam and spray against the
+barges, while at the ebb acres of mud flats are disclosed on which
+the boats lean slanting till the flood lifts them again and makes
+them strain at the wheezing ropes that tie them to the quay.
+
+A year before the flame of war went roaring through Europe in
+unquenchable conflagration it would have seemed that nothing could
+possibly rouse Ashbridge from its red-brick Georgian repose.  There
+was never a town so inimitably drowsy or so sternly uncompetitive.
+A hundred years ago it must have presented almost precisely the
+same appearance as it did in the summer of 1913, if we leave out of
+reckoning a few dozen of modern upstart villas that line its
+outskirts, and the very inconspicuous railway station that hides
+itself behind the warehouses near the river's bank.  Most of the
+trains, too, quite ignore its existence, and pass through it on
+their way to more rewarding stopping-places, hardly recognising it
+even by a spurt of steam from their whistles, and it is only if you
+travel by those that require the most frequent pauses in their
+progress that you will be enabled to alight at its thin and
+depopulated platform.
+
+Just outside the station there perennially waits a low-roofed and
+sanguine omnibus that under daily discouragement continues to hope
+that in the long-delayed fulness of time somebody will want to be
+driven somewhere.  (This nobody ever does, since the distance to
+any house is so small, and a porter follows with luggage on a
+barrow.)  It carries on its floor a quantity of fresh straw, in the
+manner of the stage coaches, in which the problematic passenger,
+should he ever appear, will no doubt bury his feet.  On its side,
+just below the window that is not made to open, it carries the
+legend that shows that it belongs to the Comber Arms, a hostelry so
+self-effacing that it is discoverable only by the sharpest-eyed of
+pilgrims.  Narrow roadways, flanked by proportionately narrower
+pavements, lie ribbon-like between huddled shops and squarely-
+spacious Georgian houses; and an air of leisure and content,
+amounting almost to stupefaction, is the moral atmosphere of the
+place.
+
+On the outskirts of the town, crowning the gentle hills that lie to
+the north and west, villas in acre plots, belonging to business men
+in the county town some ten miles distant, "prick their Cockney
+ears" and are strangely at variance with the sober gravity of the
+indigenous houses.  So, too, are the manners and customs of their
+owners, who go to Stoneborough every morning to their work, and
+return by the train that brings them home in time for dinner.  They
+do other exotic and unsuitable things also, like driving swiftly
+about in motors, in playing golf on the other side of the river at
+Coton, and in having parties at each other's houses.  But apart
+from them nobody ever seems to leave Ashbridge (though a stroll to
+the station about the time that the evening train arrives is a
+recognised diversion) or, in consequence, ever to come back.
+Ashbridge, in fact, is self-contained, and desires neither to
+meddle with others nor to be meddled with.
+
+The estuary opposite the town is some quarter of a mile broad at
+high tide, and in order to cross to the other side, where lie the
+woods and park of Ashbridge House, it is necessary to shout and
+make staccato prancings in order to attract the attention of the
+antique ferryman, who is invariably at the other side of the river
+and generally asleep at the bottom of his boat.  If you are strong-
+lunged and can prance and shout for a long time, he may eventually
+stagger to his feet, come across for you and row you over.
+Otherwise you will stand but little chance of arousing him from his
+slumbers, and you will stop where you are, unless you choose to
+walk round by the bridge at Coton, a mile above.
+
+Periodical attempts are made by the brisker inhabitants of
+Ashbridge, who do not understand its spirit, to substitute for this
+aged and ineffectual Charon someone who is occasionally awake, but
+nothing ever results from these revolutionary moves, and the
+requests addressed to the town council on the subject are never
+heard of again.  "Old George" was ferryman there before any members
+of the town council were born, and he seems to have established a
+right to go to sleep on the other side of the river which is now
+inalienable from him.  Besides, asleep or awake, he is always
+perfectly sober, which, after all, is really one of the first
+requirements for a suitable ferryman.  Even the representations of
+Lord Ashbridge himself who, when in residence, frequently has
+occasion to use the ferry when crossing from his house to the town,
+failed to produce the smallest effect, and he was compelled to
+build a boathouse of his own on the farther bank, and be paddled
+across by himself or one of the servants.  Often he rowed himself,
+for he used to be a fine oarsman, and it was good for the lounger
+on the quay to see the foaming prow of his vigorous progress and
+the dignity of physical toil.
+
+In all other respects, except in this case of "Old George," Lord
+Ashbridge's wishes were law to the local authorities, for in this
+tranquil East-coast district the spirit of the feudal system with a
+beneficent lord and contented tenants strongly survived.  It had
+triumphed even over such modern innovations as railroads, for Lord
+Ashbridge had the undoubted right to stop any train he pleased by
+signal at Ashbridge station.  This he certainly enjoyed doing; it
+fed his sense of the fitness of things to progress along the
+platform with his genial, important tiptoe walk, and elbows
+squarely stuck out, to the carriage that was at once reserved for
+him, to touch the brim of his grey top-hat (if travelling up to
+town) to the obsequious guard, and to observe the heads of
+passengers who wondered why their express was arrested, thrust out
+of carriage windows to look at him.  A livened footman, as well as
+a valet, followed him, bearing a coat and a rug and a morning or
+evening paper and a dispatch-box with a large gilt coronet on it,
+and bestowed these solaces to a railway journey on the empty seats
+near him.  And not only his sense of fitness was hereby fed, but
+that also of the station-master and the solitary porter and the
+newsboy, and such inhabitants of Ashbridge as happened to have
+strolled on to the platform.  For he was THEIR Earl of Ashbridge,
+kind, courteous and dominant, a local king; it was all very
+pleasant.
+
+But this arrest of express trains was a strictly personal
+privilege; when Lady Ashbridge or Michael travelled they always
+went in the slow train to Stoneborough, changed there and abided
+their time on the platform like ordinary mortals.  Though he could
+undoubtedly have extended his rights to the stopping of a train for
+his wife or son, he wisely reserved this for himself, lest it
+should lose prestige.  There was sufficient glory already (to probe
+his mind to the bottom) for Lady Ashbridge in being his wife; it
+was sufficient also for Michael that he was his son.
+
+It may be inferred that there was a touch of pomposity about this
+admirable gentleman, who was so excellent a landlord and so hard
+working a member of the British aristocracy.  But pomposity would
+be far too superficial a word to apply to him; it would not
+adequately connote his deep-abiding and essential conviction that
+on one of the days of Creation (that, probably, on which the decree
+was made that there should be Light) there leaped into being the
+great landowners of England.
+
+But Lord Ashbridge, though himself a peer, by no means accepted the
+peerage en bloc as representing the English aristocracy; to be, in
+his phrase, "one of us" implied that you belonged to certain well-
+ascertained families where brewers and distinguished soldiers had
+no place, unless it was theirs already.  He was ready to pay all
+reasonable homage to those who were distinguished by their
+abilities, their riches, their exalted positions in Church and
+State, but his homage to such was transfused with a courteous
+condescension, and he only treated as his equals and really revered
+those who belonged to the families that were "one of us."
+
+His wife, of course, was "one of us," since he would never have
+permitted himself to be allied to a woman who was not, though for
+beauty and wisdom she might have been Aphrodite and Athene rolled
+compactly into one peerless identity.  As a matter of fact, Lady
+Ashbridge had not the faintest resemblance to either of these
+effulgent goddesses.  In person she resembled a camel, long and
+lean, with a drooping mouth and tired, patient eyes, while in mind
+she was stunned.  No idea other than an obvious one ever had birth
+behind her high, smooth forehead, and she habitually brought
+conversation to a close by the dry enunciation of something
+indubitably true, which had no direct relation to the point under
+discussion.  But she had faint, ineradicable prejudices, and
+instincts not quite dormant.  There was a large quantity of mild
+affection in her nature, the quality of which may be illustrated by
+the fact that when her father died she cried a little every day
+after breakfast for about six weeks.  Then she did not cry any
+more.  It was impossible not to like what there was of her, but
+there was really very little to like, for she belonged heart and
+soul to the generation and the breeding among which it is enough
+for a woman to be a lady, and visit the keeper's wife when she has
+a baby.
+
+But though there was so little of her, the balance was made up for
+by the fact that there was so much of her husband.  His large,
+rather flamboyant person, his big white face and curling brown
+beard, his loud voice and his falsetto laugh, his absolutely
+certain opinions, above all the fervency of his consciousness of
+being Lord Ashbridge and all which that implied, completely filled
+any place he happened to be in, so that a room empty except for him
+gave the impression of being almost uncomfortably crowded.  This
+keen consciousness of his identity was naturally sufficient to make
+him very good humoured, since he was himself a fine example of the
+type that he admired most.  Probably only two persons in the world
+had the power of causing him annoyance, but both of these, by an
+irony of fate that it seemed scarcely possible to consider
+accidental, were closely connected with him, for one was his
+sister, the other his only son.
+
+The grounds of their potentiality in this respect can be easily
+stated.  Barbara Comber, his sister (and so "one of us"), had
+married an extremely wealthy American, who, in Lord Ashbridge's
+view, could not be considered one of anybody at all; in other
+words, his imagination failed to picture a whole class of people
+who resembled Anthony Jerome.  He had hoped when his sister
+announced her intention of taking this deplorable step that his
+future brother-in-law would at any rate prove to be a snob--he had
+a vague notion that all Americans were snobs--and that thus Mr.
+Jerome would have the saving grace to admire and toady him.  But
+Mr. Jerome showed no signs of doing anything of the sort; he
+treated him with an austere and distant politeness that Lord
+Ashbridge could not construe as being founded on admiration and a
+sense of his own inferiority, for it was so clearly founded on
+dislike.  That, however, did not annoy Lord Ashbridge, for it was
+easy to suppose that poor Mr. Jerome knew no better.  But Barbara
+annoyed him, for not only had she shown herself a renegade in
+marrying a man who was not "one of us," but with all the advantages
+she had enjoyed since birth of knowing what "we" were, she gloried
+in her new relations, saying, without any proper reticence about
+the matter, that they were Real People, whose character and wits
+vastly transcended anything that Combers had to show.
+
+Michael was an even more vexatious case, and in moments of
+depression his father thought that he would really turn in his
+grave at the dismal idea of Michael having stepped into his
+honourable shoes.  Physically he was utterly unlike a Comber, and
+his mind, his general attitude towards life seemed to have diverged
+even farther from that healthy and unreflective pattern.  Only this
+morning his father had received a letter from him that summed
+Michael up, that fulfilled all the doubts and fears that had hung
+about him; for after three years in the Guards he had, without
+consultation with anybody, resigned his commission on the
+inexplicable grounds that he wanted to do something with his life.
+To begin with that was rankly heretical; if you were a Comber there
+was no need to do anything with your life; life did everything for
+you. . . .  And what this un-Comberish young man wanted to do with
+his life was to be a musician.  That musicians, artists, actors,
+had a right to exist Lord Ashbridge did not question.  They were no
+doubt (or might be) very excellent people in their way, and as a
+matter of fact he often recognised their existence by going to the
+opera, to the private view of the Academy, or to the play, and he
+took a very considerable pride of proprietorship in his own
+admirable collection of family portraits.  But then those were
+pictures of Combers; Reynolds and Romney and the rest of them had
+enjoyed the privilege of perpetuating on their canvases these big,
+fine men and charming women.  But that a Comber--and that one
+positively the next Lord Ashbridge--should intend to devote his
+energies to an artistic calling, and allude to that scheme as doing
+something with his life, was a thing as unthinkable as if the
+butler had developed a fixed idea that he was "one of us."
+
+The blow was a recent one; Michael's letter had only reached his
+father this morning, and at the present moment Lord Ashbridge was
+attempting over a cup of tea on the long south terrace overlooking
+the estuary to convey--not very successfully--to his wife something
+of his feelings on the subject.  She, according to her custom, was
+drinking a little hot water herself, and providing her Chinese pug
+with a mixture of cream and crumbled rusks.  Though the dog was of
+undoubtedly high lineage, Lord Ashbridge rather detested her.
+
+"A musical career!" he exclaimed, referring to Michael's letter.
+"What sort of a career for a Comber is a musical career?  I shall
+tell Michael pretty roundly when he arrives this evening what I
+think of it all.  We shall have Francis next saying that he wants
+to resign, too, and become a dentist."
+
+Lady Ashbridge considered this for a moment in her stunned mind.
+
+"Dear me, Robert, I hope not," she said.  "I do not think it the
+least likely that Francis would do anything of the kind.  Look,
+Petsy is better; she has drunk her cream and rusks quite up.  I
+think it was only the heat."
+
+He gave a little good-humoured giggle of falsetto laughter.
+
+"I wish, Marion," he said, "that you could manage to take your mind
+off your dog for a moment and attend to me.  And I must really ask
+you not to give your Petsy any more cream, or she will certainly be
+sick."
+
+Lady Ashbridge gave a little sigh.
+
+"All gone, Petsy," she said.
+
+"I am glad it has all gone," said he, "and we will hope it won't
+return.  But about Michael now!"
+
+Lady Ashbridge pulled herself together.
+
+"Yes, poor Michael!" she said.  "He is coming to-night, is he not?
+But just now you were speaking of Francis, and the fear of his
+wanting to be a dentist!"
+
+"Well, I am now speaking of Michael's wanting to be a musician.  Of
+course that is utterly out of the question.  If, as he says, he has
+sent in his resignation, he will just have to beg them to cancel
+it.  Michael seems not to have the slightest idea of the duties
+which his birth and position entail on him.  Unfitted for the life
+he now leads . . . waste of time. . . .  Instead he proposes to go
+to Baireuth in August, and then to settle down in London to study!"
+
+Lady Ashbridge recollected the almanac.
+
+"That will be in September, then," she said.  "I do not think I was
+ever in London in September.  I did not know that anybody was."
+
+"The point, my dear, is not how or where you have been accustomed
+to spend your Septembers," said her husband.  "What we are talking
+about is--"
+
+"Yes, dear, I know quite well what we are talking about," said she.
+"We are talking about Michael not studying music all September."
+
+Lord Ashbridge got up and began walking across the terrace opposite
+the tea-table with his elbows stuck out and his feet lifted rather
+high.
+
+"Michael doesn't seem to realise that he is not Tom or Dick or
+Harry," said he.  "Music, indeed!  I'm musical myself; all we
+Combers are musical.  But Michael is my only son, and it really
+distresses me to see how little sense he has of his
+responsibilities.  Amusements are all very well; it is not that I
+want to cut him off his amusements, but when it comes to a career--"
+
+Lady Ashbridge was surreptitiously engaged in pouring out a little
+more cream for Petsy, and her husband, turning rather sooner than
+she had expected, caught her in the act.
+
+"Do not give Petsy any more cream," he said, with some asperity; "I
+absolutely forbid it."
+
+Lady Ashbridge quite composedly replaced the cream-jug.
+
+"Poor Petsy!" she observed.
+
+"I ask you to attend to me, Marion," he said.
+
+"But I am attending to you very well, Robert," said she, "and I
+understand you perfectly.  You do not want Michael to be a musician
+in September and wear long hair and perhaps play at concerts.  I am
+sure I quite agree with you, for such a thing would be as unheard
+of in my family as in yours.  But how do you propose to stop it?"
+
+"I shall use my authority," he said, stepping a little higher.
+
+"Yes, dear, I am sure you will.  But what will happen if Michael
+doesn't pay any attention to your authority?  You will be worse off
+than ever.  Poor Michael is very obedient when he is told to do
+anything he intends to do, but when he doesn't agree it is
+difficult to do anything with him.  And, you see, he is quite
+independent of you with my mother having left him so much money.
+Poor mamma!"
+
+Lord Ashbridge felt strongly about this.
+
+"It was a most extraordinary disposition of her property for your
+mother to make," he observed.  "It has given Michael an
+independence which I much deplore.  And she did it in direct
+opposition to my wishes."
+
+This touched on one of the questions about which Lady Ashbridge had
+her convictions.  She had a mild but unalterable opinion that when
+anybody died, all that they had previously done became absolutely
+flawless and laudable.
+
+"Mamma did as she thought right with her property," she said, "and
+it is not for us to question it.  She was conscientiousness itself.
+You will have to excuse my listening to any criticism you may feel
+inclined to make about her, Robert."
+
+"Certainly, my dear.  I only want you to listen to me about
+Michael.  You agree with me on the impossibility of his adopting a
+musical career.  I cannot, at present, think so ill of Michael as
+to suppose that he will defy our joint authority."
+
+"Michael has a great will of his own," she remarked.  "He gets that
+from you, Robert, though he gets his money from his grandmother."
+
+The futility of further discussion with his wife began to dawn on
+Lord Ashbridge, as it dawned on everybody who had the privilege of
+conversing with her.  Her mind was a blind alley that led nowhere;
+it was clear that she had no idea to contribute to the subject
+except slightly pessimistic forebodings with which, unfortunately,
+he found himself secretly disposed to agree.  He had always felt
+that Michael was an uncomfortable sort of boy; in other words, that
+he had the inconvenient habit of thinking things out for himself,
+instead of blindly accepting the conclusions of other people.
+
+Much as Lord Ashbridge valued the sturdy independence of character
+which he himself enjoyed displaying, he appreciated it rather less
+highly when it was manifested by people who were not sensible
+enough to agree with him.  He looked forward to Michael's arrival
+that evening with the feeling that there was a rebellious standard
+hoisted against the calm blue of the evening sky, and remembering
+the advent of his sister he wondered whether she would not join the
+insurgent.  Barbara Jerome, as has been remarked, often annoyed her
+brother; she also genially laughed at him; but Lord Ashbridge,
+partly from affection, partly from a loyal family sense of
+clanship, always expected his sister to spend a fortnight with him
+in August, and would have been much hurt had she refused to do so.
+Her husband, however, so far from spending a fortnight with his
+brother-in-law, never spent a minute in his presence if it could
+possibly be avoided, an arrangement which everybody concerned
+considered to be wise, and in the interests of cordiality.
+
+"And Barbara comes this evening as well as Michael, does she not?"
+he said.  "I hope she will not take Michael's part in his absurd
+scheme."
+
+"I have given Barbara the blue room," said Lady Ashbridge, after a
+little thought.  "I am afraid she may bring her great dog with her.
+I hope he will not quarrel with Petsy.  Petsy does not like other
+dogs."
+
+
+The day had been very hot, and Lord Ashbridge, not having taken any
+exercise, went off to have a round of golf with the professional of
+the links that lay not half a mile from the house.  He considered
+exercise an essential part of the true Englishman's daily
+curriculum, and as necessary a contribution to the traditional mode
+of life which made them all what they were--or should be--as a bath
+in the morning or attendance at church on Sunday.  He did not care
+so much about playing golf with a casual friend, because the casual
+friend, as a rule, casually beat him--thus putting him in an un-
+English position--and preferred a game with this first-class
+professional whose duty it was--in complete violation of his
+capacities--to play just badly enough to be beaten towards the end
+of the round after an exciting match.  It required a good deal of
+cleverness and self-control to accomplish this, for Lord Ashbridge
+was a notably puerile performer, but he generally managed it with
+tact and success, by dint of missing absurdly easy putts, and (here
+his skill came in) by pulling and slicing his ball into far-distant
+bunkers.  Throughout the game it was his business to keep up a
+running fire of admiring ejaculations such as "Well driven, my
+lord," or "A fine putt, my lord.  Ah! dear me, I wish I could putt
+like that," though occasionally his chorus of praise betrayed him
+into error, and from habit he found himself saying: "Good shot, my
+lord," when my lord had just made an egregious mess of things.  But
+on the whole he devised so pleasantly sycophantic an atmosphere as
+to procure a substantial tip for himself, and to make Lord
+Ashbridge conscious of being a very superior performer.  Whether at
+the bottom of his heart he knew he could not play at all, he
+probably did not inquire; the result of his matches and his
+opponent's skilfully-showered praise was sufficient for him.  So
+now he left the discouraging companionship of his wife and Petsy
+and walked swingingly across the garden and the park to the links,
+there to seek in Macpherson's applause the self-confidence that
+would enable him to encounter his republican sister and his musical
+son with an unyielding front.
+
+His spirits mounted rapidly as he went.  It pleased him to go
+jauntily across the lawn and reflect that all this smooth turf was
+his, to look at the wealth of well-tended flowers in his garden and
+know that all this polychromatic loveliness was bred in Lord
+Ashbridge's borders (and was graciously thrown open to the gaze of
+the admiring public on Sunday afternoon, when they were begged to
+keep off the grass), and that Lord Ashbridge was himself.  He liked
+reminding himself that the towering elms drew their leafy verdure
+from Lord Ashbridge's soil; that the rows of hen-coops in the park,
+populous and cheeping with infant pheasants, belonged to the same
+fortunate gentleman who in November would so unerringly shoot them
+down as they rocketted swiftly over the highest of his tree-tops;
+that to him also appertained the long-fronted Jacobean house which
+stood so commandingly upon the hill-top, and glowed with all the
+mellowness of its three-hundred-years-old bricks.  And his
+satisfaction was not wholly fatuous nor entirely personal; all
+these spacious dignities were insignia (temporarily conferred on
+him, like some order, and permanently conferred on his family) of
+the splendid political constitution under which England had made
+herself mistress of an empire and the seas that guarded it.
+Probably he would have been proud of belonging to that even if he
+had not been "one of us"; as it was, the high position which he
+occupied in it caused that pride to be slightly mixed with the
+pride that was concerned with the notion of the Empire belonging to
+him and his peers.
+
+But though he was the most profound of Tories, he would truthfully
+have professed (as indeed he practised in the management of his
+estates) the most Liberal opinions as to schemes for the
+amelioration of the lower classes.  Only, just as the music he was
+good enough to listen to had to be played for him, so the tenants
+and farmers had to be his dependents.  He looked after them very
+well indeed, conceiving this to be the prime duty of a great
+landlord, but his interest in them was really proprietary.  It was
+of his bounty, and of his complete knowledge of what his duties as
+"one of us" were, that he did so, and any legislation which
+compelled him to part with one pennyworth of his property for the
+sake of others less fortunate he resisted to the best of his
+ability as a theft of what was his.  The country, in fact, if it
+went to the dogs (and certain recent legislation distinctly seemed
+to point kennelwards), would go to the dogs because ignorant
+politicians, who were most emphatically not "of us," forced him and
+others like him to recognise the rights of dependents instead of
+trusting to their instinctive fitness to dispense benefits not as
+rights but as acts of grace.  If England trusted to her aristocracy
+(to put the matter in a nutshell) all would be well with her in the
+future even as it had been in the past, but any attempt to curtail
+their splendours must inevitably detract from the prestige and
+magnificence of the Empire. . . .  And he responded suitably to the
+obsequious salute of the professional, and remembered that the
+entire golf links were his property, and that the Club paid a
+merely nominal rental to him, just the tribute money of a penny
+which was due to Caesar.
+
+
+For the next hour or two after her husband had left her, Lady
+Ashbridge occupied herself in the thoroughly lady-like pursuit of
+doing nothing whatever; she just existed in her comfortable chair,
+since Barbara might come any moment, and she would have to
+entertain her, which she frequently did unawares.  But as Barbara
+continued not to come, she took up her perennial piece of
+needlework, feeling rather busy and pressed, and had hardly done so
+when her sister-in-law arrived.
+
+She was preceded by an enormous stag-hound, who, having been shut
+up in her motor all the way from London, bounded delightedly, with
+the sense of young limbs released, on to the terrace, and made wild
+leaps in a circle round the horrified Petsy, who had just received
+a second saucerful of cream.  Once he dashed in close, and with a
+single lick of his tongue swept the saucer dry of nutriment, and
+with hoarse barkings proceeded again to dance corybantically about,
+while Lady Ashbridge with faint cries of dismay waved her
+embroidery at him.  Then, seeing his mistress coming out of the
+French window from the drawing-room, he bounded calf-like towards
+her, and Petsy, nearly sick with cream and horror, was gathered to
+Lady Ashbridge's bosom.
+
+"My dear Barbara," she said, "how upsetting your dog is!  Poor
+Petsy's heart is beating terribly; she does not like dogs.  But I
+am very pleased to see you, and I have given you the blue room."
+
+It was clearly suitable that Barbara Jerome should have a large
+dog, for both in mind and body she was on the large scale herself.
+She had a pleasant, high-coloured face, was very tall, enormously
+stout, and moved with great briskness and vigour.  She had
+something to say on any subject that came on the board; and, what
+was less usual in these days of universal knowledge, there was
+invariably some point in what she said.  She had, in the ordinary
+sense of the word, no manners at all, but essentially made up for
+this lack by her sincere and humourous kindliness.  She saw with
+acute vividness the ludicrous side of everybody, herself included,
+and to her mind the arch-humourist of all was her brother, whom she
+was quite unable to take seriously.  She dressed as if she had
+looted a milliner's shop and had put on in a great hurry anything
+that came to hand.  She towered over her sister-in-law as she
+kissed her, and Petsy, safe in her citadel, barked shrilly.
+
+"My dear, which is the blue room?" she said.  "I hope it is big
+enough for Og and me.  Yes, that is Og, which is short for dog.  He
+takes two mutton-chops for dinner, and a little something during
+the night if he feels disposed, because he is still growing.  Tony
+drove down with me, and is in the car now.  He would not come in
+for fear of seeing Robert, so I ventured to tell them to take him a
+cup of tea there, which he will drink with the blinds down, and
+then drive back to town again.  He has been made American
+ambassador, by the way, and will go in to dinner before Robert.  My
+dear, I can think of few things which Robert is less fitted to bear
+than that.  However, we all have our crosses, even those of us who
+have our coronets also."
+
+Lady Ashbridge's hospitable instincts asserted themselves.  "But
+your husband must come in," she said.  "I will go and tell him.
+And Robert has gone to play golf."
+
+Barbara laughed.
+
+"I am quite sure Tony won't come in," she said.  "I promised him he
+shouldn't, and he only drove down with me on the express
+stipulation that no risks were to be run about his seeing Robert.
+We must take no chances, so let him have his tea quietly in the
+motor and then drive away again.  And who else is there?  Anybody?
+Michael?"
+
+"Michael comes this evening."
+
+"I am glad; I am particularly fond of Michael.  Also he will play
+to us after dinner, and though I don't know one note from another,
+it will relieve me of sitting in a stately circle watching Robert
+cheat at patience.  I always find the evenings here rather trying;
+they remind me of being in church.  I feel as if I were part of a
+corporate body, which leads to misplaced decorum.  Ah! there is the
+sound of Tony's retreating motor; his strategic movement has come
+off.  And now give me some news, if you can get in a word.  Dear
+me, there is Robert coming back across the lawn.  What a mercy that
+Tony did not leave the motor.  Robert always walks as if he was
+dancing a minuet.  Look, there is Og imitating him!  Or is he
+stalking him, thinking he is an enemy.  Og, come here!"
+
+She whistled shrilly on her fingers, and rose to greet her brother,
+whom Og was still menacing, as he advanced towards her with
+staccato steps.  Barbara, however, got between Og and his prey, and
+threw her parasol at him.
+
+"My dear, how are you?" she said.  "And how did the golf go?  And
+did you beat the professional?"
+
+He suspected flippancy here, and became markedly dignified.
+
+"An excellent match," he said, "and Macpherson tells me I played a
+very sound game.  I am delighted to see you, Barbara.  And did
+Michael come down with you?"
+
+"No.  I drove from town.  It saves time, but not expense, with your
+awful trains."
+
+"And you are well, and Mr. Jerome?" he asked.  He always called his
+brother-in-law Mr. Jerome, to indicate the gulf between them.
+Barbara gave a little spurt of laughter.
+
+"Yes, his excellency is quite well," she said.  "You must call him
+excellency now, my dear."
+
+"Indeed!  That is a great step."
+
+"Considering that Tony began as an office-boy.  How richly
+rewarding you are, my dear.  And shan't I make an odd ambassadress!
+I haven't been to a Court since the dark ages, when I went to those
+beloved States.  We will practise after dinner, dear, and you and
+Marion shall be the King and Queen, and I will try to walk
+backwards without tumbling on my head.  You will like being the
+King, Robert.  And then we will be ourselves again, all except Og,
+who shall be Tony and shall go out of the room before you."
+
+He gave his treble little giggle, for on the whole it answered
+better not to be dignified with Barbara, whenever he could remember
+not to be; and Lady Ashbridge, still nursing Petsy, threw a
+bombshell of the obvious to explode the conversation.
+
+"Og has two mutton-chops for his dinner," she said, "and he is
+growing still.  Fancy!"
+
+Lord Ashbridge took a refreshing glance at the broad stretch of
+country that all belonged to him.
+
+"I am rather glad to have this opportunity of talking to you, my
+dear Barbara," he said, "before Michael comes."
+
+"His train gets in half an hour before dinner" said Lady Ashbridge.
+"He has to change at Stoneborough."
+
+"Quite so.  I heard from Michael this morning, saying that he has
+resigned his commission in the Guards, and is going to take up
+music seriously."
+
+Barbara gave a delighted exclamation.
+
+"But how perfectly splendid!" she said.  "Fancy a Comber doing
+anything original!  Michael and I are the only Combers who ever
+have, since Combers 'arose from out the azure main' in the year
+one.  I married an American; that's something, though it's not up to
+Michael!"
+
+"That is not quite my view of it," said he.  "As for its being
+original, it would be original enough if Marion eloped with a
+Patagonian."
+
+Lady Ashbridge let fall her embroidery at this monstrous
+suggestion.
+
+"You are talking very wildly, Robert," she said, in a pained voice.
+
+"My dear, get on with your sacred carpet," said he.  "I am talking
+to Barbara.  I have already ascertained your--your lack of views on
+the subject.  I was saying, Barbara, that mere originality is not a
+merit."
+
+"No, you never said that," remarked Lady Ashbridge.
+
+"I should have if you had allowed me to.  And as for your saying
+that he has done it, Barbara, that is very wide of the mark, and I
+intend shall continue to be so."
+
+"Dear great Bashaw, that is just what you said to me when I told
+you I was going to marry his Excellency.  But I did.  And I think
+it is a glorious move on Michael's part.  It requires brain to find
+out what you like, and character to go and do it.  Combers haven't
+got brains as a rule, you see.  If they ever had any, they have
+degenerated into conservative instincts."
+
+He again refreshed himself with the landscape.  The roofs of
+Ashbridge were visible in the clear sunset. . . .  Ashbridge paid
+its rents with remarkable regularity.
+
+"That may or may not be so," he said, forgetting for a moment the
+danger of being dignified.  "But Combers have position."
+
+Barbara controlled herself admirably.  A slight tremor shook her,
+which he did not notice.
+
+"Yes, dear," she said.  "I allow that Combers have had for many
+generations a sort of acquisitive cunning, for all we possess has
+come to us by exceedingly prudent marriages.  They have also--I am
+an exception here--the gift of not saying very much, which
+certainly has an impressive effect, even when it arises from not
+having very much to say.  They are sticky; they attract wealth, and
+they have the force called vis inertiae, which means that they
+invest their money prudently.  You should hear Tony--well, perhaps
+you had better not hear Tony.  But now here is Michael showing that
+he has got tastes.  Can you wonder that I'm delighted?  And not
+only has he got tastes, but he has the strength of character to
+back them.  Michael, in the Guards too!  It was a perfect farce,
+and he's had the sense to see it.  He hated his duties, and he
+hated his diversions.  Now Francis--"
+
+"I am afraid Michael has always been a little jealous of Francis,"
+remarked his father.
+
+This roused Barbara; she spoke quite seriously:
+
+"If you really think that, my dear," she said, "you have the
+distinction of being the worst possible judge of character that the
+world has ever known.  Michael might be jealous of anybody else,
+for the poor boy feels his physical awkwardness most sensitively,
+but Francis is just the one person he really worships.  He would do
+anything in the world for him."
+
+The discussion with Barbara was being even more fruitless than that
+with his wife, and Lord Ashbridge rose.
+
+"All I can do, then, is to ask you not to back Michael up," he
+said.
+
+"My dear, he won't need backing up.  He's a match for you by
+himself.  But if Michael, after thoroughly worsting you, asks me my
+opinion, I shall certainly give it him.  But he won't ask my
+opinion first.  He will strew your limbs, Robert, over this
+delightful terrace."
+
+"Michael's train is late," said Lady Ashbridge, hearing the stable
+clock strike.  "He should have been here before this."
+
+Barbara had still a word to say, and disregarded this quencher.
+
+"But don't think, Robert," she said, "that because Michael resists
+your wishes and authority, he will be enjoying himself.  He will
+hate doing it, but that will not stop him."
+
+Lord Ashbridge was not a bully; he had merely a profound sense of
+his own importance.
+
+"We will see about resistance," he said.
+
+Barbara was not so successful on this occasion, and exploded
+loudly:
+
+"You will, dear, indeed," she said.
+
+
+Michael meantime had been travelling down from London without
+perturbing himself over the scene with his father which he knew lay
+before him.  This was quite characteristic of him; he had a
+singular command over his imagination when he had made up his mind
+to anything, and never indulged in the gratuitous pain of
+anticipation.  Today he had an additional bulwark against such
+self-inflicted worries, for he had spent his last two hours in town
+at the vocal recital of a singer who a month before had stirred the
+critics into rhapsody over her gift of lyric song.  Up till now he
+had had no opportunity of hearing her; and, with the panegyrics
+that had been showered on her in his mind, he had gone with the
+expectation of disappointment.  But now, an hour afterwards, the
+wheels of the train sang her songs, and in the inward ear he could
+recapture, with the vividness of an hallucination, the timbre of
+that wonderful voice and also the sweet harmonies of the pianist
+who accompanied her.
+
+The hall had been packed from end to end, and he had barely got to
+his seat, the only one vacant in the whole room, when Miss Sylvia
+Falbe appeared, followed at once by her accompanist, whose name
+occurred nowhere on the programme.  Two neighbours, however, who
+chatted shrilly during the applause that greeted them, informed him
+that this was Hermann, "dear Hermann; there is no one like him!"
+But it occurred to Michael that the singer was like him, though she
+was fair and he dark.  But his perception of either of them
+visually was but vague; he had come to hear and not to see.
+Neither she nor Hermann had any music with them, and Hermann just
+glanced at the programme, which he put down on the top of the
+piano, which, again unusually, was open.  Then without pause they
+began the set of German songs--Brahms, Schubert, Schumann--with
+which the recital opened.  And for one moment, before he lost
+himself in the ecstasy of hearing, Michael found himself
+registering the fact that Sylvia Falbe had one of the most charming
+faces he had ever seen.  The next he was swallowed up in melody.
+
+She had the ease of the consummate artist, and each note, like the
+gates of the New Jerusalem, was a pearl, round and smooth and
+luminous almost, so that it was as if many-coloured light came from
+her lips.  Nor was that all; it seemed as if the accompaniment was
+made by the song itself, coming into life with the freshness of the
+dawn of its creation; it was impossible to believe that one mind
+directed the singer and another the pianist, and if the voice was
+an example of art in excelsis, not less exalted was the perfection
+of the player.  Not for a moment through the song did he take his
+eyes off her; he looked at her with an intensity of gaze that
+seemed to be reading the emotion with which the lovely melody
+filled her.  For herself, she looked straight out over the hall,
+with grey eyes half-closed, and mouth that in the pauses of her
+song was large and full-lipped, generously curving, and face that
+seemed lit with the light of the morning she sang of.  She was the
+song; Michael thought of her as just that, and the pianist who
+watched and understood her so unerringly was the song, too.  They
+had for him no identity of their own; they were as remote from
+everyday life as the mind of Schumann which they made so vivid.  It
+was then that they existed.
+
+The last song of the group she sang in English, for it was "Who is
+Sylvia?"  There was a buzz of smiles and whispers among the front
+row in the pause before it, and regaining her own identity for a
+moment, she smiled at a group of her friends among whom clearly it
+was a cliche species of joke that she should ask who Sylvia was,
+and enumerate her merits, when all the time she was Sylvia.
+Michael felt rather impatient at this; she was not anybody just now
+but a singer.  And then came the divine inevitable simplicity of
+perfect words and the melody preordained for them.  The singer, as
+he knew, was German, but she had no trace of foreign accent.  It
+seemed to him that this was just one miracle the more; she had
+become English because she was singing what Shakespeare wrote.
+
+The next group, consisting of modern French songs, appeared to
+Michael utterly unworthy of the singer and the echoing piano.  If
+you had it in you to give reality to great and simple things, it
+was surely a waste to concern yourself with these little morbid,
+melancholy manikins, these marionettes.  But his emotions being
+unoccupied he attended more to the manner of the performance, and
+in especial to the marvellous technique, not so much of the singer,
+but of the pianist who caused the rain to fall and the waters
+reflect the toneless grey skies.  He had never, even when listening
+to the great masters, heard so flawless a comprehension as this
+anonymous player, incidentally known as Hermann, exhibited.  As far
+as mere manipulation went, it was, as might perhaps be expected,
+entirely effortless, but effortless no less was the understanding
+of the music.  It happened. . . .  It was like that.
+
+All of this so filled Michael's mind as he travelled down that
+evening to Ashbridge, that he scarcely remembered the errand on
+which he went, and when it occurred to him it instantly sank out of
+sight again, lost in the recollection of the music which he had
+heard to-day and which belonged to the art that claimed the
+allegiance of his soul.  The rattle of the wheels was alchemised
+into song, and as with half-closed eyes he listened to it, there
+swam across it now the full face of the singer, now the profile of
+the pianist, that had stood out white and intent against the dark
+panelling behind his head.  He had gleaned one fact at the box-
+office as he hurried out to catch his train: this Hermann was the
+singer's brother, a teacher of the piano in London, and apparently
+highly thought of.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Michael's train, as his mother had so infallibly pronounced, was
+late, and he had arrived only just in time to hurry to his room and
+dress quickly, in order not to add to his crimes the additional one
+of unpunctuality, for unpunctuality, so Lord Ashbridge held, was
+the politeness not only of kings, but of all who had any pretence
+to decent breeding.  His father gave him a carefully-iced welcome,
+his mother the tip of her long, camel-like lips, and they waited
+solemnly for the appearance of Aunt Barbara, who, it would seem,
+had forfeited her claims to family by her marriage.  A man-servant
+and a half looked after each of them at dinner, and the twelve Lord
+Ashbridges in uniform looked down from their illuminated frames on
+their degenerate descendant.
+
+The only bright spot in this portentous banquet was Aunt Barbara,
+who had chosen that evening, with what intention may possibly be
+guessed, to put on an immense diamond tiara and a breastplate of
+rubies, while Og, after one futile attempt to play with the
+footmen, yielded himself up to the chilling atmosphere of good
+breeding, and ate his mutton-chops with great composure.  But Aunt
+Barbara, fortified by her gems, ate an excellent dinner, and talked
+all the time with occasional bursts of unexplained laughter.
+
+Afterwards, when Michael was left alone with his father, he found
+that his best efforts at conversation elicited only monosyllabic
+replies, and at last, in the despairing desire to bring things to a
+head, he asked him if he had received his letter.  An affirmative
+monosyllable, followed by the hissing of Lord Ashbridge's cigarette
+end as he dropped it into his coffee cup, answered him, and he
+perceived that the approaching storm was to be rendered duly
+impressive by the thundery stillness that preceded it.  Then his
+father rose, and as he passed Michael, who held the door open for
+him, said:
+
+"If you can spare the time, Michael, I would like to have a talk
+with you when your mother and aunt have gone to bed."
+
+That was not very long delayed; Michael imagined that Aunt Barbara
+must have had a hint, for before half-past ten she announced with a
+skilfully suppressed laugh that she was about to retire, and kissed
+Michael affectionately.  Both her laugh and her salute were
+encouraging; he felt that he was being backed up.  Then a
+procession of footmen came into the room bearing lemonade and soda
+water and whiskey and a plate of plain biscuits, and the moment
+after he was alone with his father.
+
+Lord Ashbridge rose and walked, very tall and majestic, to the
+fireplace, where he stood for a moment with his back to his son.
+Then he turned round.
+
+"Now about this nonsense of your resigning your commission,
+Michael," he said.  "I don't propose to argue about it, and I am
+just going to tell you.  If, as you have informed me, you have
+actually sent it in, you will write to-morrow with due apologies
+and ask that it may be withdrawn.  I will see your letter before
+you send it."
+
+Michael had intended to be as quiet and respectful as possible,
+consistent with firmness, but a sentence here gave him a spasm of
+anger.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, sir," he said, "by saying 'if I have
+sent it in.'  You have received my letter in which I tell you that
+I have done so."
+
+Already, even at the first words, there was bad blood between them.
+Michael's face had clouded with that gloom which his father would
+certainly call sulky, and for himself he resented the tone of
+Michael's reply.  To make matters worse he gave his little falsetto
+cackle, which no doubt was intended to convey the impression of
+confident good humour.  But there was, it must be confessed, very
+little good humour about it, though he still felt no serious doubt
+about the result of this interview.
+
+"I'm afraid, perhaps, then, that I did not take your letter quite
+seriously, my dear Michael," he said, in the bantering tone that
+froze Michael's cordiality completely up.  "I glanced through it; I
+saw a lot of nonsense--or so it struck me--about your resigning
+your commission and studying music; I think you mentioned Baireuth,
+and settling down in London afterwards."
+
+"Yes.  I said all that," said Michael.  "But you make a mistake if
+you do not see that it was written seriously."
+
+His father glanced across at him, where he sat with his heavy,
+plain face, his long arms and short legs, and the sight merely
+irritated him.  With his passion for convention (and one of the
+most important conventions was that Combers should be fine,
+strapping, normal people) he hated the thought that it was his son
+who presented that appearance.  And his son's mind seemed to him at
+this moment as ungainly as his person.  Again, very unwisely, he
+laughed, still thinking to carry this off by the high hand.
+
+"Yes, but I can't take that rubbish seriously," he said.  "I am
+asking your permission now to inquire, without any nonsense, into
+what you mean."
+
+Michael frowned.  He felt the insincerity of his father's laugh,
+and rebelled against the unfairness of it.  The question, he knew
+well, was sarcastically asked, the flavour of irony in the
+"permission to inquire" was not there by accident.  To speak like
+that implied contempt of his opposition; he felt that he was being
+treated like a child over some nursery rebellion, in which,
+subsequently, there is no real possibility of disobedience.  He
+felt his anger rising in spite of himself.
+
+"If you refer to it as rubbish, sir, there is the end of the
+matter."
+
+"Ah! I thought we should soon agree," said Lord Ashbridge,
+chuckling.
+
+"You mistake me," said Michael.  "There is the end of the matter,
+because I won't discuss it any more, if you treat me like this.  I
+will say good night, if you intend to persist in the idea that you
+can just brush my resolves away like that."
+
+This clearly took his father aback; it was a perfectly dignified
+and proper attitude to take in the face of ridicule, and Lord
+Ashbridge, though somewhat an adept at the art of self-deception--
+as, for instance, when he habitually beat the golf professional--
+could not disguise from himself that his policy had been to laugh
+and blow away Michael's absurd ideas.  But it was abundantly clear
+at this moment that this apparently easy operation was out of his
+reach.
+
+He got up with more amenity in his manner than he had yet shown,
+and laid his hand on Michael's shoulder as he stood in front of
+him, evidently quite prepared to go away.
+
+"Come, my dear Michael.  This won't do," he said.  "I thought it
+best to treat your absurd schemes with a certain lightness, and I
+have only succeeded in irritating you."
+
+Michael was perfectly aware that he had scored.  And as his object
+was to score he made another criticism.
+
+"When you say 'absurd schemes,' sir," he said, with quiet respect,
+"are you not still laughing at them?"
+
+Lord Ashbridge again retreated strategically.
+
+"Very well; I withdraw absurd," he said.  "Now sit down again, and
+we will talk.  Tell me what is in your mind."
+
+Michael made a great effort with himself.  He desired, in the
+secret, real Michael, to be reasonable and cordial, to behave
+filially, while all the time his nerves were on edge with his
+father's ridicule, and with his instinctive knowledge of his
+father's distaste for him.
+
+"Well, it's like this, father," he said.  "I'm doing no good as I
+am.  I went into the Guards, as you know, because it was the right
+thing to do.  A business man's son is put into business for the
+same reason.  And I'm not good at it."
+
+Michael paused a moment.
+
+"My heart isn't in it," he said, "and I dislike it.  It seems to me
+useless.  We're for show.  And my heart is quite entirely in music.
+It's the thing I care for more than anything else."
+
+Again he paused; all that came so easily to his tongue when he was
+speaking to Francis was congealed now when he felt the contempt
+with which, though unexpressed, he knew he inspired his father.
+
+Lord Ashbridge waited with careful politeness, his eyes fixed on
+the ceiling, his large person completely filling his chair, just as
+his atmosphere filled the room.  He said nothing at all until the
+silence rang in Michael's ears.
+
+"That is all I can tell you," he said at length.
+
+Lord Ashbridge carefully conveyed the ash from his cigarette to the
+fireplace before he spoke.  He felt that the time had come for his
+most impressive effort.
+
+"Very well, then, listen to me," he said.  "What you suffer from,
+Michael, is a mere want of self-confidence and from modesty.  You
+don't seem to grasp--I have often noticed this--who you are and
+what your importance is--an importance which everybody is willing
+to recognise if you will only assume it.  You have the privileges
+of your position, which you don't sufficiently value, but you have,
+also, the responsibilities of it, which I am afraid you are
+inclined to shirk.  You haven't got the large view; you haven't the
+sense of patriotism.  There are a great many things in my position--
+the position into which you will step--which I would much sooner
+be without.  But we have received a tradition, and we are bound to
+hand it on intact.  You may think that this has nothing to do with
+your being in the Guards, but it has.  We"--and he seemed to swell
+a little--"we are bound in honour to take the lead in the service
+of our country, and we must do it whether we like it or not.  We
+have to till, with our own efforts, 'our goodly heritage.'  You
+have to learn the meaning of such words as patriotism, and caste,
+and duty."
+
+Lord Ashbridge thought that he was really putting this very well
+indeed, and he had the sustaining consciousness of sincerity.  He
+entirely believed what he said, and felt that it must carry
+conviction to anyone who listened to it with anything like an open
+mind.  The only thing that he did not allow for was that he
+personally immensely enjoyed his social and dominant position,
+thinking it indeed the only position which was really worth having.
+This naturally gave an aid to comprehension, and he did not take
+into account that Michael was not so blessed as he, and indeed
+lacked this very superior individual enlightenment.  But his own
+words kindled the flame of this illumination, and without noticing
+the blank stolidity of Michael's face he went on with gathering
+confidence:
+
+"I am sure you are high-minded, my dear Michael," he said.  "And it
+is to your high-mindedness that I--yes, I don't mind saying it--
+that I appeal.  In a moment of unreflectiveness you have thrown
+overboard what I am sure is real to you, the sense, broadly
+speaking, that you are English and of the highest English class,
+and have intended to devote yourself to more selfish and pleasure-
+loving aims, and to dwell in a tinkle of pleasant sounds that
+please your ear; and I'm sure I don't wonder, because, as your
+mother and I both know, you play charmingly.  But I feel confident
+that your better mind does not really confuse the mere diversions
+of life with its serious issues."
+
+Michael suddenly rose to his feet.
+
+"Father, I'm afraid this is no use at all," he said.  "All that I
+feel, and all that I can't say, I know is unintelligible to you.
+You have called it rubbish once, and you think it is rubbish
+still."
+
+Lord Ashbridge's eloquence was suddenly arrested.  He had been
+cantering gleefully along, and had the very distinct impression of
+having run up against a stone wall.  He dismounted, hurt, but in no
+way broken.
+
+"I am anxious to understand you, Michael," he said.
+
+"Yes, father, but you don't," said he.  "You have been explaining
+me all wrong.  For instance, I don't regard music as a diversion.
+That is the only explanation there is of me."
+
+"And as regards my wishes and my authority?" asked his father.
+
+Michael squared his shoulders and his mind.
+
+"I am exceedingly sorry to disappoint you in the matter of your
+wishes," he said; "but in the matter of your authority I can't
+recognise it when the question of my whole life is at stake.  I
+know that I am your son, and I want to be dutiful, but I have my
+own individuality as well.  That only recognises the authority of
+my own conscience."
+
+That seemed to Lord Ashbridge both tragic and ludicrous.
+Completely subservient himself to the conventions which he so much
+enjoyed, it was like the defiance of a child to say such things.
+He only just checked himself from laughing again.
+
+"I refuse to take that answer from you," he said.
+
+"I have no other to give you," said Michael.  "But I should like to
+say once more that I am sorry to disobey your wishes."
+
+The repetition took away his desire to laugh.  In fact, he could
+not have laughed.
+
+"I don't want to threaten you, Michael," he said.  "But you may
+know that I have a very free hand in the disposal of my property."
+
+"Is that a threat?" asked Michael.
+
+"It is a hint."
+
+"Then, father, I can only say that I should be perfectly satisfied
+with anything you may do," said Michael.  "I wish you could leave
+everything you have to Francis.  I tell you in all sincerity that I
+wish he had been my elder brother.  You would have been far better
+pleased with him."
+
+Lord Ashbridge's anger rose.  He was naturally so self-complacent
+as to be seldom disposed to anger, but its rarity was not due to
+kindliness of nature.
+
+"I have before now noticed your jealousy of your cousin," he
+observed.
+
+Michael's face went white.
+
+"That is infamous and untrue, father," he said.
+
+Lord Ashbridge turned on him.
+
+"Apologise for that," he said.
+
+Michael looked up at his high towering without a tremor.
+
+"I wait for the withdrawal of your accusation that I am jealous of
+Francis," he replied.
+
+There was a dead silence.  Lord Ashbridge stood there in swollen
+and speechless indignation, and Michael faced him undismayed. . . .
+And then suddenly to the boy there came an impulse of pure pity for
+his father's disappointment in having a son like himself.  He saw
+with the candour which was so real a part of him how hopeless it
+must be, to a man of his father's mind, to have a millstone like
+himself unalterably bound round his neck, fit to choke and drown
+him.
+
+"Indeed, I am not jealous of Francis, father," he said, "and I
+speak quite truthfully when I say how I sympathise with you in
+having a son like me.  I don't want to vex you.  I want to make the
+best of myself."
+
+Lord Ashbridge stood looking exactly like his statue in the market-
+place at Ashbridge.
+
+"If that is the case, Michael," he said, "it is within your power.
+You will write the letter I spoke about."
+
+Michael paused a moment as if waiting for more.  It did not seem to
+him possible that his appeal should bear no further fruit than
+that.  But it was soon clear that there was no more to come.
+
+"I will wish you good night, father," he said.
+
+
+Sunday was a day on which Lord Ashbridge was almost more himself
+than during the week, so shining and public an example did he
+become of the British nobleman.  Instead of having breakfast,
+according to the middle-class custom, rather later than usual, that
+solid sausagy meal was half an hour earlier, so that all the
+servants, except those whose presence in the house was imperatively
+necessary for purposes of lunch, should go to church.  Thus "Old
+George" and Lord Ashbridge's private boat were exceedingly busy for
+the half-hour preceding church time, the last boat-load holding the
+family, whose arrival was the signal for service to begin.  Lady
+Ashbridge, however, always went on earlier, for she presided at the
+organ with the long, camel-like back turned towards the
+congregation, and started playing a slow, melancholy voluntary when
+the boy who blew the bellows said to her in an ecclesiastical
+whisper:  "His lordship has arrived, my lady."  Those of the
+household who could sing (singing being construed in the sense of
+making a loud and cheerful noise in the throat) clustered in the
+choir-pews near the organ, while the family sat in a large, square
+box, with a stove in the centre, amply supplied with prayer-books
+of the time when even Protestants might pray for Queen Caroline.
+Behind them, separated from the rest of the church by an ornamental
+ironwork grille, was the Comber chapel, in which antiquarians took
+nearly as much pleasure as Lord Ashbridge himself.  Here reclined a
+glorious company of sixteenth century knights, with their
+honourable ladies at their sides, unyielding marble bolsters at
+their heads, and grotesque dogs at their feet.  Later, when their
+peerage was conferred, they lost a little of their yeoman
+simplicity, and became peruked and robed and breeched; one, indeed,
+in the age of George III., who was blessed with poetical
+aspirations, appeared in bare feet and a Roman toga with a scroll
+of manuscript in his hand; while later again, mere tablets on the
+walls commemorated their almost uncanny virtues.
+
+And just on the other side of the grille, but a step away, sat the
+present-day representatives of the line, while Lady Ashbridge
+finished the last bars of her voluntary, Lord Ashbridge himself and
+his sister, large and smart and comely, and Michael beside them,
+short and heavy, with his soul full of the aspirations his father
+neither could nor cared to understand.  According to his invariable
+custom, Lord Ashbridge read the lessons in a loud, sonorous voice,
+his large, white hands grasping the wing-feathers of the brass
+eagle, and a great carnation in his buttonhole; and when the time
+came for the offertory he put a sovereign in the open plate
+himself, and proceeded with his minuet-like step to go round the
+church and collect the gifts of the encouraged congregation.  He
+followed all the prayers in his book, he made the responses in a
+voice nearly as loud as that in which he read the lessons; he sang
+the hymns with a curious buzzing sound, and never for a moment did
+he lose sight of the fact that he was the head of the Comber
+family, doing his duty as the custom of the Combers was, and
+setting an example of godly piety.  Afterwards, as usual, he would
+change his black coat, eat a good lunch, stroll round the gardens
+(for he had nothing to say to golf on Sunday), and in the evening
+the clergyman would dine with him, and would be requested to say
+grace both before and after the meal.  He knew exactly the proper
+mode of passing the Sunday for the landlord on his country estate,
+and when Lord Ashbridge knew that a thing was proper he did it with
+invariable precision.
+
+Michael, of course, was in disgrace; his father, pending some
+further course of action, neither spoke to him nor looked at him;
+indeed, it seemed doubtful whether he would hand him the offertory
+plate, and it was perhaps a pity that he unbent even to this
+extent, for Michael happened to have none of the symbols of
+thankfulness about his person, and he saw a slight quiver pass
+through Aunt Barbara's hymn-book.  After a rather portentous lunch,
+however, there came some relief, for his father did not ask his
+company on the usual Sunday afternoon stroll, and Aunt Barbara
+never walked at all unless she was obliged.  In consequence, when
+the thunderstorm had stepped airily away across the park, Michael
+joined her on the terrace, with the intention of talking the
+situation over with her.
+
+Aunt Barbara was perfectly willing to do this, and she opened the
+discussion very pleasantly with peals of laughter.
+
+"My dear, I delight in you," she said; "and altogether this is the
+most entertaining day I have ever spent here.  Combers are supposed
+to be very serious, solid people, but for unconscious humour there
+isn't a family in England or even in the States to compare with
+them.  Our lunch just now; if you could put it into a satirical
+comedy called The Aristocracy it would make the fortune of any
+theatre."
+
+A dawning smile began to break through Michael's tragedy face.
+
+"I suppose it was rather funny," he said.  "But really I'm wretched
+about it, Aunt Barbara."
+
+"My dear, what is there to be wretched about?  You might have been
+wretched if you had found you couldn't stand up to your father, but
+I gather, though I know nothing directly, that you did.  At least,
+your mother has said to me three times, twice on the way to church
+and once coming back: 'Michael has vexed his father very much.'
+And the offertory plate, my dear, and, as I was saying, lunch!  I
+am in disgrace too, because I said perfectly plainly yesterday that
+I was on your side; and there we were at lunch, with your father
+apparently unable to see either you or me, and unconscious of our
+presence.  Fancy pretending not to see me!  You can't help seeing
+me, a large, bright object like me!  And what will happen next?
+That's what tickles me to death, as they say on my side of the
+Atlantic.  Will he gradually begin to perceive us again, like
+objects looming through a fog, or shall we come into view suddenly,
+as if going round a corner?  And you are just as funny, my dear,
+with your long face, and air of depressed determination.  Why be
+heavy, Michael?  So many people are heavy, and none of them can
+tell you why."
+
+It was impossible not to feel the unfreezing effect of this.
+Michael thawed to it, as he would have thawed to Francis.
+
+"Perhaps they can't help it, Aunt Barbara," he said.  "At least, I
+know I can't.  I really wish I could learn how to.  I--I don't see
+the funny side of things till it is pointed out.  I thought lunch a
+sort of hell, you know.  Of course, it was funny, his appearing not
+to see either of us.  But it stands for more than that; it stands
+for his complete misunderstanding of me."
+
+Aunt Barbara had the sense to see that the real Michael was
+speaking.  When people were being unreal, when they were pompous or
+adopting attitudes, she could attend to nothing but their
+absurdity, which engrossed her altogether.  But she never laughed
+at real things; real things were not funny, but were facts.
+
+"He quite misunderstands," went on Michael, with the eagerness with
+which the shy welcome comprehension.  "He thinks I can make my mind
+like his if I choose; and if I don't choose, or rather can't
+choose, he thinks that his wishes, his authority, should be
+sufficient to make me act as if it was.  Well, I won't do that.  He
+may go on,"--and that pleasant smile lit up Michael's plain face--
+"he may go on being unaware of my presence as long as he pleases.
+I am very sorry it should be so, but I can't help it.  And the
+worst of it is, that opposition of that sort--his sort--makes me
+more determined than ever."
+
+Aunt Barbara nodded.
+
+"And your friends?" she asked.  "What will they think?"
+
+Michael looked at her quite simply and directly.
+
+"Friends?" he said.  "I haven't got any."
+
+"Ah, my dear, that's nonsense!" she said.
+
+"I wish it was.  Oh, Francis is a friend, I know.  He thinks me an
+odd old thing, but he likes me.  Other people don't.  And I can't
+see why they should.  I'm sure it's my fault.  It's because I'm
+heavy.  You said I was, yourself."
+
+"Then I was a great ass," remarked Aunt Barbara.  "You wouldn't be
+heavy with people who understood you.  You aren't heavy with me,
+for instance; but, my dear, lead isn't in it when you are with your
+father."
+
+"But what am I to do, if I'm like that?" asked the boy.
+
+She held up her large, fat hand, and marked the points off on her
+fingers.
+
+"Three things," she said.  "Firstly, get away from people who don't
+understand you, and whom, incidentally, you don't understand.
+Secondly, try to see how ridiculous you and everybody else always
+are; and, thirdly, which is much the most important, don't think
+about yourself.  If I thought about myself I should consider how
+old and fat and ugly I am.  I'm not ugly, really; you needn't be
+foolish and tell me so.  I should spoil my life by trying to be
+young, and only eating devilled codfish and drinking hot plum-
+juice, or whatever is the accepted remedy for what we call obesity.
+We're all odd old things, as you say.  We can only get away from
+that depressing fact by doing something, and not thinking about
+ourselves.  We can all try not to be egoists.  Egoism is the really
+heavy quality in the world."
+
+She paused a moment in this inspired discourse and whistled to Og,
+who had stretched his weary limbs across a bed of particularly fine
+geraniums.
+
+"There!" she said, pointing, "if your dog had done that, you would
+be submerged in depression at the thought of how vexed your father
+would be.  That would be because you are thinking of the effect on
+yourself.  As it's my dog that has done it--dear me, they do look
+squashed now he has got up--you don't really mind about your
+father's vexation, because you won't have to think about yourself.
+That is wise of you; if you were a little wiser still, you would
+picture to yourself how ridiculous I shall look apologising for Og.
+Kindly kick him, Michael; he will understand.  Naughty!  And as for
+your not having any friends, that would be exceedingly sad, if you
+had gone the right way to get them and failed.  But you haven't.
+You haven't even gone among the people who could be your friends.
+Your friends, broadly speaking, must like the same sort of things
+as you.  There must be a common basis.  You can't even argue with
+somebody, or disagree with somebody unless you have a common ground
+to start from.  If I say that black is white, and you think it is
+blue, we can't get on.  It leads nowhere.  And, finally--"
+
+She turned round and faced him directly.
+
+"Finally, don't be so cross, my dear," she said.
+
+"But am I?" asked he.
+
+"Yes.  You don't know it, or else probably, since you are a very
+decent fellow, you wouldn't be.  You expect not to be liked, and
+that is cross of you.  A good-humoured person expects to be liked,
+and almost always is.  You expect not to be understood, and that's
+dreadfully cross.  You think your father doesn't understand you; no
+more he does, but don't go on thinking about it.  You think it is a
+great bore to be your father's only son, and wish Francis was
+instead.  That's cross; you may think it's fine, but it isn't, and
+it is also ungrateful.  You can have great fun if you will only be
+good-tempered!"
+
+"How did you know that--about Francis, I mean?" asked Michael.
+
+"Does it happen to be true?  Of course it does.  Every cross young
+man wishes he was somebody else."
+
+"No, not quite that," began Michael.
+
+"Don't interrupt.  It is sufficiently accurate.  And you think
+about your appearance, my dear.  It will do quite well.  You might
+have had two noses, or only one eye, whereas you have two rather
+jolly ones.  And do try to see the joke in other people, Michael.
+You didn't see the joke in your interview last night with your
+father.  It must have been excruciatingly funny.  I don't say it
+wasn't sad and serious as well.  But it was funny too; there were
+points."
+
+Michael shook his head.
+
+"I didn't see them," he said.
+
+"But I should have, and I should have been right.  All dignity is
+funny, simply because it is sham.  When dignity is real, you don't
+know it's dignity.  But your father knew he was being dignified,
+and you knew you were being dignified.  My dear, what a pair of
+you!"
+
+Michael frowned.
+
+"But is nothing serious, then?" he asked.  "Surely it was serious
+enough last night.  There was I in rank rebellion to my father, and
+it vexed him horribly; it did more, it grieved him."
+
+She laid her hand on Michael's knee.
+
+"As if I didn't know that!" she said.  "We're all sorry for that,
+though I should have been much sorrier if you had given in and
+ceased to vex him.  But there it is!  Accept that, and then, my
+dear, swiftly apply yourself to perceive the humour of it.  And
+now, about your plans!"
+
+"I shall go to Baireuth on Wednesday, and then on to Munich," began
+Michael.
+
+"That, of course.  Perhaps you may find the humour of a Channel
+crossing.  I look for it in vain.  Yet I don't know. . . .  The man
+who puts on a yachting-cap, and asks if there's a bit of a sea on.
+It proves to be the case, and he is excessively unwell.  I must
+look out for him next time I cross.  And then?"
+
+"Then I shall settle in town and study.  Oh, here's my father
+coming home."
+
+Lord Ashbridge approached down the terrace.  He stopped for a
+moment at the desecrated geranium bed, saw the two sitting
+together, and turned at right angles and went into the house.
+Almost immediately a footman came out with a long dog-lead and
+advanced hesitatingly to Og.  Og was convinced that he had come to
+play with him, and crouched and growled and retreated and advanced
+with engaging affability.  Out of the windows of the library looked
+Lord Ashbridge's baleful face. . . .  Aunt Barbara swayed out of
+her chair, and laid a trembling hand on Michael's shoulder.
+
+"I shall go and apologise for Og," she said.  "I shall do it quite
+sincerely, my dear.  But there are points."
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Michael practised a certain mature and rather elderly precision in
+the ordinary affairs of daily life.  His habits were almost unduly
+tidy and punctual; he answered letters by return of post, he never
+mislaid things nor tore up documents which he particularly desired
+should be preserved; he kept his gold in a purse and his change in
+a trousers-pocket, and in matters of travelling he always arrived
+at stations with plenty of time to spare, and had such creature
+comforts as he desired for his journey in a neat Gladstone bag
+above his head.  He never travelled first-class, for the very
+simple and adequate reason that, though very well off, he preferred
+to spend his money in ways that were more productive of usefulness
+or pleasure; and thus, when he took his place in the corner of a
+second-class compartment of the Dover-Ostend express on the
+Wednesday morning following, he was the only occupant of it.
+
+Probably he had never felt so fully at liberty, nor enjoyed a
+keener zest for life and the future.  For the first time he had
+asserted his own indisputable right to stand on his own feet, and
+though he was genuinely sorry for his father's chagrin at not being
+able to tuck him up in the family coach, his own sense of
+independence could not but wave its banners.  There had been a
+second interview, no less fruitless than the first, and Lord
+Ashbridge had told him that when next his presence was desired at
+home, he would be informed of the fact.  His mother had cried in a
+mild, trickling fashion, but it was quite obvious that in her heart
+of hearts she was more concerned with a bilious attack of peculiar
+intensity that had assailed Petsy.  She wished Michael would not be
+so disobedient and vex his father, but she was quite sure that
+before long some formula, in diplomatic phrase, would be found on
+which reconciliation could be based; whereas it was highly
+uncertain whether any formula could be found that would produce the
+desired effect on Petsy, whose illness she attributed to the shock
+of Og's sudden and disconcerting appearance on Saturday, when all
+Petsy's nervous force was required to digest the copious cream.
+Consequently, though she threw reproachful glances at Michael,
+those directed at Barbara, who was the cause of the acuter tragedy,
+were pointed with more penetrating blame.  Indeed, it is
+questionable whether Lady Ashbridge would have cried at all over
+Michael's affairs had not Petsy's also been in so lamentable and
+critical a state.
+
+Just as the train began to move out of the station a young man
+rushed across the platform, eluded the embrace of the guard who
+attempted to stop him with amazing agility, and jumped into
+Michael's compartment.  He slammed the door after him, and leaned
+out, apparently looking for someone, whom he soon saw.
+
+"Just caught it, Sylvia," he shouted.  "Send on my luggage, will
+you?  It's in the taxi still, I think, and I haven't paid the man.
+Good-bye, darling."
+
+He waved to her till the curving line took the platform out of
+sight, and then sat down with a laugh, and eyes of friendly
+interest for Michael.
+
+"Narrow squeak, wasn't it?" he said gleefully.  "I thought the
+guard had collared me.  And I should have missed Parsifal."
+
+Michael had recognised him at once as he rushed across the
+platform; his shouting to Sylvia had but confirmed the recognition;
+and here on the day of his entering into his new kingdom of liberty
+was one of its citizens almost thrown into his arms.  But for the
+moment his old invincible habit of shyness and sensitiveness
+forbade any responsive lightness of welcome, and he was merely
+formal, merely courteous.
+
+"And all your luggage left behind," he said.  "Won't you be
+dreadfully uncomfortable?"
+
+"Uncomfortable?  Why?" asked Falbe.  "I shall buy a handkerchief
+and a collar every day, and a shirt and a pair of socks every other
+day till it arrives."
+
+Michael felt a sudden, daring impulse.  He remembered Aunt
+Barbara's salutary remarks about crossness being the equivalent of
+thinking about oneself.  And the effort that it cost him may be
+taken as the measure of his solitary disposition.
+
+"But you needn't do that," he said, "if--if you will be good enough
+to borrow of me till your things come."
+
+He blurted it out awkwardly, almost brusquely, and Falbe looked
+slightly amused at this wholly surprising offer of hospitality.
+
+"But that's awfully good of you," he said, laughing and saying
+nothing direct about his acceptance.  "It implies, too, that you
+are going to Baireuth.  We travel together, then, I hope, for it is
+dismal work travelling alone, isn't it?  My sister tells me that
+half my friends were picked up in railway carriages.  Been there
+before?"
+
+Michael felt himself lured from the ordinary aloofness of attitude
+and demeanour, which had been somewhat accustomed to view all
+strangers with suspicion.  And yet, though till this moment he had
+never spoken to him, he could hardly regard Falbe as a stranger,
+for he had heard him say on the piano what his sister understood by
+the songs of Brahms and Schubert.  He could not help glancing at
+Falbe's hands, as they busied themselves with the filling and
+lighting of a pipe, and felt that he knew something of those long,
+broad-tipped fingers, smooth and white and strong.  The man himself
+he found to be quite different to what he had expected; he had seen
+him before, eager and intent and anxious-faced, absorbed in the
+task of following another mind; now he looked much younger, much
+more boyish.
+
+"No, it's my first visit to Baireuth," he said, "and I can't tell
+you how excited I am about it.  I've been looking forward to it so
+much that I almost expect to be disappointed."
+
+Falbe blew out a cloud of smoke and laughter.
+
+"Oh, you're safe enough," he said.  "Baireuth never disappoints.
+It's one of the facts--a reliable fact.  And Munich?  Do you go to
+Munich afterwards?"
+
+"Yes.  I hope so."
+
+Falbe clicked with his tongue
+
+"Lucky fellow," he said.  "How I wish I was.  But I've got to get
+back again after my week.  You'll spend the mornings in the
+galleries, and the afternoons and evenings at the opera.  O Lord,
+Munich!"
+
+He came across from the other side of the carriage and sat next
+Michael, putting his feet up on the seat opposite.
+
+"Talk of Munich," he said.  "I was born in Munich, and I happen to
+know that it's the heavenly Jerusalem, neither more nor less."
+
+"Well, the heavenly Jerusalem is practically next door to
+Baireuth," said Michael.
+
+"I know; but it can't be managed.  However, there's a week of
+unalloyed bliss between me now and the desolation of London in
+August.  What is so maddening is to think of all the people who
+could go to Munich and don't."
+
+Michael held debate within himself.  He felt that he ought to tell
+his new acquaintance that he knew who he was, that, however trivial
+their conversation might be, it somehow resembled eavesdropping to
+talk to a chance fellow-passenger as if he were a complete
+stranger.  But it required again a certain effort to make the
+announcement.
+
+"I think I had better tell you," he said at length, "that I know
+you, that I've listened to you at least, at your sister's recital a
+few days ago."
+
+Falbe turned to him with the friendliest pleasure.
+
+"Ah! were you there?" he asked.  "I hope you listened to her, then,
+not to me.  She sang well, didn't she?"
+
+"But divinely.  At the same time I did listen to you, especially in
+the French songs.  There was less song, you know."
+
+Falbe laughed.
+
+"And more accompaniment!" he said.  "Perhaps you play?"
+
+Michael was seized with a fit of shyness at the idea of talking to
+Falbe about himself.
+
+"Oh, I just strum," he said.
+
+
+Throughout the journey their acquaintanceship ripened; and
+casually, in dropped remarks, the two began to learn something
+about each other.  Falbe's command of English, as well as his
+sister's, which was so complete that it was impossible to believe
+that a foreigner was speaking, was explained, for it came out that
+his mother was English, and that from infancy they had spoken
+German and English indiscriminately.  His father, who had died some
+dozen years before, had been a singer of some note in his native
+land, but was distinguished more for his teaching than his
+practice, and it was he who had taught his daughter.  Hermann Falbe
+himself had always intended to be a pianist, but the poverty in
+which they were left at his father's death had obliged him to give
+lessons rather than devote himself to his own career; but now at
+the age of thirty he found himself within sight of the competence
+that would allow him to cut down his pupils, and begin to be a
+pupil again himself.
+
+His sister, moreover, for whom he had slaved for years in order
+that she might continue her own singing education unchecked, was
+now more than able, especially after these last three months in
+London, where she had suddenly leaped into eminence, to support
+herself and contributed to the expenses of their common home.  But
+there was still, so Michael gathered, no great superabundance of
+money, and he guessed that Falbe's inability to go to Munich was
+due to the question of expense.
+
+All this came out by inference and allusion rather than by direct
+information, while Michael, naturally reticent and feeling that his
+own uneventful affairs could have no interest for anybody, was less
+communicative.  And, indeed, while shunning the appearance of
+inquisitiveness, he was far too eager to get hold of his new
+acquaintance to think of volunteering much himself.  Here to him
+was this citizen of the new country who all his life had lived in
+the palace of art, and that in no dilettante fashion, but with set
+aim and serious purpose.  And Falbe abounded in such topics; he
+knew the singers and the musicians of the world, and, which was
+much more than that, he was himself of them; humble, no doubt, in
+circumstances and achievement as yet, but clearly to Michael of the
+blood royal of artistry.  That was the essential thing about him as
+regards his relations with his fellow-traveller, though, when next
+morning the spires of Cologne and the swift river of his Fatherland
+came into sight, he burst out into a sort of rhapsody of patriotism
+that mockingly covered a great sincerity.
+
+"Ah! beloved land!" he cried.  "Soil of heaven and of divine
+harmony!  Hail to thee!  Hail to thee!  Rhine, Rhine deep and true
+and steadfast. . . ."  And he waved his hat and sang the greeting
+of Brunnhilde.  Then he turned laughingly to Michael.
+
+"I am sufficiently English to know how ridiculous that must seem to
+you," he said, "for I love England also, and the passengers on the
+boat would merely think me mad if I apostrophised the cliffs of
+Dover and the mud of the English roads.  But here I am a German
+again, and I would willingly kiss the soil.  You English--we
+English, I may say, for I am as much English as German--I believe
+have got the same feeling somewhere in our hearts, but we lock it
+up and hide it away.  Pray God I shall never have to choose to
+which nation I belong, though for that matter there in no choice in
+it at all, for I am certainly a German subject.  Guten Tag, Koln;
+let us instantly have our coffee.  There is no coffee like German
+coffee, though the French coffee is undeniably pleasanter to the
+mere superficial palate.  But it doesn't touch the heart, as
+everything German touches my heart when I come back to the
+Fatherland."
+
+He chattered on in tremendous high spirits.
+
+"And to think that to-night we shall sleep in true German beds," he
+said.  "I allow that the duvet is not so convenient as blankets,
+and that there is a watershed always up the middle of your bed, so
+that during the night your person descends to one side while the
+duvet rolls down the other; but it is German, which makes up for
+any trifling inconvenience.  Baireuth, too; perhaps it will strike
+you as a dull and stinking little town, and so I dare say it is.
+But after lunch we shall go up the hillside to where the theatre
+stands, at the edge of the pine-woods, and from the porch the
+trumpets will give out the motif of the Grail, and we shall pass
+out of the heat into the cool darkness of the theatre.  Aren't you
+thrilled, Comber?  Doesn't a holy awe pervade you!  Are you worthy,
+do you think?"
+
+All this youthful, unrestrained enthusiasm was a revelation to
+Michael.  Intentionally absurd as Falbe's rhapsody on the
+Fatherland had been, Michael knew that it sprang from a solid
+sincerity which was not ashamed of expressing itself.  Living, as
+he had always done, in the rather formal and reticent atmosphere of
+his class and environment, he would have thought this fervour of
+patriotism in an English mouth ridiculous, or, if persevered in,
+merely bad form.  Yet when Falbe hailed the Rhine and the spires of
+Cologne, it was clear that there was no bad form about it at all.
+He felt like that; and, indeed, as Michael was beginning to
+perceive, he felt with a similar intensity on all subjects about
+which he felt at all.  There was something of the same vivid
+quality about Aunt Barbara, but Aunt Barbara's vividness was
+chiefly devoted to the hunt of the absurdities of her friends, and
+it was always the concretely ridiculous that she pursued.  But this
+handsome, vital young man, with his eagerness and his welcome for
+the world, who had fallen with so delightful a cordiality into
+Michael's company, had already an attraction for him of a sort he
+had never felt before.
+
+Dimly, as the days went by, he began to conjecture that he who had
+never had a friend was being hailed and halloed to, was being
+ordered, if not by precept, at any rate by example, to come out of
+the shell of his reserve, and let himself feel and let himself
+express.  He could see how utterly different was Falbe's general
+conception and practice of life from his own; to Michael it had
+always been a congregation of strangers--Francis excepted--who
+moved about, busy with each other and with affairs that had no
+allure for him, and were, though not uncivil, wholly alien to him.
+He was willing to grant that this alienation, this absence of
+comradeship which he had missed all his life, was of his own
+making, in so far as his shyness and sensitiveness were the cause
+of it; but in effect he had never yet had a friend, because he had
+never yet taken his shutters down, so to speak, or thrown his front
+door open.  He had peeped out through chinks, and felt how lonely
+he was, but he had not given anyone a chance to get in.
+
+Falbe, on the other hand, lived at his window, ready to hail the
+passer-by, even as he had hailed Michael, with cheerful words.
+There he lounged in his shirt-sleeves, you might say, with elbows
+on the window-sill; and not from politeness, but from good
+fellowship, from the fact that he liked people, was at home to
+everybody.  He liked people; there was the key to it.  And Michael,
+however much he might be capable of liking people, had up till now
+given them no sign of it.  It really was not their fault if they
+had not guessed it.
+
+Two days passed, on the first of which Parsifal was given, and on
+the second Meistersinger.  On the third there was no performance,
+and the two young men had agreed to meet in the morning and drive
+out of the town to a neighbouring village among the hills, and
+spend the day there in the woods.  Michael had looked forward to
+this day with extraordinary pleasure, but there was mingled with it
+a sort of agony of apprehension that Falbe would find him a very
+boring companion.  But the precepts of Aunt Barbara came to his
+mind, and he reflected that the certain and sure way of proving a
+bore was to be taken up with the idea that he might be.  And
+anyhow, Falbe had proposed the plan himself.
+
+They lunched in a little restaurant near a forest-enclosed lake,
+and since the day was very hot, did no more than stroll up the hill
+for a hundred yards, where they would get some hint of breeze, and
+disposed themselves at length on the carpet of pine-needles.
+Through the thick boughs overhead the sunlight reached them only in
+specks and flakes, the wind was but as a distant sea in the
+branches, and Falbe rolled over on to his face, and sniffed at the
+aromatic leaves with the gusto with which he enjoyed all that was
+to him enjoyable.
+
+"Ah; that's good, that's good!" he said.  "How I love smells--
+clean, sharp smells like this.  But they've got to be wild; you
+can't tame a smell and put it on your handkerchief; it takes the
+life out of it.  Do you like smells, Comber?"
+
+"I--I really never thought about it," said Michael.
+
+"Think now, then, and tell me," said Falbe.  "If you consider, you
+know such a lot about me, and, as a matter of fact, I know nothing
+whatever about you.  I know you like music--I know you like blue
+trout, because you ate so many of them at lunch to-day.  But what
+else do I know about you ?  I don't even know what you thought of
+Parsifal.  No, perhaps I'm wrong there, because the fact that
+you've never mentioned it probably shows that you couldn't.  The
+symptom of not understanding anything about Parsifal is to talk
+about it, and say what a tremendous impression it has made on you."
+
+"Ah! you've guessed right there," said Michael.  "I couldn't talk
+about it; there's nothing to say about it, except that it is
+Parsifal."
+
+"That's true.  It becomes part of you, and you can't talk of it any
+more than you can talk about your elbows and your knees.  It's one
+of the things that makes you. . . ."
+
+He turned over on to his back, and laid his hands palm uppermost
+over his eyes.
+
+"That's part of the glory of it all," he said; "that art and its
+emotions become part of you like the food you eat and the wine you
+drink.  Art is always making us; it enters into our character and
+destiny.  As long as you go on growing you assimilate, and thank
+God one's mind or soul, or whatever you like to call it, goes on
+growing for a long time.  I suppose the moment comes to most people
+when they cease to grow, when they become fixed and hard; and that
+is what we mean by being old.  But till then you weave your
+destiny, or, rather, people and beauty weave it for you, as you'll
+see the Norns weaving, and yet you never know what you are making.
+You make what you are, and you never are because you are always
+becoming.  You must excuse me; but Germans are always
+metaphysicians, and they can't help it."
+
+"Go on; be German," said Michael.
+
+"Lieber Gott!  As if I could be anything else," said Falbe,
+laughing.  "We are the only nation which makes a science of
+experimentalism; we try everything, just as a puppy tries
+everything.  It tries mutton bones, and match-boxes, and soap and
+boots; it tries to find out what its tail is for, and bites it till
+it hurts, on which it draws the conclusion that it is not meant to
+eat.  Like all metaphysicians, too, and dealers in the abstract, we
+are intensely practical.  Our passion for experimentalism is
+dictated by the firm object of using the knowledge we acquire.  We
+are tremendously thorough; we waste nothing, not even time, whereas
+the English have an absolute genius for wasting time.  Look at all
+your games, your sports, your athletics--I am being quite German
+now, and forgetting my mother, bless her!--they are merely devices
+for getting rid of the hours, and so not having to think.  You hate
+thought as a nation, and we live for it.  Music is thought; all art
+is thought; commercial prosperity is thought; soldiering is
+thought."
+
+"And we are a nation of idiots?" asked Michael.
+
+"No; I didn't say that.  I should say you are a nation of
+sensualists.  You value sensation above everything; you pursue the
+enjoyable.  You are a nation of children who are always having a
+perpetual holiday.  You go straying all over the world for fun, and
+annex it generally, so that you can have tiger-shooting in India,
+and lots of gold to pay for your tiger-shooting in Africa, and fur
+from Canada for your coats.  But it's all a game; not one man in a
+thousand in England has any idea of Empire."
+
+"Oh, I think you are wrong there," said Michael.  "You believe that
+only because we don't talk about it.  It's--it's like what we
+agreed about Parsifal.  We don't talk about it because it is so
+much part of us."
+
+Falbe sat up.
+
+"I deny it; I deny it flatly," he said.  "I know where I get my
+power of foolish, unthinking enjoyment from, and it's from my
+English blood.  I rejoice in my English blood, because you are the
+happiest people on the face of the earth.  But you are happy
+because you don't think, whereas the joy of being German is that
+you do think.  England is lying in the shade, like us, with a
+cigarette and a drink--I wish I had one--and a golf ball or the
+world with which she has been playing her game.  But Germany is
+sitting up all night thinking, and every morning she gives an order
+or two."
+
+Michael supplied the cigarette.
+
+"Do you mean she is thinking about England's golf ball?" asked
+Michael.
+
+"Why, of course she is!  What else is there to think about?"
+
+"Oh, it's impossible that there should be a European war," said
+Michael, "for that is what it will mean!"
+
+"And why is a European war impossible?" demanded Falbe, lighting
+his cigarette.
+
+"It's simply unthinkable!"
+
+"Because you don't think," he interrupted.  "I can tell you that
+the thought of war is never absent for a single day from the
+average German mind.  We are all soldiers, you see.  We start with
+that.  You start by being golfers and cricketers.  But 'der Tag' is
+never quite absent from the German mind.  I don't say that all you
+golfers and cricketers wouldn't make good soldiers, but you've got
+to be made.  You can't be a golfer one day and a soldier the next."
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"As for that," he said, "I made an uncommonly bad soldier.  But I
+am an even worse golfer.  As for cricket--"
+
+Falbe again interrupted.
+
+"Ah, then at last I know two things about you," he said.  "You were
+a soldier and you can't play golf.  I have never known so little
+about anybody after three--four days.  However, what is our
+proverb?  'Live and learn.'  But it takes longer to learn than to
+live.  Eh, what nonsense I talk."
+
+He spoke with a sudden irritation, and the laugh at the end of his
+speech was not one of amusement, but rather of mockery.  To Michael
+this mood was quite inexplicable, but, characteristically, he
+looked about in himself for the possible explanation of it.
+
+"But what's the matter?" he asked.  "Have I annoyed you somehow?
+I'm awfully sorry."
+
+Falbe did not reply for a moment.
+
+"No, you've not annoyed me," he said.  "I've annoyed myself.  But
+that's the worst of living on one's nerves, which is the penalty of
+Baireuth.  There is no charge, so to speak, except for your ticket,
+but a collection is made, as happens at meetings, and you pay with
+your nerves.  You must cancel my annoyance, please.  If I showed it
+I did not mean to."
+
+Michael pondered over this.
+
+"But I can't leave it like that," he said at length.  "Was it about
+the possibility of war, which I said was unthinkable?"
+
+Falbe laughed and turned on his elbow towards Michael.
+
+"No, my dear chap," he said.  "You may believe it to be
+unthinkable, and I may believe it to be inevitable; but what does
+it matter what either of us believes?  Che sara sara.  It was quite
+another thing that caused me to annoy myself.  It does not matter."
+
+Michael lay back on the soft slope.
+
+"Yet I insist on knowing," he said.  "That is, I mean, if it is not
+private."
+
+Falbe lay quietly with his long fingers in the sediment of pine-
+needles.
+
+"Well, then, as it is not private, and as you insist," he said, "I
+will certainly tell you.  Does it not strike you that you are
+behaving like an absolute stranger to me?  We have talked of me and
+my home and my plans all the time since we met at Victoria Station,
+and you have kept complete silence about yourself.  I know nothing
+of you, not who you are, or what you are, or what your flag is.
+You fly no flag, you proclaim no identity.  You may be a crossing-
+sweeper, or a grocer, or a marquis for all I know.  Of course, that
+matters very little; but what does matter is that never for a
+moment have you shown me not what you happen to be, but what you
+are.  I've got the impression that you are something, that there's
+a real 'you' in your inside.  But you don't let me see it.  You
+send a polite servant to the door when I knock.  Probably this
+sounds very weird and un-English to you.  But to my mind it is much
+more weird to behave as you are behaving.  Come out, can't you.
+Let's look at you."
+
+It was exactly that--that brusque, unsentimental appeal--that
+Michael needed.  He saw himself at that moment, as Falbe saw him, a
+shelled and muffled figure, intangible and withdrawn, but
+observing, as it were, through eye-holes, and giving nothing in
+exchange for what he saw.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said.  "It's quite true what you tell me.  I'm like
+that.  But it really has never struck me that anybody cared to
+know."
+
+Falbe ceased digging his excavation in the pine-needles and looked
+up on Michael.
+
+"Good Lord, man!" he said; "people care if you'll only allow them
+to.  The indifference of other people is a false term for the
+secretiveness of oneself.  How can they care, unless you let them
+know what there is to care for?"
+
+"But I'm completely uninteresting," said Michael.
+
+"Yes; I'll judge of that," said Falbe.
+
+
+Slowly, and with diffident pauses, Michael began to speak of
+himself, feeling at first as if he was undressing in public.  But
+as he went on he became conscious of the welcome that his story
+received, though that welcome only expressed itself in perfectly
+unemotional monosyllables.  He might be undressing, but he was
+undressing in front of a fire.  He knew that he uncovered himself
+to no icy blast or contemptuous rain, as he had felt when, so few
+days before, he had spoken of himself and what he was to his
+father.  There was here the common land of music to build upon,
+whereas to Lord Ashbridge that same soil had been, so to speak, the
+territory of the enemy.  And even more than that, there was the
+instinct, the certain conviction that he was telling his tale to
+sympathetic ears, to which the mere fact that he was speaking of
+himself presupposed a friendly hearing.  Falbe, he felt, wanted to
+know about him, regardless of the nature of his confessions.  Had
+he said that he was an undetected kleptomaniac, Falbe would have
+liked to know, have been pleased at any tidings, provided only they
+were authentic.  This seemed to reveal itself to him even as he
+spoke; it had been there waiting for him to claim it, lying there
+as in a poste restante, only ready for its owner.
+
+At the end Falbe gave a long sigh.
+
+"And why the devil didn't you give me any hint of it before?" he
+asked.
+
+"I didn't think it mattered," said Michael.
+
+"Well, then, you are amazingly wrong.  Good Lord, it's about the
+most interesting thing I've ever heard.  I didn't know anybody
+could escape from that awful sort of prison-house in which our--I'm
+English now--in which our upper class immures itself.  Yet you've
+done it.  I take it that the thing is done now?"
+
+"I'm not going back into the prison-house again, if you mean that,"
+said Michael.
+
+"And will your father cut you off?" asked he.
+
+"Oh, I haven't the least idea," said Michael.
+
+"Aren't you going to inquire?"
+
+Michael hesitated.
+
+"No, I'm sure I'm not," he said.  "I can't do that.  It's his
+business.  I couldn't ask about what he had done, or meant to do.
+It's a sort of pride, I suppose.  He will do as he thinks proper,
+and when he has thought, perhaps he will tell me what he intends."
+
+"But, then, how will you live?" asked Falbe.
+
+"Oh, I forgot to tell you that.  I've got some money, quite a lot,
+I mean, from my grandmother.  In some ways I rather wish I hadn't.
+It would have been a proof of sincerity to have become poor.  That
+wouldn't have made the smallest difference to my resolution."
+
+Falbe laughed.
+
+"And so you are rich, and yet go second-class," he said.  "If I
+were rich I would make myself exceedingly comfortable.  I like
+things that are good to eat and soft to touch.  But I'm bound to
+say that I get on quite excellently without them.  Being poor does
+not make the smallest difference to one's happiness, but only to
+the number of one's pleasures."
+
+Michael paused a moment, and then found courage to say what for the
+last two days he had been longing to give utterance to.
+
+"I know; but pleasures are very nice things," he said.  "And
+doesn't it seem obvious now that you are coming to Munich with me?
+It's a purely selfish suggestion on my part.  After being with you
+it will be very stupid to be alone there.  But it would be so
+delightful if you would come."
+
+Falbe looked at him a moment without speaking, but Michael saw the
+light in his eyes.
+
+"And what if I have my pride too?" he said.  "Then I shall
+apologise for having made the proposal," said Michael simply.
+
+For just a second more Falbe hesitated.  Then he held out his hand.
+
+"I thank you most awfully," he said.  "I accept with the greatest
+pleasure."
+
+Michael drew a long breath of relief.
+
+"I am glad," he said.  "So that's settled.  It's really nice of
+you."
+
+The heat of the day was passing off, and over the sun-bleached
+plain the coolness of evening was beginning to steal.  Overhead the
+wind stirred more resonantly in the pines, and in the bushes birds
+called to each other.  Presently after, they rose from where they
+had lain all the afternoon and strolled along the needled slope to
+where, through a vista in the trees, they looked down on the lake
+and the hamlet that clustered near it.  Down the road that wound
+through the trees towards it passed labourers going homeward from
+their work, with cheerful guttural cries to each other and a herd
+of cows sauntered by with bells melodiously chiming, taking
+leisurely mouthfuls from the herbage of the wayside.  In the
+village, lying low in the clear dusk, scattered lights began to
+appear, the smoke of evening fires to ascend, and the aromatic
+odour of the burning wood strayed towards them up the wind.
+
+Falbe, whose hand lay in the crook of Michael's arm, pointed
+downwards to the village that lay there sequestered and rural.
+
+"That's Germany," he said; "it's that which lies at the back of
+every German heart.  There lie the springs of the Rhine.  It's out
+of that originally that there came all that Germany stands for, its
+music, its poetry, its philosophy, its kultur.  All flowed from
+these quiet uplands.  It was here that the nation began to think
+and to dream.  To dreamt!  It's out of dreams that all has sprung."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"And then next week when we go to Munich, you will find me saying
+that this, this Athens of a town, with its museums and its
+galleries and its music, is Germany.  I shall be right, too.  Out
+of much dreaming comes the need to make.  It is when the artist's
+head and heart are full of his dreams that his hands itch for the
+palette or the piano.  Nuremberg!  Cannot we stop a few hours, at
+least, in Nuremberg, and see the meadow by the Pegnitz where the
+Meistersingers held their contest of song and the wooden, gabled
+house where Albrecht Durer lived?  That will teach you Germany,
+too.  The bud of their dream was opening then; and what flower,
+even in the magnificence of its full-blowing, is so lovely?
+Albrecht Durer, with his deep, patient eyes, and his patient hands
+with their unerring stroke; or Bach, with the fugue flowing from
+his brain through his quick fingers, making stars--stars fixed
+forever in the heaven of harmony!  Don't tell me that there is
+anything in the world more wonderful!  We may have invented a few
+more instruments, we may have experimented with a few more
+combinations of notes, but in the B minor Mass, or in the music of
+the Passion, all is said.  And all that came from the woods and the
+country and the quiet life in little towns, when the artist did his
+work because he loved it, and cared not one jot about what anybody
+else thought about it.  We are a nation of thinkers and dreamers."
+
+Michael hesitated a moment.
+
+"But you said not long ago that you were also the most practical
+nation," he said.  "You are a nation of soldiers, also."
+
+"And who would not willingly give himself for such a Fatherland?"
+said Falbe.  "If need be, we will lay our lives down for that, and
+die more willingly than we have lived.  God grant that the need
+comes not.  But should it come we are ready.  We are bound to be
+ready; it would be a crime not to be ready--a crime against the
+Fatherland.  We love peace, but the peace-lovers are just those who
+in war are most terrible.  For who are the backbone of war when war
+comes?  The women of the country, my friend, not the ministers, not
+the generals and the admirals.  I don't say they make war, but when
+war is made they are the spirit of it, because, more than men, they
+love their homes.  There is not a woman in Germany who will not
+send forth brother and husband and father and child, should the day
+come.  But it will not come from our seeking."
+
+He turned to Michael, his face illuminated by the red glow of the
+sinking sun.
+
+"Germany will rise as one man if she's told to," he said, "for that
+is what her unity and her discipline mean.  She is patient and
+peaceful, but she is obedient."
+
+He pointed northwards.
+
+"It is from there, from Prussia, from Berlin," he said, "that the
+word will come, if they who rule and govern us, and in whose hands
+are all organisation and equipment, tell us that our national
+existence compels us to fight.  They rule.  The Prussians rule;
+there is no doubt of that.  From Germany have come the arts, the
+sciences, the philosophies of the world, and not from there.  But
+they guard our national life.  It is they who watch by the Rhine
+for us, patient and awake.  Should they beckon us one night, on
+some peaceful August night like this, when all seems so tranquil,
+so secure, we shall go.  The silent beckoning finger will be obeyed
+from one end of the land to the other, from Poland on the east to
+France on the west."
+
+He turned away quickly.
+
+"It does not bear thinking of," he said; "and yet there are many,
+oh, so many, who night and day concern themselves with nothing
+else.  Let us be English again, and not think of anything serious
+or unpleasant.  Already, as you know, I am half English; there is
+something to build upon.  Ah, and this is the sentimental hour,
+just when the sun begins to touch the horizon line of the stale,
+weary old earth and turns it into rosy gold and heals its troubles
+and its weariness.  Schon, Schon!"
+
+He stood for a moment bareheaded to the breeze, and made a great
+florid salutation to the sun, now only half-disk above the horizon.
+
+"There!  I have said my evensong," he remarked, "like a good
+German, who always and always is ridiculous to the whole world,
+except those who are German also.  Oh, I can see how we look to the
+rest of the world so well.  Beer mug in one hand, and mouth full of
+sausage and song, and with the other hand, perhaps, fingering a
+revolver.  How unreal it must seem to you, how affected, and yet
+how, in truth, you miss it all.  Scratch a Russian, they say, and
+you find a Tartar; but scratch a German and you find two things--a
+sentimentalist and a soldier.  Lieber Gott!  No, I will say, Good
+God!  I am English again, and if you scratch me you will find a
+golf ball."
+
+He took Michael's arm again.
+
+"Well, we've spent one day together," he said, "and now we know
+something of who we are.  I put this day in the bank; it's mine or
+yours or both of ours.  I won't tell you how I've enjoyed it, or
+you will say that I have enjoyed it because I have talked almost
+all the time.  But since it's the sentimental hour I will tell you
+that you mistake.  I have enjoyed it because I believe I have found
+a friend."
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Hermann Falbe had just gone back to his lodgings at the end of the
+Richard Wagner Strasse late on the night of their last day at
+Baireuth, and Michael, who had leaned out of his window to remind
+him of the hour of their train's departure the next morning, turned
+back into the room to begin his packing.  That was not an affair
+that would take much time, but since, on this sweltering August
+night, it would certainly be a process that involved the production
+of much heat, he made ready for bed first, and went about his
+preparations in pyjamas.  The work of dropping things into a bag
+was soon over, and finding it impossible to entertain the idea of
+sleep, he drew one of the stiff, plush-covered arm-chairs to the
+window and slipped the rein from his thoughts, letting them gallop
+where they pleased.
+
+In all his life he had never experienced so much sheer emotion as
+the last week had held for him.  He had enjoyed his first taste of
+liberty; he had stripped himself naked to music; he had found a
+friend.  Any one of these would have been sufficient to saturate
+him, and they had all, in the decrees of Fate, come together.  His
+life hitherto had been like some dry sponge, dusty and crackling;
+now it was plunged in the waters of three seas, all incomparably
+sweet.
+
+He had gained his liberty, and in that process he had forgotten
+about himself, the self which up till now had been so intolerable a
+burden.  At school, and even before, when first the age of self-
+consciousness dawned upon him, he had seen himself as he believed
+others saw him--a queer, awkward, ill-made boy, slow at his work,
+shy with his fellows, incapable at games.  Walled up in this
+fortress of himself, this gloomy and forbidding fastness, he had
+altogether failed to find the means of access to others, both to
+the normal English boys among whom his path lay, and also to his
+teachers, who, not unnaturally, found him sullen and unresponsive.
+There was no key among the rather limited bunches at their command
+which unlocked him, nor at home had anything been found which could
+fit his wards.  It had been the business of school to turn out boys
+of certain received types.  There was the clever boy, the athletic
+boy, the merely pleasant boy; these and the combinations arrived at
+from these types were the output.  There was no use for others.
+
+Then had succeeded those three nightmare years in the Guards,
+where, with his more mature power of observation, he had become
+more actively conscious of his inability to take his place on any
+of the recognised platforms.  And all the time, like an owl on his
+solitary perch, he had gazed out lonelily, while the other birds of
+day, too polite to mock him, had merely passed him by.  One such,
+it is true--his cousin--had sat by him, and the poor owl's heart
+had gone out to him.  But even Francis, so he saw now, had not
+understood.  He had but accepted the fact of him without
+repugnance, had been fond of him as a queer sort of kind elder
+cousin.
+
+Then there was Aunt Barbara.  Aunt Barbara, Michael allowed, had
+understood a good deal; she had pointed out with her unerringly
+humourous finger the obstacles he had made for himself.
+
+But could Aunt Barbara understand the rapture of living which this
+one week of liberty had given him?  That Michael doubted.  She had
+only pointed out the disabilities he made for himself.  She did not
+know what he was capable of in the way of happiness.  But he
+thought, though without self-consciousness, how delightful it would
+be to show himself, the new, unshelled self, to Aunt Barbara again.
+
+A laughing couple went tapping down the street below his window,
+boy and girl, with arms and waists interlaced.  They were laughing
+at nothing at all, except that they were boy and girl together and
+it was all glorious fun.  But the sight of them gave Michael a
+sudden spasm of envy.  With all this enlightenment that had come to
+him during this last week, there had come no gleam of what that
+simplest and commonest aspect of human nature meant.  He had never
+felt towards a girl what that round-faced German boy felt.  He was
+not sure, but he thought he disliked girls; they meant nothing to
+him, anyhow, and the mere thought of his arm round a girl's waist
+only suggested a very embarrassing attitude.  He had nothing to say
+to them, and the knowledge of his inability filled him with an
+uncomfortable sense of his want of normality, just as did the
+consciousness of his long arms and stumpy legs.
+
+There was a night he remembered when Francis had insisted that he
+should go with him to a discreet little supper party after an
+evening at the music-hall.  There were just four of them--he,
+Francis, and two companions--and he played the role of sour
+gooseberry to his cousin, who, with the utmost gaiety, had proved
+himself completely equal to the inauspicious occasion, and had
+drank indiscriminately out of both the girls' glasses, and lit
+cigarettes for them; and, after seeing them both home, had looked
+in on Michael, and gone into fits of laughter at his general
+incompatibility.
+
+The steps and conversation passed round the corner, and Michael,
+stretching his bare toes on to the cool balcony, resumed his
+researches--those joyful, unegoistic researches into himself.  His
+liberty was bound up with his music; the first gave the key to the
+second.  Often as he had rested, so to speak, in oases of music in
+London, they were but a pause from the desert of his uncongenial
+life into the desert again.  But now the desert was vanished, and
+the oasis stretched illimitable to the horizon in front of him.
+That was where, for the future, his life was to be passed, not
+idly, sitting under trees, but in the eager pursuit of its
+unnumbered paths.  It was that aspect of it which, as he knew so
+well, his father, for instance, would never be able to understand.
+To Lord Ashbridge's mind, music was vaguely connected with white
+waistcoats and opera glasses and large pink carnations; he was
+congenitally incapable of viewing it in any other light than a
+diversion, something that took place between nine and eleven
+o'clock in the evening, and in smaller quantities at church on
+Sunday morning.  He would undoubtedly have said that Handel's
+Messiah was the noblest example of music in the world, because of
+its subject; music did not exist for him as a separate, definite
+and infinite factor of life; and since it did not so exist for
+himself, he could not imagine it existing for anybody else.  That
+Michael correctly knew to be his father's general demeanour towards
+life; he wanted everybody in their respective spheres to be like
+what he was in his.  They must take their part, as he undoubtedly
+did, in the Creation-scheme when the British aristocracy came into
+being.
+
+A fresh factor had come into Michael's conception of music during
+these last seven days.  He had become aware that Germany was music.
+He had naturally known before that the vast proportion of music
+came from Germany, that almost all of that which meant "music" to
+him was of German origin; but that was a very different affair from
+the conviction now borne in on his mind that there was not only no
+music apart from Germany, but that there was no Germany apart from
+music.
+
+But every moment he spent in this wayside puddle of a town (for so
+Baireuth seemed to an unbiased view), he became more and more aware
+that music beat in the German blood even as sport beat in the blood
+of his own people.  During this festival week Baireuth existed only
+because of that; at other times Baireuth was probably as non-
+existent as any dull and minor town in the English Midlands.  But,
+owing to the fact of music being for these weeks resident in
+Baireuth, the sordid little townlet became the capital of the huge,
+patient Empire.  It existed just now simply for that reason; to-
+night, with the curtain of the last act of Parsifal, it had ceased
+to exist again.  It was not that a patriotic desire to honour one
+of the national heroes in the home where he had been established by
+the mad genius of a Bavarian king that moved them; it was because
+for the moment that Baireuth to Germans meant Germany.  From
+Berlin, from Dresden, from Frankfurt, from Luxemburg, from a
+hundred towns those who were most typically German, whether high or
+low, rich or poor, made their joyous pilgrimage.  Joy and
+solemnity, exultation and the yearning that could never be
+satisfied drew them here.  And even as music was in Michael's
+heart, so Germany was there also.  They were the people who
+understood; they did not go to the opera as a be-diamonded
+interlude between a dinner and a dance; they came to this dreadful
+little town, the discomforts of which, the utter provinciality of
+which was transformed into the air of the heavenly Jerusalem, as
+Hermann Falbe had said, because their souls were fed here with wine
+and manna.  He would find the same thing at Munich, so Falbe had
+told him, the next week.
+
+The loves and the tragedies of the great titanic forces that saw
+the making of the world; the dreams and the deeds of the masters of
+Nuremberg; above all, sacrifice and enlightenment and redemption of
+the soul; how, except by music, could these be made manifest?  It
+was the first and only and final alchemy that could by its magic
+transformation give an answer to the tremendous riddles of
+consciousness; that could lift you, though tearing and making
+mincemeat of you, to the serenity of the Pisgah-top, whence was
+seen the promised land.  It, in itself, was reality; and the door-
+keeper who admitted you into that enchanted realm was the spirit of
+Germany.  Not France, with its little, morbid shiverings, and its
+meat-market called love; not Italy, with its melodious declamations
+and tawdry tunes; not Russia even, with the wind of its
+impenetrable winters, its sense of joys snatched from its eternal
+frosts gave admittance there; but Germany, "deep, patient Germany,"
+that sprang from upland hamlets, and flowed down with ever-
+broadening stream into the illimitable ocean.
+
+Here, then, were two of the initiations that had come, with the
+swiftness of the spate in Alpine valleys at the melting of the
+snow, upon Michael; his own liberty, namely, and this new sense of
+music.  He had groped, he felt now, like a blind man in that
+direction, guided only by his instinct, and on a sudden the scales
+had fallen from his eyes, and he knew that his instinct had guided
+him right.  But not less epoch-making had been the dawn of
+friendship.  Throughout the week his intimacy with Hermann Falbe
+had developed, shooting up like an aloe flower, and rising into
+sunlight above the mists of his own self-occupied shyness, which
+had so darkly beset him all life long.  He had given the best that
+he knew of himself to his cousin, but all the time there had never
+quite been absent from his mind his sense of inferiority, a sort of
+aching wonder why he could not be more like Francis, more careless,
+more capable of enjoyment, more of a normal type.  But with Falbe
+he was able for the first time to forget himself altogether; he had
+met a man who did not recall him to himself, but took him clean out
+of that tedious dwelling which he knew so well and, indeed,
+disliked so much.  He was rid for the first time of his morbid
+self-consciousness; his anchor had been taken up from its dragging
+in the sand, and he rode free, buoyed on waters and taken by tides.
+It did not occur to him to wonder whether Falbe thought him uncouth
+and awkward; it did not occur to him to try to be pleasant, a job
+over which poor Michael had so often found himself dishearteningly
+incapable; he let himself be himself in the consciousness that this
+was sufficient.
+
+They had spent the morning together before this second performance
+of Parsifal that closed their series, in the woods above the
+theatre, and Michael, no longer blurting out his speeches, but
+speaking in the quiet, orderly manner in which he thought,
+discussed his plans.
+
+"I shall come back to London with you after Munich," he said, "and
+settle down to study.  I do know a certain amount about harmony
+already; I have been mugging it up for the last three years.  But I
+must do something as well as learn something, and, as I told you,
+I'm going to take up the piano seriously."
+
+Falbe was not attending particularly.
+
+"A fine instrument, the piano," he remarked.  "There is certainly
+something to be done with a piano, if you know how to do it.  I can
+strum a bit myself.  Some keys are harder than others--the black
+notes."
+
+"Yes; what of the black notes?" asked Michael.
+
+"Oh! they're black.  The rest are white.  I beg your pardon!"
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"When you have finished drivelling," he said, "you might let me
+know."
+
+"I have finished drivelling, Michael.  I was thinking about
+something else."
+
+"Not really?"
+
+"Really."
+
+"Then it was impolite of you, but you haven't any manners.  I was
+talking about my career.  I want to do something, and these large
+hands are really rather nimble.  But I must be taught.  The
+question is whether you will teach me."
+
+Falbe hesitated.
+
+"I can't tell you," he said, "till I have heard you play.  It's
+like this: I can't teach you to play unless you know how, and I
+can't tell if you know how until I have heard you.  If you have got
+that particular sort of temperament that can put itself into the
+notes out of the ends of your fingers, I can teach you, and I will.
+But if you haven't, I shall feel bound to advise you to try the
+Jew's harp, and see if you can get it out of your teeth.  I'm not
+mocking you; I fancy you know that.  But some people, however
+keenly and rightly they feel, cannot bring their feelings out
+through their fingers.  Others can; it is a special gift.  If you
+haven't got it, I can't teach you anything, and there is no use in
+wasting your time and mine.  You can teach yourself to be
+frightfully nimble with your fingers, and all the people who don't
+know will say: 'How divinely Lord Comber plays!  That sweet thing;
+is it Brahms or Mendelssohn?'  But I can't really help you towards
+that; you can do that for yourself.  But if you've got the other, I
+can and will teach you all that you really know already."
+
+"Go on!" said Michael.
+
+"That's just the devil with the piano," said Falbe.  "It's the
+easiest instrument of all to make a show on, and it is the rarest
+sort of person who can play on it.  That's why, all those years, I
+have hated giving lessons.  If one has to, as I have had to, one
+must take any awful miss with a pigtail, and make a sham pianist of
+her.  One can always do that.  But it would be waste of time for
+you and me; you wouldn't want to be made a sham pianist, and simply
+I wouldn't make you one."
+
+Michael turned round.
+
+"Good Lord!" he said, "the suspense is worse than I can bear.
+Isn't there a piano in your room?  Can't we go down there, and have
+it over?"
+
+"Yes, if you wish.  I can tell at once if you are capable of
+playing--at least, whether I think you are capable of playing--
+whether I can teach you."
+
+"But I haven't touched a piano for a week," said Michael.
+
+"It doesn't matter whether you've touched a piano for a year."
+
+Michael had not been prevented by the economy that made him travel
+second-class from engaging a carriage by the day at Baireuth, since
+that clearly was worth while, and they found it waiting for them by
+the theatre.  There was still time to drive to Falbe's lodging and
+get through this crucial ordeal before the opera, and they went
+straight there.  A very venerable instrument, which Falbe had not
+yet opened, stood against the wall, and he struck a few notes on
+it.
+
+"Completely out of tune," he said; "but that doesn't matter.  Now
+then!"
+
+"But what am I to play?" asked Michael.
+
+"Anything you like."
+
+He sat down at the far end of the room, put his long legs up on to
+another chair and waited.  Michael sent a despairing glance at that
+gay face, suddenly grown grim, and took his seat.  He felt a
+paralysing conviction that Falbe's judgment, whatever that might
+turn out to be, would be right, and the knowledge turned his
+fingers stiff.  From the few notes that Falbe had struck he guessed
+on what sort of instrument his ordeal was to take place, and yet he
+knew that Falbe himself would have been able to convey to him the
+sense that he could play, though the piano was all out of tune, and
+there might be dumb, disconcerting notes in it.  There was justice
+in Falbe's dictum about the temperament that lay behind the player,
+which would assert itself through any faultiness of instrument, and
+through, so he suspected, any faultiness of execution.
+
+He struck a chord, and heard it jangle dissonantly.
+
+"Oh, it's not fair," he said.
+
+"Get on!" said Falbe.
+
+In spite of Germany there occurred to Michael a Chopin prelude, at
+which he had worked a little during the last two months in London.
+The notes he knew perfectly; he had believed also that he had found
+a certain conception of it as a whole, so that he could make
+something coherent out of it, not merely adding bar to correct bar.
+And he began the soft repetition of chord-quavers with which it
+opened.
+
+Then after stumbling wretchedly through two lines of it, he
+suddenly forgot himself and Falbe, and the squealing unresponsive
+notes.  He heard them no more, absorbed in the knowledge of what he
+meant by them, of the mood which they produced in him.  His great,
+ungainly hands had all the gentleness and self-control that
+strength gives, and the finger-filling chords were as light and as
+fine as the settling of some poised bird on a bough.  In the last
+few lines of the prelude a deep bass note had to be struck at the
+beginning of each bar; this Michael found was completely dumb, but
+so clear and vivid was the effect of it in his mind that he
+scarcely noticed that it returned no answer to his finger. . . .
+At the end he sat without moving, his hands dropped on to his
+knees.
+
+Falbe got up and, coming over to the piano, struck the bass note
+himself.
+
+"Yes, I knew it was dumb," he said, "but you made me think it
+wasn't. . . .  You got quite a good tone out of it."
+
+He paused a moment, again striking the dumb note, as if to make
+sure that it was soundless.
+
+"Yes; I'll teach you," he said.  "All the technique you have got,
+you know, is wrong from beginning to end, and you mustn't mind
+unlearning all that.  But you've got the thing that matters."
+
+
+All this stewed and seethed in Michael's mind as he sat that night
+by the window looking out on to the silent and empty street.  His
+thoughts flowed without check or guide from his will, wandering
+wherever their course happened to take them, now lingering, like
+the water of a river in some deep, still pool, when he thought of
+the friendship that had come into his life, now excitedly plunging
+down the foam of swift-flowing rapids in the exhilaration of his
+newly-found liberty, now proceeding with steady current at the
+thought of the weeks of unremitting industry at a beloved task that
+lay in front of him.  He could form no definite image out of these
+which should represent his ordinary day; it was all lost in a
+bright haze through which its shape was but faintly discernible;
+but life lay in front of him with promise, a thing to be embraced
+and greeted with welcome and eager hands, instead of being a mere
+marsh through which he had to plod with labouring steps, a business
+to be gone about without joy and without conviction in its being
+worth while.
+
+He wondered for a moment, as he rose to go to bed, what his
+feelings would have been if, at the end of his performance on the
+sore-throated and voiceless piano, Falbe had said: "I'm sorry, but
+I can't do anything with you."  As he knew, Falbe intended for the
+future only to take a few pupils, and chiefly devote himself to his
+own practice with a view to emerging as a concert-giver the next
+winter; and as Michael had sat down, he remembered telling himself
+that there was really not the slightest chance of his friend
+accepting him as a pupil.  He did not intend that this rejection
+should make the smallest difference to his aim, but he knew that he
+would start his work under the tremendous handicap of Falbe not
+believing that he had it in him to play, and under the
+disappointment of not enjoying the added intimacy which work with
+and for Falbe would give him.  Then he had engaged in this tussle
+with refractory notes till he quite lost himself in what he was
+playing, and thought no more either of Falbe or the piano, but only
+of what the melody meant to him.  But at the end, when he came to
+himself again, and sat with dropped hands waiting for Falbe's
+verdict, he remembered how his heart seemed to hang poised until it
+came.  He had rehearsed again to himself his fixed determination
+that he would play and could play, whatever his friend might think
+about it; but there was no doubt that he waited with a greater
+suspense than he had ever known in his life before for that verdict
+to be made known to him.
+
+Next day came their journey to Munich, and the installation in the
+best hotel in Europe.  Here Michael was host, and the economy which
+he practised when he had only himself to provide for, and which
+made him go second-class when travelling, was, as usual, completely
+abandoned now that the pleasure of hospitality was his.  He engaged
+at once the best double suite of rooms that the hotel contained,
+two bedrooms with bathrooms, and an admirable sitting-room, looking
+spaciously out on to the square, and with brusque decision silenced
+Falbe's attempted remonstrance.  "Don't interfere with my show,
+please," he had said, and proceeded to inquire about a piano to be
+sent in for the week.  Then he turned to his friend again.  "Oh, we
+are going to enjoy ourselves," he said, with an irresistible
+sincerity.
+
+Tristan und Isolde was given on the third day of their stay there,
+and Falbe, reading the morning German paper, found news.
+
+"The Kaiser has arrived," he said.  "There's a truce in the army
+manoeuvres for a couple of days, and he has come to be present at
+Tristan this evening.  He's travelled three hundred miles to get
+here, and will go back to-morrow.  The Reise-Kaiser, you know."
+
+Michael looked up with some slight anxiety.
+
+"Ought I to write my name or anything?" he asked.  "He has stayed
+several times with my father."
+
+"Has he?  But I don't suppose it matters.  The visit is a widely-
+advertised incognito.  That's his way.  God be with the All-
+highest," he added.
+
+"Well, I shan't" said Michael.  "But it would shock my father
+dreadfully if he knew.  The Kaiser looks on him as the type and
+model of the English nobleman."
+
+Michael crunched one of the inimitable breakfast rusks in his
+teeth.
+
+"Lord, what a day we had when he was at Ashbridge last year," he
+said.  "We began at eight with a review of the Suffolk Yeomanry;
+then we had a pheasant shoot from eleven till three; then the
+Emperor had out a steam launch and careered up and down the river
+till six, asking a thousand questions about the tides and the
+currents and the navigable channels.  Then he lectured us on the
+family portraits till dinner; after dinner there was a concert, at
+which he conducted the 'Song to Aegir,' and then there was a torch-
+light fandango by the tenants on the lawn.  He was on his holiday,
+you must remember."
+
+"I heard the 'Song to Aegir' once," remarked Falbe, with a
+perfectly level intonation.
+
+"I was--er--luckier," said Michael politely, "because on that
+occasion I heard it twice.  It was encored."
+
+"And what did it sound like the second time?" asked Falbe.
+
+"Much as before," said Michael.
+
+The advent of the Emperor had put the whole town in a ferment.
+Though the visit was quite incognito, an enormous military staff
+which had been poured into the town might have led the thoughtful
+to suspect the Kaiser's presence, even if it had not been announced
+in the largest type in the papers, and marchings and counter-
+marchings of troops and sudden bursts of national airs proclaimed
+the august presence.  He held an informal review of certain
+Bavarian troops not out for manoeuvres in the morning, visited the
+sculpture gallery and pinacothek in the afternoon, and when Hermann
+and Michael went up to the theatre they found rows of soldiers
+drawn up, and inside unusual decorations over a section of stalls
+which had been removed and was converted into an enormous box.
+This was in the centre of the first tier, nearly at right angles to
+where they sat, in the front row of the same tier; and when, with
+military punctuality, the procession of uniforms, headed by the
+Emperor, filed in, the whole of the crowded house stood up and
+broke into a roar of recognition and loyalty.
+
+For a minute, or perhaps more, the Emperor stood facing the house
+with his hand raised in salute, a figure the uprightness of which
+made him look tall.  His brilliant uniform was ablaze with
+decorations; he seemed every inch a soldier and a leader of men.
+For that minute he stood looking neither to the right nor left,
+stern and almost frowning, with no shadow of a smile playing on the
+tightly-drawn lips, above which his moustache was brushed upwards
+in two stiff protuberances towards his eyes.  He was there just
+then not to see, but to be seen, his incognito was momentarily in
+abeyance, and he stood forth the supreme head of his people, the
+All-highest War Lord, who had come that day from the field, to
+which he would return across half Germany tomorrow.  It was an
+impressive and dignified moment, and Michael heard Falbe say to
+himself: "Kaiserlich!  Kaiserlich!"
+
+Then it was over.  The Emperor sat down, beckoned to two of his
+officers, who had stood in a group far at the back of the box, to
+join him, and with one on each side he looked about the house and
+chatted to them.  He had taken out his opera-glass, which he
+adjusted, using his right hand only, and looked this way and that,
+as if, incognito again, he was looking for friends in the house.
+Once Michael thought that he looked rather long and fixedly in his
+direction, and then, putting down his glass, he said something to
+one of the officers, this time clearly pointing towards Michael.
+Then he gave some signal, just raising his hand towards the
+orchestra, and immediately the lights were put down, the whole
+house plunged in darkness, except where the lamps in the sunk
+orchestra faintly illuminated the base of the curtain, and the
+first longing, unsatisfied notes of the prelude began.
+
+The next hour passed for Michael in one unbroken mood of
+absorption.  The supreme moment of knowing the music intimately and
+of never having seen the opera before was his, and all that he had
+dreamed of or imagined as to the possibilities of music was flooded
+and drowned in the thing itself.  You could not say that it was
+more gigantic than The Ring, more human than the Meistersingers,
+more emotional than Parsifal, but it was utterly and wholly
+different to anything else he had ever seen or conjectured.  Falbe,
+he himself, the thronged and silent theatre, the Emperor, Munich,
+Germany, were all blotted out of his consciousness.  He just
+watched, as if discarnate, the unrolling of the decrees of Fate
+which were to bring so simple and overpowering a tragedy on the two
+who drained the love-potion together.  And at the end he fell back
+in his seat, feeling thrilled and tired, exhilarated and exhausted.
+
+"Oh, Hermann," he said, "what years I've wasted!"
+
+Falbe laughed.
+
+"You've wasted more than you know yet," he said.  "Hallo!"
+
+A very resplendent officer had come clanking down the gangway next
+them.  He put his heels together and bowed.
+
+"Lord Comber, I think?" he said in excellent English.
+
+Michael roused himself.
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+"His Imperial Majesty has done me the honour to desire you to come
+and speak to him," he said.
+
+"Now?" said Michael.
+
+"If you will be so good," and he stood aside for Michael to pass up
+the stairs in front of him.
+
+In the wide corridor behind he joined him again.
+
+"Allow me to introduce myself as Count von Bergmann," he said, "and
+one of His Majesty's aides-de-camp.  The Kaiser always speaks with
+great pleasure of the visits he has paid to your father, and he saw
+you immediately he came into the theatre.  If you will permit me, I
+would advise you to bow, but not very low, respecting His Majesty's
+incognito, to seat yourself as soon as he desires it, and to remain
+till he gives you some speech of dismissal.  Forgive me for going
+in front of you here.  I have to introduce you to His Majesty's
+presence."
+
+Michael followed him down the steps to the front of the box.
+
+"Lord Comber, All-highest," he said, and instantly stood back.
+
+The Emperor rose and held out his hand, and Michael, bowing over it
+as he took it, felt himself seized in the famous grip of steel, of
+which its owner as well as its recipient was so conscious.
+
+"I am much pleased to see you, Lord Comber," said he.  "I could not
+resist the pleasure of a little chat with you about our beloved
+England.  And your excellent father, how is he?"
+
+He indicated a chair to Michael, who, as advised, instantly took
+it, though the Emperor remained a moment longer standing.
+
+"I left him in very good health, Your Majesty," said Michael.
+
+"Ah! I am glad to hear it.  I desire you to convey to him my
+friendliest greetings, and to your mother also.  I well remember my
+last visit to his house above the tidal estuary at Ashbridge, and I
+hope it may not be very long before I have the opportunity to be in
+England again."
+
+He spoke in a voice that seemed rather hoarse and tired, but his
+manner expressed the most courteous cordiality.  His face, which
+had been as still as a statue's when he showed himself to the
+house, was now never in repose for a moment.  He kept turning his
+head, which he carried very upright, this way and that as he spoke;
+now he would catch sight of someone in the audience to whom he
+directed his glance, now he would peer over the edge of the low
+balustrade, now look at the group of officers who stood apart at
+the back of the box.
+
+His whole demeanour suggested a nervous, highly-strung condition;
+the restlessness of it was that of a man overstrained, who had lost
+the capability of being tranquil.  Now he frowned, now he smiled,
+but never for a moment was he quiet.  Then he launched a perfect
+hailstorm of questions at Michael, to the answers to which (there
+was scarcely time for more than a monosyllable in reply) he
+listened with an eager and a suspicious attention.  They were
+concerned at first with all sorts of subjects: inquired if Michael
+had been at Baireuth, what he was going to do after the Munich
+festival was over, if he had English friends here.  He inquired
+Falbe's name, looked at him for a moment through his glasses, and
+desired to know more about him.  Then, learning he was a teacher of
+the piano in England, and had a sister who sang, he expressed great
+satisfaction.
+
+"I like to see my subjects, when there is no need for their
+services at home," he said, "learning about other lands, and
+bringing also to other lands the culture of the Fatherland, even as
+it always gives me pleasure to see the English here, strengthening
+by the study of the arts the bonds that bind our two great nations
+together.  You English must learn to understand us and our great
+mission, just as we must learn to understand you."
+
+Then the questions became more specialised, and concerned the state
+of things in England.  He laughed over the disturbances created by
+the Suffragettes, was eager to hear what politicians thought about
+the state of things in Ireland, made specific inquiries about the
+Territorial Force, asked about the Navy, the state of the drama in
+London, the coal strike which was threatened in Yorkshire.  Then
+suddenly he put a series of personal questions.
+
+"And you, you are in the Guards, I think?" he said.
+
+"No, sir; I have just resigned my commission," said Michael.
+
+"Why?  Why is that?  Have many of your officers been resigning?"
+
+"I am studying music, Your Majesty," said Michael.
+
+"I am glad to see you came to Germany to do it.  Berlin?  You ought
+to spend a couple of months in Berlin.  Perhaps you are thinking of
+doing so."
+
+He turned round quickly to one of his staff who had approached him.
+
+"Well, what is it?" he said.
+
+Count von Bergmann bowed low.
+
+"The Herr-Director," he said, "humbly craves to know whether it is
+Your Majesty's pleasure that the opera shall proceed."
+
+The Kaiser laughed.
+
+"There, Lord Comber," he said, "you see how I am ordered about.
+They wish to cut short my conversation with you.  Yes, Bergmann, we
+will go on.  You will remain with me, Lord Comber, for this act."
+
+Immediately after the lights were lowered again, the curtain rose,
+and a most distracting hour began for Michael.  His neighbour was
+never still for a single moment.  Now he would shift in his chair,
+now with his hand he would beat time on the red velvet balustrade
+in front of him, and a stream of whispered appreciation and
+criticism flowed from him.
+
+"They are taking the opening scene a little too slow," he said.  "I
+shall call the director's attention to that.  But that crescendo is
+well done; yes, that is most effective.  The shawl--observe the
+beautiful lines into which the shawl falls as she waves it.  That
+is wonderful--a very impressive entry.  Ah, but they should not
+cross the stage yet; it is more effective if they remain longer
+there.  Brangane sings finely; she warns them that the doom is
+near."
+
+He gave a little giggle, which reminded Michael of his father.
+
+"Brangane is playing gooseberry, as you say in England," he said.
+"A big gooseberry, is she not?  Ah, bravo! bravo!  Wunderschon!
+Yes, enter King Mark from his hunting.  Very fine.  Say I was
+particularly pleased with the entry of King Mark, Bergmann.  A
+wonderful act!  Wagner never touched greater heights."
+
+At the end the Emperor rose and again held out his hand.
+
+"I am pleased to have seen you, Lord Comber," he said.  "Do not
+forget my message to your father; and take my advice and come to
+Berlin in the winter.  We are always pleased to see the English in
+Germany."
+
+As Michael left the box he ran into the Herr-Director, who had been
+summoned to get a few hints.
+
+He went back to join Falbe in a state of republican irritation,
+which the honour that had been done him did not at all assuage.
+There was an hour's interval before the third act, and the two
+drove back to their hotel to dine there.  But Michael found his
+friend wholly unsympathetic with his chagrin.  To him, it was quite
+clear, the disappointment of not having been able to attend very
+closely to the second act of Tristan was negligible compared to the
+cause that had occasioned it.  It was possible for the ordinary
+mortal to see Tristan over and over again, but to converse with the
+Kaiser was a thing outside the range of the average man.  And again
+in this interval, as during the act itself, Michael was bombarded
+with questions.  What did the Kaiser say?  Did he remember
+Ashbridge?  Did Michael twice receive the iron grip?  Did the All-
+highest say anything about the manoeuvres?  Did he look tired, or
+was it only the light above his head that made him appear so
+haggard?  Even his opinion about the opera was of interest.  Did he
+express approval?
+
+This was too much for Michael.
+
+"My dear Hermann," he said, "we alluded very cautiously to the
+'Song to Aegir' this morning, and delicately remarked that you had
+heard it once and I twice.  How can you care what his opinion of
+this opera is?"
+
+Falbe shook his handsome head, and gesticulated with his fine
+hands.
+
+"You don't understand," he said.  "You have just been talking to
+him himself.  I long to hear his every word and intonation.  There
+is the personality, which to us means so much, in which is summed
+up all Germany.  It is as if I had spoken to Rule Britannia
+herself.  Would you not be interested?  There is no one in the
+world who is to his country what the Kaiser is to us.  When you
+told me he had stayed at Ashbridge I was thrilled, but I was
+ashamed lest you should think me snobbish, which indeed I am not.
+But now I am past being ashamed."
+
+He poured out a glass of wine and drank it with a "Hoch!"
+
+"In his hand lies peace and war," he said.  "It is as he pleases.
+The Emperor and his Chancellor can make Germany do exactly what
+they choose, and if the Chancellor does not agree with the Emperor,
+the Emperor can appoint one who does.  That is what it comes to;
+that is why he is as vast as Germany itself.  The Reichstag but
+advises where he is concerned.  Have you no imagination, Michael?
+Europe lies in the hand that shook yours."
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"I suppose I must have no imagination," he said.  "I don't picture
+it even now when you point it out."
+
+Falbe pointed an impressive forefinger.
+
+"But for him," he said, "England and Germany would have been at
+each other's throats over the business at Agadir.  He held the
+warhounds in leash--he, their master, who made them."
+
+"Oh, he made them, anyhow," said Michael.
+
+"Naturally.  It is his business to be ready for any attack on the
+part of those who are jealous at our power.  The whole Fatherland
+is a sword in his hand, which he sheathes.  It would long ago have
+leaped from the scabbard but for him."
+
+"Against whom?" asked Michael.  "Who is the enemy?"
+
+Falbe hesitated.
+
+"There is no enemy at present," he said, "but the enemy potentially
+is any who tries to thwart our peaceful expansion."
+
+Suddenly the whole subject tasted bitter to Michael.  He recalled,
+instinctively, the Emperor's great curiosity to be informed on
+English topics by the ordinary Englishman with whom he had
+acquaintance.
+
+"Oh, let's drop it," he said.  "I really didn't come to Munich to
+talk politics, of which I know nothing whatever."
+
+Falbe nodded.
+
+"That is what I have said to you before," he remarked.  "You are
+the most happy-go-lucky of the nations.  Did he speak of England?"
+
+"Yes, of his beloved England," said Michael.  "He was extremely
+cordial about our relations."
+
+"Good.  I like that," said Falbe briskly.
+
+"And he recommended me to spend two months in Berlin in the
+winter," added Michael, sliding off on to other topics.
+
+Falbe smiled.
+
+"I like that less," he said, "since that will mean you will not be
+in London."
+
+"But I didn't commit myself," said Michael, smiling back; "though I
+can say 'beloved Germany' with equal sincerity."
+
+Falbe got up.
+
+"I would wish that--that you were Kaiser of England," he said.
+
+"God forbid!" said Michael.  "I should not have time to play the
+piano."
+
+During the next day or two Michael often found himself chipping at
+the bed-rock, so to speak, of this conversation, and Falbe's
+revealed attitude towards his country and, in particular, towards
+its supreme head.  It seemed to him a wonderful and an enviable
+thing that anyone could be so thoroughly English as Falbe certainly
+was in his ordinary, everyday life, and that yet, at the back of
+this there should lie so profound a patriotism towards another
+country, and so profound a reverence to its ruler.  In his general
+outlook on life, his friend appeared to be entirely of one blood
+with himself, yet now on two or three occasions a chance spark had
+lit up this Teutonic beacon.  To Michael this mixture of
+nationalities seemed to be a wonderful gift; it implied a widening
+of one's sympathies and outlook, a larger comprehension of life
+than was possible to any of undiluted blood.
+
+For himself, like most young Englishmen of his day, he was not
+conscious of any tremendous sense of patriotism like this.
+Somewhere, deep down in him, he supposed there might be a source, a
+well of English waters, which some explosion in his nature might
+cause to flood him entirely, but such an idea was purely
+hypothetical; he did not, in fact, look forward to such a
+bouleversement as being a possible contingency.  But with Falbe it
+was different; quite a small cause, like the sight of the Rhine at
+Cologne, or a Bavarian village at sunset, or the fact of a friend
+having talked with the Emperor, was sufficient to make his innate
+patriotism find outlet in impassioned speech.  He wondered vaguely
+whether Falbe's explanation of this--namely, that nationally the
+English were prosperous, comfortable and insouciant--was perhaps
+sound.  It seemed that the notion was not wholly foundationless.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Michael had been practising all the morning of a dark November day,
+had eaten a couple of sandwiches standing in front of his fire, and
+observed with some secret satisfaction that the fog which had
+lifted for an hour had come down on the town again in earnest, and
+that it was only reasonable to dismiss the possibility of going
+out, and spend the afternoon as he had spent the morning.  But he
+permitted himself a few minutes' relaxation as he smoked his
+cigarette, and sat down by the window, looking out, in Lucretian
+mood, on to the very dispiriting conditions that prevailed in the
+street.
+
+Though it was still only between one and two in the afternoon, the
+densest gloom prevailed, so that it was impossible to see the
+outlines even of the houses across the street, and the only
+evidence that he was not in some desert spot lay in the fact of a
+few twinkling lights, looking incredibly remote, from the windows
+opposite and the gas-lamps below.  Traffic seemed to be at a
+standstill; the accustomed roar from Piccadilly was dumb, and he
+looked out on to a silent and vapour-swathed world.  This isolation
+from all his fellows and from the chances of being disturbed, it
+may be added, gave him a sense of extreme satisfaction.  He wanted
+his piano, but no intrusive presence.  He liked the sensation of
+being shut up in his own industrious citadel, secure from
+interruption.
+
+During the last two months and a half since his return from Munich
+he had experienced greater happiness, had burned with a stronger
+zest for life than during the whole of his previous existence.  Not
+only had he been working at that which he believed he was fitted
+for, and which gave him the stimulus which, one way or another, is
+essential to all good work, but he had been thrown among people who
+were similarly employed, with whom he had this great common ground
+of kinship in ambition and aim.  No more were the days too long
+from being but half-filled with work with which he had no sympathy,
+and diversions that gave him no pleasure; none held sufficient
+hours for all that he wanted to put into it.  And in this busy
+atmosphere, where his own studies took so much of his time and
+energy, and where everybody else was in some way similarly
+employed, that dismal self-consciousness which so drearily looked
+on himself shuffling along through fruitless, uncongenial days was
+cracking off him as the chestnut husk cracks when the kernel within
+swells and ripens.
+
+Apart from his work, the centre of his life was certainly the
+household of the Falbes, where the brother and sister lived with
+their mother.  She turned out to be in a rather remote manner "one
+of us," and had about her, very faint and dim, like an antique
+lavender bag, the odour of Ashbridge.  She lived like the lilies of
+the field, without toiling or spinning, either literally or with
+the more figurative work of the mind; indeed, she can scarcely be
+said to have had any mind at all, for, as with drugs, she had
+sapped it away by a practically unremitting perusal of all the
+fiction that makes the average reader wonder why it was written.
+In fact, she supplied the answer to that perplexing question, since
+it was clearly written for her.  She was not in the least excited
+by these tales, any more than the human race are excited by the
+oxygen in the air, but she could not live without them.  She
+subscribed to three lending libraries, which, by this time had
+probably learned her tastes, for if she ever by ill-chance embarked
+on a volume which ever so faintly adumbrated the realities of life,
+she instantly returned it, as she found it painful; and, naturally,
+she did not wish to be pained.  This did not, however, prevent her
+reading those that dealt with amiable young men who fell in love
+with amiable young women, and were for the moment sundered by red-
+haired adventuresses or black-haired moneylenders, for those she
+found not painful but powerful, and could often remember where she
+had got to in them, which otherwise was not usually the case.  She
+wore a good deal of lace, spoke in a tired voice, and must
+certainly have been of the type called "sweetly pretty" some
+quarter of a century ago.  She drank hot water with her meals, and
+continually reminded Michael of his own mother.
+
+Sylvia and Hermann certainly did all that could be done for her; in
+other words, they invariably saw that her water was hot, and her
+stock of novels replenished.  But when that was accomplished, there
+really appeared to be little more that could be done for her.  Her
+presence in a room counted for about as much as a rather powerful
+shadow on the wall, unexplained by any solid object which could
+have made it appear there.  But most of the day she spent in her
+own room, which was furnished exactly in accordance with her
+twilight existence.  There was a writing-table there, which she
+never used, several low arm-chairs (one of which she was always
+using), by each of which was a small table, on to which she could
+put the book that she was at the moment engaged on.  Lace hangings,
+of the sort that prevent anybody either seeing in or out, obscured
+the windows; and for decoration there were china figures on the
+chimney-piece, plush-rimmed plates on the walls, and a couple of
+easels, draped with chiffon, on which stood enlarged photographs of
+her husband and her children.
+
+There was, it may be added, nothing in the least pathetic about
+her, for, as far as could be ascertained, she had everything she
+wanted.  In fact, from the standpoint of commonsense, hers was the
+most successful existence; for, knowing what she liked, she passed
+her entire life in its accomplishment.  The only thing that caused
+her emotion was the energy and vitality of her two children, and
+even then that emotion was but a mild surprise when she recollected
+how tremendous a worker and boisterous a gourmand of life was her
+late husband, on the anniversary of whose death she always sat all
+day without reading any novels at all, but devoted what was left of
+her mind to the contemplation of nothing at all.  She had married
+him because, for some inscrutable reason, he insisted on it; and
+she had been resigned to his death, as to everything else that had
+ever happened to her.
+
+All her life, in fact, she had been of that unchangeable, drab
+quality in emotional affairs which is characteristic of advanced
+middle-age, when there are no great joys or sorrows to look back
+on, and no expectation for the future.  She had always had
+something of the indestructible quality of frail things like
+thistledown or cottonwool; violence and explosion that would blow
+strong and distinct organisms to atoms only puffed her a yard or
+two away where she alighted again without shock, instead of
+injuring or annihilating her. . . .  Yet, in the inexplicable ways
+of love, Sylvia and her brother not only did what could be done for
+her, but regarded her with the tenderest affection.  What that love
+lived on, what was its daily food would be hard to guess, were it
+not that love lives on itself.
+
+The rest of the house, apart from the vacuum of Mrs. Falbe's rooms,
+conducted itself, so it seemed to Michael, at the highest possible
+pressure.  Sylvia and her brother were both far too busy to be
+restless, and if, on the one hand, Mrs. Falbe's remote,
+impenetrable life was inexplicable, not less inexplicable was the
+rage for living that possessed the other two.  From morning till
+night, and on Sundays from night till morning, life proceeded at
+top speed.
+
+As regards household arrangements, which were all in Sylvia's
+hands, there were three fixed points in the day.  That is to say,
+that there was lunch for Mrs. Falbe and anybody else who happened
+to be there at half-past one; tea in Mrs. Falbe's well-liked
+sitting-room at five, and dinner at eight.  These meals--Mrs. Falbe
+always breakfasted in her bedroom--were served with quiet decorum.
+Apart from them, anybody who required anything consulted the cook
+personally.  Hermann, for instance, would have spent the morning at
+his piano in the vast studio at the back of their house in
+Maidstone Crescent, and not arrived at the fact that it was lunch
+time till perhaps three in the afternoon.  Unless then he settled
+to do without lunch altogether, he must forage for himself; or
+Sylvia, having to sing at a concert at eight, would return famished
+and exultant about ten; she would then proceed to provide herself,
+unless she supped elsewhere, with a plate of eggs and bacon, or
+anything else that was easily accessible.  It was not from
+preference that these haphazard methods were adopted; but since
+they only kept two servants, it was clear that a couple of women,
+however willing, could not possibly cope with so irregular a
+commissariat in addition to the series of fixed hours and the rest
+of the household work.  As it was, two splendidly efficient
+persons, one German, the other English, had filled the posts of
+parlourmaid and cook for the last eight years, and regarded
+themselves, and were regarded, as members of the family.  Lucas,
+the parlourmaid, indeed, from the intense interest she took in the
+conversation at table, could not always resist joining in it, and
+was apt to correct Hermann or his sister if she detected an
+inaccuracy in their statements.  "No, Miss Sylvia," she would say,
+"it was on Thursday, not Wednesday," and then recollecting herself,
+would add, "Beg your pardon, miss."
+
+In this milieu, as new to Michael as some suddenly discovered
+country, he found himself at once plunged and treated with instant
+friendly intimacy.  Hermann, so he supposed, must have given him a
+good character, for he was made welcome before he could have had
+time to make any impression for himself, as Hermann's friend.  On
+the first occasion of his visiting the house, for the purpose of
+his music lesson, he had stopped to lunch afterwards, where he met
+Sylvia, and was in the presence of (you could hardly call it more
+than that) their mother.
+
+Mrs. Falbe had faded away in some mist-like fashion soon after, but
+it was evident that he was intended to do no such thing, and they
+had gone into the studio, already comrades, and Michael had chiefly
+listened while the other two had violent and friendly discussions
+on every subject under the sun.  Then Hermann happened to sit down
+at the piano, and played a Chopin etude pianissimo prestissimo with
+finger-tips that just made the notes to sound and no more, and
+Sylvia told him that he was getting it better; and then Sylvia sang
+"Who is Sylvia?" and Hermann told her that she shouldn't have eaten
+so much lunch, or shouldn't have sung; and then, by transitions
+that Michael could not recollect, they played the Hailstone Chorus
+out of Israel in Egypt (or, at any rate, reproduced the spirit of
+it), and both sang at the top of their voices.  Then, as usually
+happened in the afternoon, two or three friends dropped in, and
+though these were all intimate with their hosts, Michael had no
+impression of being out in the cold or among strangers.  And when
+he left he felt as if he had been stretching out chilly hands to
+the fire, and that the fire was always burning there, ready for him
+to heat himself at, with its welcoming flames and core of sincere
+warmth, whenever he felt so disposed.
+
+At first he had let himself do this much less often than he would
+have liked, for the shyness of years, his over-sensitive modesty at
+his own want of charm and lightness, was a self-erected barrier in
+his way.  He was, in spite of his intimacy with Hermann,
+desperately afraid of being tiresome, of checking by his presence,
+as he had so often felt himself do before, the ease and high
+spirits of others.  But by degrees this broke down; he realised
+that he was now among those with whom he had that kinship of the
+mind and of tastes which makes the foundation on which friendship,
+and whatever friendship may ripen into, is securely built.  Never
+did the simplicity and sincerity of their welcome fail; the
+cordiality which greeted him was always his; he felt that it was
+intended that he should be at home there just as much as he cared
+to be.
+
+The six working days of the week, however, were as a rule too full
+both for the Falbes and for Michael to do more than have, apart
+from the music lessons, flying glimpses of each other; for the day
+was taken up with work, concerts and opera occurred often in the
+evening, and the shuttles of London took their threads in divergent
+directions.  But on Sunday the house at Maidstone Crescent ceased,
+as Hermann said, to be a junction, and became a temporary terminus.
+
+"We burst from our chrysalis, in fact," he said.  "If you find it
+clearer to understand this way, we burst from our chrysalis and
+become a caterpillar.  Do chrysalides become caterpillars!  We do,
+anyhow.  If you come about eight you will find food; if you come
+later you will also find food of a sketchier kind.  People have a
+habit of dropping in on Sunday evening.  There's music if anyone
+feels inclined to make any, and if they don't they are made to.
+Some people come early, others late, and they stop to breakfast if
+they wish.  It's a gaudeamus, you know, a jolly, a jamboree.  One
+has to relax sometimes."
+
+Michael felt all his old unfitness for dreadful crowds return to
+him.
+
+"Oh, I'm so bad at that sort of thing," he said.  "I am a frightful
+kill-joy, Hermann."
+
+Hermann sat down on the treble part of his piano.
+
+"That's the most conceited thing I've heard you say yet," he
+remarked.  "Nobody will pay any attention to you; you won't kill
+anybody's joy.  Also it's rather rude of you."
+
+"I didn't mean to be rude," said Michael.
+
+"Then we must suppose you were rude by accident.  That is the worst
+sort of rudeness."
+
+"I'm sorry; I'll come," said Michael.
+
+"That's right.  You might even find yourself enjoying it by
+accident, you know.  If you don't, you can go away.  There's music;
+Sylvia sings quite seriously sometimes, and other people sing or
+bring violins, and those who don't like it, talk--and then we get
+less serious.  Have a try, Michael.  See if you can't be less
+serious, too."
+
+Michael slipped despairingly from his seat.
+
+"If only I knew how!" he said.  "I believe my nurse never taught me
+to play, only to remember that I was a little gentleman.  All the
+same, when I am with you, or with my cousin Francis, I can manage
+it to a certain extent."
+
+Falbe looked at him encouragingly.
+
+"Oh, you're getting on," he said.  "You take yourself more for
+granted than you used to.  I remember you when you used to be
+polite on purpose.  It's doing things on purpose that makes one
+serious.  If you ever play the fool on purpose, you instantly cease
+playing the fool."
+
+"Is that it?" said Michael.
+
+"Yes, of course.  So come on Sunday, and forget all about it,
+except coming.  And now, do you mind going away?  I want to put in
+a couple of hours before lunch.  You know what to practise till
+Tuesday, don't you?"
+
+That was the first Sunday evening that Michael had spent with his
+friends; after that, up till this present date in November, he had
+not missed a single one of those gatherings.  They consisted almost
+entirely of men, and of the men there were many types, and many
+ages.  Actors and artists, musicians and authors were
+indiscriminately mingled; it was the strangest conglomeration of
+diverse interests.  But one interest, so it seemed to Michael,
+bound them all together; they were all doing in their different
+lives the things they most delighted in doing.  There was the key
+that unlocked all the locks--namely, the enjoyment that inspired
+their work.  The freemasonry of art and the freemasonry of the
+eager mind that looks out without verdict, but with only
+expectation and delight in experiment, passed like an open secret
+among them, secret because none spoke of it, open because it was so
+transparently obvious.  And since this was so, every member of that
+heterogeneous community had a respect for his companions; the fact
+that they were there together showed that they had all passed this
+initiation, and knew what for them life meant.
+
+Very soon after dinner all sitting accommodation, other than the
+floor, was occupied; but then the floor held the later comers, and
+the smoke from many cigarettes and the babble of many voices made a
+constantly-ascending incense before the altar dedicated to the gods
+that inspire all enjoyable endeavour.  Then Sylvia sang, and both
+those who cared to hear exquisite singing and those who did not
+were alike silent, for this was a prayer to the gods they all
+worshipped; and Falbe played, and there was a quartet of strings.
+
+After that less serious affairs held the rooms; an eminent actor
+was pleased to parody another eminent actor who was also present.
+This led to a scene in which each caricatured the other, and a
+French poet did gymnastic feats on the floor and upset a tray of
+soda-water, and a German conductor fluffed out his hair and died
+like Marguerite.  And when in the earlier hours of the morning part
+of the guests had gone away, and part were broiling ham in the
+kitchen, Sylvia sang again, quite seriously, and Michael, in
+Hermann's absence, volunteered to play her accompaniment for her.
+She stood behind him, and by a finger on his shoulder directed him
+in the way she would have him go.  Michael found himself suddenly
+and inexplicably understanding this; her finger, by its pressure or
+its light tapping, seemed to him to speak in a language that he
+found himself familiar with, and he slowed down stroking the notes,
+or quickened with staccato touch, as she wordlessly directed him.
+
+Out of all these things, which were but trivialities, pleasant,
+unthinking hours for all else concerned, several points stood out
+for Michael, points new and illuminating.  The first was the
+simplicity of it all, the spontaneousness with which pleasure was
+born if only you took off your clothes, so to speak, and left them
+on the bank while you jumped in.  All his life he had buttoned his
+jacket and crammed his hat on to his head.  The second was the
+sense, indefinable but certain, that Hermann and Sylvia between
+them were the high priests of this memorable orgie.
+
+He himself had met, at dreadful, solemn evenings when Lady
+Ashbridge and his father stood at the head of the stairs, the two
+eminent actors who had romped to-night, and found them exceedingly
+stately personages, just as no doubt they had found him an icy and
+awkward young man.  But they, like him, had taken their note on
+those different occasions from their environment.  Perhaps if his
+father and mother came here . . . but Michael's imagination quailed
+before such a supposition.
+
+The third point, which gradually through these weeks began to haunt
+him more and more, was the personality of Sylvia.  He had never
+come across a girl who in the least resembled her, probably because
+he had not attempted even to find in a girl, or to display in
+himself, the signals, winked across from one to the other, of human
+companionship.  Always he had found a difficulty in talking to a
+girl, because he had, in his self-consciousness, thought about what
+he should say.  There had been the cabalistic question of sex ever
+in front of him, a thing that troubled and deterred him.  But
+Sylvia, with her hand on his shoulder, absorbed in her singing, and
+directing him only as she would have pressed the pedal of the piano
+if she had been playing to herself, was no more agitating than if
+she had been a man; she was just singing, just using him to help
+her singing.  And even while Michael registered to himself this
+charming annihilation of sex, which allowed her to be to him no
+more than her brother was--less, in fact, but on the same plane--
+she had come to the end of her song, patted him on the back, as she
+would have patted anybody else, with a word of thanks, and, for
+him, suddenly leaped into significance.  It was not only a singer
+who had sung, but an individual one called Sylvia Falbe.  She took
+her place, at present a most inconspicuous one, on the back-cloth
+before which Michael's life was acted, towards which, when no
+action, so to speak, was taking place, his eyes naturally turned
+themselves.  His father and mother were there, Francis also and
+Aunt Barbara, and of course, larger than the rest, Hermann.  Now
+Sylvia was discernible, and, as the days went by and their meetings
+multiplied, she became bigger, walked into a nearer perspective.
+It did not occur to Michael, rightly, to imagine himself at all in
+love with her, for he was not.  Only she had asserted herself on
+his consciousness.
+
+Not yet had she begun to trouble him, and there was no sign, either
+external or intimate, in his mind that he was sickening with the
+splendid malady.  Indeed, the significance she held for him was
+rather that, though she was a girl, she presented none of the
+embarrassments which that sex had always held for him.  She grew in
+comradeship; he found himself as much at ease with her as with her
+brother, and her charm was just that which had so quickly and
+strongly attracted Michael to Hermann.  She was vivid in the same
+way as he was; she had the same warm, welcoming kindliness--the
+same complete absence of pose.  You knew where you were with her,
+and hitherto, when Michael was with one of the young ladies brought
+down to Ashbridge to be looked at, he only wished that wherever he
+was he was somewhere else.  But with Sylvia he had none of this
+self-consciousness; she was bonne camarade for him in exactly the
+same way as she was bonne camarade to the rest of the multitude
+which thronged the Sunday evenings, perfectly at ease with them, as
+they with her, in relationship entirely unsentimental.
+
+But through these weeks, up to this foggy November afternoon,
+Michael's most conscious preoccupation was his music.  Falbe's
+principles in teaching were entirely heretical according to the
+traditional school; he gave Michael no scale to play, no dismal
+finger-exercise to fill the hours.
+
+"What is the good of them?" he asked.  "They can only give you
+nimbleness and strength.  Well, you shall acquire your nimbleness
+and strength by playing what is worth playing.  Take good music,
+take Chopin or Bach or Beethoven, and practise one particular etude
+or fugue or sonata; you may choose anything you like, and learn
+your nimbleness and strength that way.  Read, too; read for a
+couple of hours every day.  The written language of music must
+become so familiar to you that it is to you precisely what a book
+or a newspaper is, so that whether you read it aloud--which is
+playing--or sit in your arm-chair with your feet on the fender,
+reading it not aloud on the piano, but to yourself, it conveys its
+definite meaning to you.  At your lessons you will have to read
+aloud to me.  But when you are reading to yourself, never pass over
+a bar that you don't understand.  It has got to sound in your head,
+just as the words you read in a printed book really sound in your
+head if you read carefully and listen for them.  You know exactly
+what they would be like if you said them aloud.  Can you read, by
+the way?  Have a try."
+
+Falbe got down a volume of Bach and opened it at random.
+
+"There," he said, "begin at the top of the page."
+
+"But I can't," said Michael.  "I shall have to spell it out."
+
+"That's just what you mustn't do.  Go ahead, and don't pause till
+you get to the bottom of the page.  Count; start each bar when it
+comes to its turn, and play as many notes as you can in it."
+
+This was a dismal experience.  Michael hitherto had gone on the
+painstaking and thorough plan of spelling out his notes with
+laborious care.  Now Falbe's inexorable voice counted for him,
+until it was lost in inextinguishable laughter.
+
+"Go on, go on!" he shouted.  "I thought it was Bach, and it is
+clearly Strauss's Don Quixote."
+
+Michael, flushed and determined, with grave, set mouth, ploughed
+his way through amazing dissonances, and at the end joined Falbe's
+laughter.
+
+"Oh dear," he said.  "Very funny.  But don't laugh so at me,
+Hermann."
+
+Falbe dried his eyes.
+
+"And what was it?" he said.  "I declare it was the fourth fugue.
+An entirely different conception of it!  A thoroughly original
+view!  Now, what you've got to do, is to repeat that--not the same
+murder I mean, but other murders--for a couple of hours a day. . . .
+By degrees--you won't believe it--you will find you are not
+murdering any longer, but only mortally wounding.  After six months
+I dare say you won't even be hurting your victims.  All the same,
+you can begin with less muscular ones."
+
+In this way Michael's musical horizons were infinitely extended.
+Not only did this system of Falbe's of flying at new music, and
+going recklessly and regardlessly on, give quickness to his brain
+and finger, make his wits alert to pick up the new language he was
+learning, but it gloriously extended his vision and his range of
+country.  He ran joyfully, though with a thousand falls and
+tumbles, through these new and wonderful vistas; he worshipped at
+the grave, Gothic sanctuaries of Beethoven, he roamed through the
+enchanted garden of Chopin, he felt the icy and eternal frosts of
+Russia, and saw in the northern sky the great auroras spread
+themselves in spear and sword of fire; he listened to the wisdom of
+Brahms, and passed through the noble and smiling country of Bach.
+All this, so to speak, was holiday travel, and between his journeys
+he applied himself with the same eager industry to the learning of
+his art, so that he might reproduce for himself and others true
+pictures of the scenes through which he scampered.  Here Falbe was
+not so easily moved to laughter; he was as severe with Michael as
+he was with himself, when it was the question of learning some
+piece with a view to really playing it.  There was no light-hearted
+hurrying on through blurred runs and false notes, slurred phrases
+and incomplete chords.  Among these pieces which had to be properly
+learned was the 17th Prelude of Chopin, on hearing which at
+Baireuth on the tuneless and catarrhed piano Falbe had agreed to
+take Michael as a pupil.  But when it was played again on Falbe's
+great Steinway, as a professed performance, a very different
+standard was required.
+
+Falbe stopped him at the end of the first two lines.
+
+"This won't do, Michael," he said.  "You played it before for me to
+see whether you could play.  You can.  But it won't do to sketch
+it.  Every note has got to be there; Chopin didn't write them by
+accident.  He knew quite well what he was about.  Begin again,
+please."
+
+This time Michael got not quite so far, when he was stopped again.
+He was playing without notes, and Falbe got up from his chair where
+he had the book open, and put it on the piano.
+
+"Do you find difficulty in memorising?" he asked.
+
+This was discouraging; Michael believed that he remembered easily;
+he also believed that he had long known this by heart.
+
+"No; I thought I knew it," he said.
+
+"Try again."
+
+This time Falbe stood by him, and suddenly put his finger down into
+the middle of Michael's hands, striking a note.
+
+"You left out that F sharp," he said.  "Go on. . . .  Now you are
+leaving out that E natural.  Try to get it better by Thursday, and
+remember this, that playing, and all that differentiates playing
+from strumming, only begins when you can play all the notes that
+are put down for you to play without fail.  You're beginning at the
+wrong end; you have admirable feeling about that prelude, but you
+needn't think about feeling till you've got all the notes at your
+fingers' ends.  Then and not till then, you may begin to remember
+that you want to be a pianist.  Now, what's the next thing?"
+
+Michael felt somewhat squashed and discouraged.  He had thought he
+had really worked successfully at the thing he knew so well by
+sight.  His heavy eyebrows drew together.
+
+"You told me to harmonise that Christmas carol," he remarked,
+rather shortly.
+
+Falbe put his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Look here, Michael," he said, "you're vexed with me.  Now, there's
+nothing to be vexed at.  You know quite well you were leaving out
+lots of notes from those jolly fat chords, and that you weren't
+playing cleanly.  Now I'm taking you seriously, and I won't have
+from you anything but the best you can do.  You're not doing your
+best when you don't even play what is written.  You can't begin to
+work at this till you do that."
+
+Michael had a moment's severe tussle with his temper.  He felt
+vexed and disappointed that Hermann should have sent him back like
+a schoolboy with his exercise torn over.  Not immediately did he
+confess to himself that he was completely in the wrong.
+
+"I'm doing the best I can," he said.  "It's rather discouraging."
+
+He moved his big shoulders slightly, as if to indicate that
+Hermann's hand was not wanted there.  Hermann kept it there.
+
+"It might be discouraging," he said, "if you were doing your best."
+
+Michael's ill-temper oozed from him.
+
+"I'm wrong," he said, turning round with the smile that made his
+ugly face so pleasant.  "And I'm sorry both that I have been slack
+and that I've been sulky.  Will that do?"
+
+Falbe laughed.
+
+"Very well indeed," he said.  "Now for 'Good King Wenceslas.'
+Wasn't it--"
+
+"Yes; I got awfully interested over it, Hermann.  I thought I would
+try and work it up into a few variations."
+
+"Let's hear," said Falbe.
+
+This was a vastly different affair.  Michael had shown both
+ingenuity and a great sense of harmonic beauty in the arrangement
+of the very simple little tune that Falbe had made him exercise his
+ear over, and the half-dozen variations that followed showed a
+wonderfully mature handling.  The air which he dealt with haunted
+them as a sort of unseen presence.  It moved in a tiny gavotte, or
+looked on at a minuet measure; it wailed, yet without being
+positively heard, in a little dirge of itself; it broadened into a
+march, it shouted in a bravura of rapid octaves, and finally
+asserted itself, heard once more, over a great scale base of bells.
+
+Falbe, as was his habit when interested, sat absolutely still, but
+receptive and alert, instead of jerking and fidgeting as he had
+done over Michael's fiasco in the Chopin prelude, and at the end he
+jumped up with a certain excitement.
+
+"Do you know what you've done?" he said.  "You've done something
+that's really good.  Faults?  Yes, millions; but there's a first-
+rate imagination at the bottom of it.  How did it happen?"
+
+Michael flushed with pleasure.
+
+"Oh, they sang themselves," he said, "and I learned them.  But will
+it really do?  Is there anything in it?"
+
+"Yes, old boy, there's King Wenceslas in it, and you've dressed him
+up well.  Play that last one again."
+
+The last one was taxing to the fingers, but Michael's big hands
+banged out the octave scale in the bass with wonderful ease, and
+Falbe gave a great guffaw of pleasure at the rollicking conclusion.
+
+"Write them all down," he said, "and try if you can hear it singing
+half a dozen more.  If you can, write them down also, and give me
+leave to play the lot at my concert in January."
+
+Michael gasped.
+
+"You don't mean that?" he said.
+
+"Certainly I do.  It's a fine bit of stuff."
+
+It was with these variations, now on the point of completion that
+Michael meant to spend his solitary and rapturous evening.  The
+spirits of the air--whatever those melodious sprites may be--had
+for the last month made themselves very audible to him, and the
+half-dozen further variations that Hermann had demanded had rung
+all day in his head.  Now, as they neared completion, he found that
+they ceased their singing; their work of dictation was done; he had
+to this extent expressed himself, and they haunted him no longer.
+At present he had but jotted down the skeleton of bars that could
+be filled in afterwards, and it gave him enormous pleasure to see
+the roles reversed and himself out of his own brain, setting Falbe
+his task.
+
+But he felt much more than this.  He had done something.  Michael,
+the dumb, awkward Michael, was somehow revealed on those eight
+pages of music.  All his twenty-five years he had stood wistfully
+inarticulate, unable, so it had seemed to him, to show himself, to
+let himself out.  And not till now, when he had found this means of
+access, did he know how passionately he had desired it, nor how
+immensely, in the process of so doing, his desire had grown.  He
+must find out more ways, other channels of projecting himself.  The
+need for that, as of a diver throwing himself into the empty air
+and the laughing waters below him, suddenly took hold of him.
+
+He took a clean sheet of music paper, into which he placed his
+pages, and with a pleasurable sense of pomp wrote in the centre of
+it:
+
+
+                      VARIATIONS ON AN AIR.
+
+                              By
+
+                         Michael Comber.
+
+
+He paused a moment, then took up his pen again.
+
+"Dedicated to Sylvia Falbe," he wrote at the top.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Michael had been so engrossingly employed since his return to
+London in the autumn that the existence of other ties and other
+people apart from those immediately connected with his work had
+worn a very shadow-like aspect.  He had, it is true, written with
+some regularity to his mother, finding, somewhat to his dismay, how
+very slight the common ground between them was for purposes of
+correspondence.  He could outline the facts that he had been to
+several concerts, that he had seen much of his music-master, that
+he had been diligent at his work, but he realised that there was
+nothing in detail about those things that could possibly interest
+her, and that nothing except them really interested him.  She on
+her side had little to say except to record the welfare of Petsy,
+to remark on the beauty of October, and tell him how many shooting
+parties they had had.
+
+His correspondence with his father had been less frequent, and
+absolutely one-sided, since Lord Ashbridge took no notice at all of
+his letters.  Michael regretted this, as showing that he was still
+outcast, but it cannot be said to have come between him and the
+sunshine, for he had begun to manufacture the sunshine within, that
+internal happiness which his environment and way of life produced,
+which seemed to be independent of all that was not directly
+connected with it.  But a letter which he received next morning
+from his mother stated, in addition to the fact that Petsy had
+another of her tiresome bilious attacks (poor lamb), that his
+father and she thought it right that he should come down to
+Ashbridge for Christmas.  It conveyed the sense that at this joyful
+season a truce, probably limited in duration, and, even while it
+lasted, of the nature of a strongly-armed neutrality, was
+proclaimed, but the prospect was not wholly encouraging, for Lady
+Ashbridge added that she hoped Michael would not "go on" vexing his
+father.  What precisely Michael was expected to do in order to
+fulfil that wish was not further stated, but he wrote dutifully
+enough to say that he would come down at Christmas.
+
+But the letter rekindled his dormant sense of there being other
+people in the world beside his immediate circle; also, indefinably,
+it gave him the sense that his mother wanted him.  That should be
+so then, and sequentially he remembered with a pang of self-
+reproach that he had not as much as indicated his presence in
+London to Aunt Barbara, or set eyes on her since their meeting in
+August.  He knew she was in London, since he had seen her name in
+some paragraph in the papers not long before, and instantly wrote
+to ask her to dine with him at a near date.  Her answer was
+characteristic.
+
+"Of course I'll dine with you, my dear," she wrote; "it will be
+delightful.  And what has happened to you?  Your letter actually
+conveyed a sense of cordiality.  You never used to be cordial.  And
+I wish to meet some of your nice friends.  Ask one or two, please--
+a prima donna of some kind and a pianist, I think.  I want them
+weird and original--the prima donna with short hair, and the
+pianist with long.  In Tony's new station in life I never see
+anybody except the sort of people whom your father likes.  Are you
+forgiven yet, by the way?"
+
+Michael found himself on the grin at the thought of Aunt Barbara
+suddenly encountering the two magnificent Falbes (prima donna and
+pianist exactly as she had desired) as representing the weird sort
+of people whom she pictured his living among, and the result quite
+came up to his expectations.  As usual, Aunt Barbara was late, and
+came in talking rapidly about the various causes that had detained
+her, which her fruitful imagination had suggested to her as she
+dressed.  In order, perhaps, to suit herself to the circle in which
+she would pass the evening, she had put on (or, rather, it looked
+as if her maid had thrown at her) a very awful sort of tea-gown,
+brown and prickly-looking, and adapted to Bohemian circles.  She,
+with the same lively imagination, had pictured Michael in a
+velveteen coat and soft shirt, the pianist as very small, with
+spectacles and long hair, and the prima donna a full-blown kind of
+barmaid with Roman pearls. . . .
+
+"Yes, my dear, I know I am late," she began before she was inside
+the door, "but Og had so much to say, and there was a block at Hyde
+Park Corner.  My dear Michael, how smart you look!"
+
+She came round the corner of the screen and the Falbes burst upon
+her, Hermann and Sylvia standing by the fire.  For the short,
+spectacled pianist there was this very tall, English-looking young
+man, upright and soldierly, with his handsome, boyish face and
+well-fitting clothes.  That was bad enough, but infinitely worse
+was she who was to have been the full-blown barmaid.  Instead was
+this magnificent girl, nearly as tall as her brother, with her
+small oval face crowning the column of her neck, her eyes merry,
+her mouth laughing at some brotherly retort that Hermann had just
+made.  Aunt Barbara took her in with one second's survey--her face,
+her neck, her beautiful dress, her whole air of ease and good-
+breeding, and gave a despairing glance at her own prickly tea-gown.
+For the moment, amiably accustomed as she was to laugh at herself,
+she did not find it humourous.
+
+"Miss Sylvia Falbe, Aunt Barbara," said Michael with a little
+tremor in his voice; "and Mr. Hermann Falbe, Lady Barbara Jerome,"
+he added, rather as if he expected nobody to believe it.
+
+Aunt Barbara made the best of it: shook hands in her jolly manner,
+and burst into laughter.
+
+"Michael, I could slay you," she said; "but before I do that I must
+tell your friends all about it.  This horrible nephew of mine, Miss
+Falbe, promised me two weird musicians, and I expected--I really
+can't tell you what I expected--but there were to be spectacles and
+velveteen coats and the general air of an afternoon concert at
+Clapham Junction.  But it is nice to be made such a fool of.  I
+feel precisely like an elderly and sour governess who has been
+ordered to come down to dinner so that there shan't be thirteen.
+Give me your arm, Mr. Falbe, and take me in to dinner at once,
+where I may drown my embarrassment in soup.  Or does Michael go in
+first?  Go on, wretch!"
+
+Presently they were seated at dinner, and Aunt Barbara could not
+help enlarging a little on her own discomfiture.
+
+"It is all your fault, Michael," she said.  "You have been in
+London all these weeks without letting me know anything about you
+or your friends, or what you were doing; so naturally I supposed
+you were leading some obscure kind of existence.  Instead of which
+I find this sort of thing.  My dear, what good soup!  I shall see
+if I can't induce your cook to leave you.  But bachelors always
+have the best of everything.  Now tell me about your visit to
+Germany.  Which was the point where we parted--Baireuth, wasn't it?
+I would not go to Baireuth with anybody!"
+
+"I went with Mr. Falbe," said Michael.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Falbe has not asked me yet.  I may have to revise what I
+say," said Aunt Barbara daringly.
+
+"I didn't ask Michael," said Hermann.  "I got into his carriage as
+the train was moving; and my luggage was left behind."
+
+"I was left behind," said Sylvia, "which was worse.  But I sent
+Hermann's luggage."
+
+"So expeditiously that it arrived the day before we left for
+Munich," remarked Hermann.
+
+"And that's all the gratitude I get.  But in the interval you lived
+upon Lord Comber."
+
+"I do still in the money I earn by giving him music lessons.  Mike,
+have you finished the Variations yet?"
+
+"Variations--what are Variations?" asked Aunt Barbara.
+
+"Yes, two days ago.  Variations are all the things you think about
+on the piano, Aunt Barbara, when you are playing a tune made by
+somebody else."
+
+"Should I like them?  Will Mr. Falbe play them to me?" asked she.
+
+"I daresay he will if he can.  But I thought you loathed music."
+
+"It certainly depends on who makes it," said Aunt Barbara.  "I
+don't like ordinary music, because the person who made it doesn't
+matter to me.  But if, so to speak, it sounds like somebody I know,
+it is a different matter."
+
+Michael turned to Sylvia.
+
+"I want to ask your leave for something I have already done," he
+said.
+
+"And if I don't give it you?"
+
+"Then I shan't tell you what it is."
+
+Sylvia looked at him with her candid friendly eyes.  Her brother
+always told her that she never looked at anybody except her
+friends; if she was engaged in conversation with a man she did not
+like, she looked at his shirt-stud or at a point slightly above his
+head.
+
+"Then, of course, I give in," she said.  "I must give you leave if
+otherwise I shan't know what you have done.  But it's a mean trick.
+Tell me at once."
+
+"I've dedicated the Variations to you," he said.
+
+Sylvia flushed with pleasure.
+
+"Oh, but that's absolutely darling of you," she said.  "Have you,
+really?  Do you mean it?"
+
+"If you'll allow me."
+
+"Allow you?  Hermann, the Variations are mine.  Isn't it too
+lovely?"
+
+It was at this moment that Aunt Barbara happened to glance at
+Michael, and it suddenly struck her that it was a perfectly new
+Michael whom she looked at.  She knew and was secretly amused at
+the fiasco that always attended the introduction of amiable young
+ladies to Ashbridge, and had warned her sister-in-law that Michael,
+when he chose the girl he wanted, would certainly do it on his own
+initiative.  Now she felt sure that Michael, though he might not be
+aware of it himself, was, even if he had not chosen, beginning to
+choose.  There was that in his eyes which none of the importations
+to Ashbridge had ever seen there, that eager deferential attention,
+which shows that a young man is interested because it is a girl he
+is talking to.  That, she knew, had never been characteristic of
+Michael; indeed, it would not have been far from the truth to say
+that the fact that he was talking to a girl was sufficient to make
+his countenance wear an expression of polite boredom.  Then for a
+while, as dinner progressed, she doubted the validity of her
+conclusion, for the Michael who was entertaining her to-night was
+wholly different from the Michael she had known and liked and
+pitied.  She felt that she did not know this new one yet, but she
+was certain that she liked him, and equally sure that she did not
+pity him at all.  He had found his place, he had found his work; he
+evidently fitted into his life, which, after all, is the surest
+ground of happiness, and it might be that it was only general joy,
+so to speak, that kindled that pleasant fire in his face.  And then
+once more she went back to her first conclusion, for talking to
+Michael herself she saw, as a woman so infallibly sees, that he
+gave her but the most superficial attention--sufficient, indeed, to
+allow him to answer intelligently and laugh at the proper places,
+but his mind was not in the least occupied with her.  If Sylvia
+moved his glance flickered across in her direction: it was she who
+gave him his alertness.  Aunt Barbara felt that she could have told
+him truthfully that he was in love with her, and she rather thought
+that it would be news to him; probably he did not know it yet
+himself.  And she wondered what his father would say when he knew it.
+
+"And then Munich," she said, violently recalling Michael's
+attention towards her.  "Munich I could have borne better than
+Baireuth, and when Mr. Falbe asks me there I shall probably go.
+Your Uncle Tony was in Germany then, by the way; he went over at
+the invitation of the Emperor to the manoeuvres."
+
+"Did he?  The Emperor came to Munich for a day during them.  He was
+at the opera," said Michael.
+
+"You didn't speak to him, I suppose?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; he sent for me, and talked a lot.  In fact, he talked too
+much, because I didn't hear a note of the second act."
+
+Aunt Barbara became infinitely more interested.
+
+"Tell me all about it, Michael," she said.  "What did he talk
+about?"
+
+"Everything, as far as I can remember, England, Ashbridge, armies,
+navies, music.  Hermann says he cast pearls before swine--"
+
+"And his tone, his attitude?" she asked.
+
+"Towards us?--towards England?  Immensely friendly, and most
+inquisitive.  I was never asked so many questions in so short a
+time."
+
+Aunt Barbara suddenly turned to Falbe.
+
+"And you?" she asked.  "Were you with Michael?"
+
+"No, Lady Barbara.  I had no pearls."
+
+"And are you naturalised English?" she asked.
+
+"No; I am German."
+
+She slid swiftly off the topic.
+
+"Do you wonder I ask, with your talking English so perfectly?" she
+said.  "You should hear me talking French when we are entertaining
+Ambassadors and that sort of persons.  I talk it so fast that
+nobody can understand a word I say.  That is a defensive measure,
+you must observe, because even if I talked it quite slowly they
+would understand just as little.  But they think it is the pace
+that stupefies them, and they leave me in a curious, dazed
+condition.  And now Miss Falbe and I are going to leave you two.
+Be rather a long time, dear Michael, so that Mr. Falbe can tell you
+what he thinks of me, and his sister shall tell me what she thinks
+of you.  Afterwards you and I will tell each other, if it is not
+too fearful."
+
+This did not express quite accurately Lady Barbara's intentions,
+for she chiefly wanted to find out what she thought of Sylvia.
+
+"And you are great friends, you three?" she said as they settled
+themselves for the prolonged absence of the two men.
+
+Sylvia smiled; she smiled, Aunt Barbara noticed, almost entirely
+with her eyes, using her mouth only when it came to laughing; but
+her eyes smiled quite charmingly.
+
+"That's always rather a rash thing to pronounce on," she said.  "I
+can tell you for certain that Hermann and I are both very fond of
+him, but it is presumptuous for us to say that he is equally
+devoted to us."
+
+"My dear, there is no call for modesty about it," said Barbara.
+"Between you--for I imagine it is you who have done it--between you
+you have made a perfectly different creature of the boy.  You've
+made him flower."
+
+Sylvia became quite grave.
+
+"Oh, I do hope he likes us," she said.  "He is so likable himself."
+
+Barbara nodded
+
+"And you've had the good sense to find that out," she said.  "It's
+astonishing how few people knew it.  But then, as I said, Michael
+hadn't flowered.  No one understood him, or was interested.  Then
+he suddenly made up his mind last summer what he wanted to do and
+be, and immediately did and was it."
+
+"I think he told Hermann," said she.  "His father didn't approve,
+did he?"
+
+"Approve?  My dear, if you knew my brother you would know that the
+only things he approves of are those which Michael isn't."
+
+Sylvia spread her fine hands out to the blaze, warming them and
+shading her face.
+
+"Michael always seems to us--" she began.  "Ah, I called him
+Michael by mistake."
+
+"Then do it on purpose next time," remarked Barbara.  "What does
+Michael seem?"
+
+"Ah, but don't let him know I called him Michael," said Sylvia in
+some horror.  "There is nothing so awful as to speak of people
+formally to their faces, and intimately behind their backs.  But
+Hermann is always talking of him as Michael."
+
+"And Michael always seems--"
+
+"Oh, yes; he always seems to me to have been part of us, of Hermann
+and me, for years.  He's THERE, if you know what I mean, and so few
+people are there.  They walk about your life, and go in and out, so
+to speak, but Michael stops.  I suppose it's because he is so
+natural."
+
+Aunt Barbara had been a diplomatist long before her husband, and
+fearful of appearing inquisitive about Sylvia's impression of
+Michael, which she really wanted to inquire into, instantly changed
+the subject.
+
+"Ah, everybody who has got definite things to do is natural," she
+said.  "It is only the idle people who have leisure to look at
+themselves in the glass and pose.  And I feel sure that you have
+definite things to do and plenty of them, my dear.  What are they?"
+
+"Oh, I sing a little," said Sylvia.
+
+"That is the first unnatural thing you have said.  I somehow feel
+that you sing a great deal."
+
+Aunt Barbara suddenly got up.
+
+"My dear, you are not THE Miss Falbe, are you, who drove London
+crazy with delight last summer.  Don't tell me you are THE Miss
+Falbe?"
+
+Sylvia laughed.
+
+"Do you know, I'm afraid I must be," she said.  "Isn't it dreadful
+to have to say that after your description?"
+
+Aunt Barbara sat down again, in a sort of calm despair.
+
+"If there are any more shocks coming for me to-night," she said, "I
+think I had better go home.  I have encountered a perfectly new
+nephew Michael.  I have dressed myself like a suburban housekeeper
+to meet a Poiret, so don't deny it, and having humourously told
+Michael I wished to see a prima donna and a pianist, he takes me at
+my word and produces THE Miss Falbe.  I'm glad I knew that in time;
+I should infallibly have asked you to sing, and if you had done so--
+you are probably good-natured enough to have done even that--I
+should have given the drawing-room gasp at the end, and told your
+brother that I thought you sang very prettily."
+
+Sylvia laughed.
+
+"But really it wasn't my fault, Lady Barbara," she said.  "When we
+met I couldn't have said, 'Beware!  I am THE Miss Falbe.'"
+
+"No, my dear; but I think you ought, somehow, to have conveyed the
+impression that you were a tremendous swell.  You didn't.  I have
+been thinking of you as a charming girl, and nothing more."
+
+"But that's quite good enough for me," said Sylvia.
+
+The two young men joined them after this, and Hermann speedily
+became engrossed in reading the finished Variations.  Some of these
+pleased him mightily; one he altogether demurred to.
+
+"It's just a crib, Mike," he said.  "The critics would say I had
+forgotten it, and put in instead what I could remember of a
+variation out of the Handel theme.  That next one's, oh, great fun.
+But I wish you would remember that we all haven't got great orang-
+outang paws like you."
+
+Aunt Barbara stopped in the middle of her sentence; she knew
+Michael's old sensitiveness about these physical disabilities, and
+she had a moment's cold horror at the thought of Falbe having said
+so miserably tactless a thing to him.  But the horror was of
+infinitesimal duration, for she heard Michael's laugh as they
+leaned over the top of the piano together.
+
+"I wish you had, Hermann," he said.  "I know you'll bungle those
+tenths."
+
+Falbe moved to the piano-seat.
+
+"Oh, let's have a shot at it," he said.  "If Lady Barbara won't
+mind, play that one through to me first, Mike."
+
+"Oh, presently, Hermann," he said.  "It makes such an infernal row
+that you can't hear anything else afterwards.  Do sing, Miss
+Sylvia; my aunt won't really mind--will you, Aunt Barbara?"
+
+"Michael, I have just learned that this is THE Miss Falbe," she
+said.  "I am suffering from shock.  Do let me suffer from coals of
+fire, too."
+
+Michael gently edged Hermann away from the music-stool.  Much as he
+enjoyed his master's accompaniment he was perfectly sure that he
+preferred, if possible, to play for Sylvia himself than have the
+pleasure of listening to anybody else.
+
+"And may I play for you, Miss Sylvia?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, will you?  Thanks, Lord Comber."
+
+Hermann moved away.
+
+"And so Mr. Hermann sits down by Lady Barbara while Lord Comber
+plays for Miss Sylvia," he observed, with emphasis on the titles.
+
+A sudden amazing boldness seized Michael.
+
+"Sylvia, then," he said.
+
+"All right, Michael," answered the girl, laughing.
+
+She came and stood on the left of the piano, slightly behind him.
+
+"And what are we going to have?" asked Michael.
+
+"It must be something we both know, for I've brought no music,"
+said she.
+
+Michael began playing the introduction to the Hugo Wolff song which
+he had accompanied for her one Sunday night at their house.  He
+knew it perfectly by heart, but stumbled a little over the
+difficult syncopated time.  This was not done without purpose, for
+the next moment he felt her hand on his shoulder marking it for him.
+
+"Yes, that's right," she said.  "Now you've got it."  And Michael
+smiled sweetly at his own amazing ingenuity.
+
+Hermann put down the Variations, which he still had in his hand,
+when Sylvia's voice began.  Unaccustomed as she was to her
+accompanist, his trained ear told him that she was singing
+perfectly at ease, and was completely at home with her player.
+Occasionally she gave Michael some little indication, as she had
+done before, but for the most part her fingers rested immobile on
+his shoulder, and he seemed to understand her perfectly.  Somehow
+this was a surprise to him; he had not known that Michael possessed
+that sort of second-sight that unerringly feels and translates into
+the keys the singer's mood.  For himself he always had to attend
+most closely when he was playing for his sister, but familiar as he
+was with her singing, he felt that Michael divined her certainly as
+well as himself, and he listened to the piano more than to the voice.
+
+"You extraordinary creature," he said when the song was over.
+"Where did you learn to accompany?"
+
+Suddenly Michael felt an access of shyness, as if he had been
+surprised when he thought himself private.
+
+"Oh, I've played it before for Miss--I mean for Sylvia," he said.
+
+Then he turned to the girl.
+
+"Thanks, awfully," he said.  "And I'm greedy.  May we have one
+more?"
+
+He slid into the opening bars of "Who is Sylvia?"  That song, since
+he had heard her sing it at her recital in the summer, had grown in
+significance to him, even as she had.  It had seemed part of her
+then, but then she was a stranger.  To-night it was even more
+intimately part of her, and she was a friend.
+
+Hermann strolled across to the fireplace at the end of this, and
+lit a cigarette.
+
+"My sister's a blatant egoist, Lady Barbara," he said.  "She loves
+singing about herself.  And she lays it on pretty thick, too,
+doesn't she?  Now, Sylvia, if you've finished--quite finished, I
+mean--do come and sit down and let me try these Variations--"
+
+"Shall we surrender, Michael?" asked the girl.  "Or shall we stick
+to the piano, now we've got it?  If Hermann once sits down, you
+know, we shan't get him away for the rest of the evening.  I can't
+sing any more, but we might play a duet to keep him out."
+
+Hermann rushed to the piano, took his sister by the shoulders, and
+pushed her into a chair.
+
+"You sit there," he said, "and listen to something not about
+yourself.  Michael, if you don't come away from that piano, I shall
+take Sylvia home at once.  Now you may all talk as much as you
+like; you won't interrupt me one atom--but you'll have to talk loud
+in certain parts."
+
+Then a feat of marvellous execution began.  Michael had taken an
+evil pleasure in giving his master, for whom he slaved with so
+unwearied a diligence, something that should tax his powers, and he
+gave a great crash of laughter when for a moment Hermann was
+brought to a complete standstill in an octave passage of triplets
+against quavers, and the performer exultantly joined in it, as he
+pushed his hair back from his forehead, and made a second attempt.
+
+"It isn't decent to ask a fellow to read that," he shouted.  "It's
+a crime; it's a scandal."
+
+"My dear, nobody asked you to read it," said Sylvia.
+
+"Silence, you chit!  Mike, come here a minute.  Sit down one second
+and play that.  Promise to get up again, though, immediately.  Just
+these three bars--yes, I see.  An orang-outang apparently can do
+it, so why not I?  Am I not much better than they?  Go away,
+please; or, rather, stop there and turn over.  Why couldn't you
+have finished the page with the last act, and started this one
+fresh, instead of making this Godforsaken arrangement?  Now!"
+
+A very simple little minuet measure followed this outrageous
+passage, and Hermann's exquisite lightness of touch made it sound
+strangely remote, as if from a mile away, or a hundred years ago,
+some graceful echo was evoked again.  Then the little dirge wept
+for the memories of something that had never happened, and leaving
+out the number he disapproved of, as reminiscent of the Handel
+theme, Hermann gathered himself up again for the assertion of the
+original tune, with its bars of scale octaves.  The contagious
+jollity of it all seized the others, and Sylvia, with full voice,
+and Aunt Barbara, in a strange hooting, sang to it.
+
+Then Hermann banged out the last chord, and jumped up from his
+seat, rolling up the music.
+
+"I go straight home," he said, "and have a peaceful hour with it.
+Michael, old boy, how did you do it?  You've been studying
+seriously for a few months only, and so this must all have been in
+you before.  And you've come to the age you are without letting any
+of it out.  I suppose that's why it has come with a rush.  You knew
+it all along, while you were wasting your time over drilling your
+toy soldiers.  Come on, Sylvia, or I shall go without you.  Good
+night, Lady Barbara.  Half-past ten to-morrow, Michael."
+
+Protest was clearly useless; and, having seen the two off, Michael
+came upstairs again to Aunt Barbara, who had no intention of going
+away just yet.
+
+"And so these are the people you have been living with," she said.
+"No wonder you had not time to come and see me.  Do they always go
+that sort of pace--it is quicker than when I talk French."
+
+Michael sank into a chair.
+
+"Oh, yes, that's Hermann all over," he said.  "But--but just think
+what it means to me!  He's going to play my tunes at his concert.
+Michael Comber, Op. 1.  O Lord! O Lord!"
+
+"And you just met him in the train?" said Aunt Barbara.
+
+"Yes; second class, Victoria Station, with Sylvia on the platform.
+I didn't much notice Sylvia then."
+
+This and the inference that naturally followed was as much as could
+be expected, and Aunt Barbara did not appear to wait for anything
+more on the subject of Sylvia.  She had seen sufficient of the
+situation to know where Michael was most certainly bound for.  Yet
+the very fact of Sylvia's outspoken friendliness with him made her
+wonder a little as to what his reception would be.  She would
+hardly have said so plainly that she and her brother were devoted
+to him if she had been devoted to him with that secret tenderness
+which, in its essentials, is reticent about itself.  Her half-
+hour's conversation with the girl had given her a certain insight
+into her; still more had her attitude when she stood by Michael as
+he played for her, and put her hand on his shoulder precisely as
+she would have done if it had been another girl who was seated at
+the piano.  Without doubt Michael had a real existence for her, but
+there was no sign whatever that she hailed it, as a girl so
+unmistakably does, when she sees it as part of herself.
+
+"More about them," she said.  "What are they?  Who are they?"
+
+He outlined for her, giving the half-English, half-German
+parentage, the shadow-like mother, the Bavarian father, Sylvia's
+sudden and comet-like rising in the musical heaven, while her
+brother, seven years her senior, had spent his time in earning in
+order to give her the chance which she had so brilliantly taken.
+Now it was to be his turn, the shackles of his drudgery no longer
+impeded him, and he, so Michael radiantly prophesied, was to have
+his rocket-like leap to the zenith, also.
+
+"And he's German?" she asked.
+
+"Yes.  Wasn't he rude about my being a toy soldier?  But that's the
+natural German point of view, I suppose."
+
+Michael strolled to the fireplace.
+
+"Hermann's so funny," he said.  "For days and weeks together you
+would think he was entirely English, and then a word slips from him
+like that, which shows he is entirely German.  He was like that in
+Munich, when the Emperor appeared and sent for me."
+
+Aunt Barbara drew her chair a little nearer the fire, and sat up.
+
+"I want to hear about that," she said.
+
+"But I've told you; he was tremendously friendly in a national
+manner."
+
+"And that seemed to you real?" she asked.
+
+Michael considered.
+
+"I don't know that it did," he said.  "It all seemed to me rather
+feverish, I think."
+
+"And he asked quantities of questions, I think you said."
+
+"Hundreds.  He was just like what he was when he came to Ashbridge.
+He reviewed the Yeomanry, and shot pheasants, and spent the
+afternoon in a steam launch, apparently studying the deep-water
+channel of the river, where it goes underneath my father's place;
+and then in the evening there was a concert."
+
+Aunt Barbara did not heed the concert.
+
+"Do you mean the channel up from Harwich," she asked, "of which the
+Admiralty have the secret chart?"
+
+"I fancy they have," said Michael.  "And then after the concert
+there was the torchlight procession, with the bonfire on the top of
+the hill."
+
+"I wasn't there.  What else?"
+
+"I think that's all," said Michael.  "But what are you driving at,
+Aunt Barbara?"
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+"I'm driving at this," she said.  "The Germans are accumulating a
+vast quantity of knowledge about England.  Tony, for instance, has
+a German valet, and when he went down to Portsmouth the other day
+to see the American ship that was there, he took him with him.  And
+the man took a camera and was found photographing where no
+photography is allowed.  Did you see anything of a camera when the
+Emperor came to Ashbridge?"
+
+Michael thought.
+
+"Yes; one of his staff was clicking away all day," he said.  "He
+sent a lot of them to my mother."
+
+"And, we may presume, kept some copies himself," remarked Aunt
+Barbara drily.  "Really, for childish simplicity the English are
+the biggest fools in creation."
+
+"But do you mean--"
+
+"I mean that the Germans are a very knowledge-seeking people, and
+that we gratify their desires in a very simple fashion.  Do you
+think they are so friendly, Michael?  Do you know, for instance,
+what is a very common toast in German regimental messes?  They do
+not drink it when there are foreigners there, but one night during
+the manoeuvres an officer in a mess where Tony was dining got
+slightly 'on,' as you may say, and suddenly drank to 'Der Tag.'"
+
+"That means 'The Day,'" said Michael confidently.
+
+"It does; and what day?  The day when Germany thinks that all is
+ripe for a war with us.  'Der Tag' will dawn suddenly from a quiet,
+peaceful night, when they think we are all asleep, and when they
+have got all the information they think is accessible.  War, my
+dear."
+
+Michael had never in his life seen his aunt so serious, and he was
+amazed at her gravity.
+
+"There are hundreds and hundreds of their spies all over England,"
+she said, "and hundreds of their agents all over America.  Deep,
+patient Germany, as Carlyle said.  She's as patient as God and as
+deep as the sea.  They are working, working, while our toy soldiers
+play golf.  I agree with that adorable pianist; and, what's more, I
+believe they think that 'Der Tag' is near to dawn.  Tony says that
+their manoeuvres this year were like nothing that has ever been
+seen before.  Germany is a fighting machine without parallel in the
+history of the world."
+
+She got up and stood with Michael near the fireplace.
+
+"And they think their opportunity is at hand," she said, "though
+not for a moment do they relax their preparations.  We are their
+real enemy, don't you see?  They can fight France with one hand and
+Russia with the other; and in a few months' time now they expect we
+shall be in the throes of an internal revolution over this Irish
+business.  They may be right, but there is just the possibility
+that they may be astoundingly wrong.  The fact of the great foreign
+peril--this nightmare, this Armageddon of European war--may be
+exactly that which will pull us together.  But their diplomatists,
+anyhow, are studying the Irish question very closely, and German
+gold, without any doubt at all, is helping the Home Rule party.  As
+a nation we are fast asleep.  I wonder what we shall be like when
+we wake.  Shall we find ourselves already fettered when we wake, or
+will there be one moment, just one moment, in which we can spring
+up?  At any rate, hitherto, the English have always been at their
+best, not their worst, in desperate positions.  They hate exciting
+themselves, and refuse to do it until the crisis is actually on
+them.  But then they become disconcertingly serious and cool-
+headed."
+
+"And you think the Emperor--" began Michael.
+
+"I think the Emperor is the hardest worker in all Germany," said
+Barbara.  "I believe he is trying (and admirably succeeding) to
+make us trust his professions of friendship.  He has a great eye
+for detail, too; it seemed to him worth while to assure you even,
+my dear Michael, of his regard and affection for England.  He was
+always impressing on Tony the same thing, though to him, of course,
+he said that if there was any country nearer to his heart than
+England it was America.  Stuff and nonsense, my dear!"
+
+All this, though struck in a more serious key than was usual with
+Aunt Barbara, was quite characteristic of her.  She had the quality
+of mind which when occupied with one idea is occupied with it to
+the exclusion of all others; she worked at full power over anything
+she took up.  But now she dismissed it altogether.
+
+"You see what a diplomatist I have become," she said.  "It is a
+fascinating business: one lives in an atmosphere that is charged
+with secret affairs, and it infects one like the influenza.  You
+catch it somehow, and have a feverish cold of your own.  And I am
+quite useful to him.  You see, I am such a chatterbox that people
+think I let out things by accident, which I never do.  I let out
+what I want to let out on purpose, and they think they are pumping
+me.  I had a long conversation the other day with one of the German
+Embassy, all about Irish affairs.  They are hugely interested about
+Irish affairs, and I just make a note of that; but they can make as
+many notes as they please about what I say, and no one will be any
+the wiser.  In fact, they will be the foolisher.  And now I suppose
+I had better take myself away."
+
+"Don't do anything of the kind," said Michael.
+
+"But I must.  And if when you are down at Ashbridge at Christmas
+you find strangers hanging about the deep-water reach, you might
+just let me know.  It's no use telling your father, because he will
+certainly think they have come to get a glimpse of him as he plays
+golf.  But I expect you'll be too busy thinking about that new
+friend of yours, and perhaps his sister.  What did she tell me we
+had got to do?  'To her garlands let us bring,' was it not?  You
+and I will both send wreaths, Michael, though not for her funeral.
+Now don't be a hermit any more, but come and see me.  You shall
+take your garland girl into dinner, if she will come, too; and her
+brother shall certainly sit next me.  I am so glad you have become
+yourself at last.  Go on being yourself more and more, my dear: it
+suits you."
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Some fortnight later, and not long before Michael was leaving town
+for his Christmas visit to Ashbridge, Sylvia and her brother were
+lingering in the big studio from which the last of their Sunday
+evening guests had just departed.  The usual joyous chaos
+consequent on those entertainments reigned: the top of the piano
+was covered with the plates and glasses of those who had made an
+alfresco supper (or breakfast) of fried bacon and beer before
+leaving; a circle of cushions were ranged on the floor round the
+fire, for it was a bitterly cold night, and since, for some reason,
+a series of charades had been spontaneously generated, there was
+lying about an astonishing collection of pillow-cases, rugs, and
+table-cloths, and such articles of domestic and household use as
+could be converted into clothes for this purpose.  But the event of
+the evening had undoubtedly been Hermann's performance of the
+"Wenceslas Variations"; these he had now learned, and, as he had
+promised Michael, was going to play them at his concert in the
+Steinway Hall in January.  To-night a good many musician friends
+had attended the Sunday evening gathering, and there had been no
+two opinions about the success of them.
+
+"I was talking to Arthur Lagden about them," said Falbe, naming a
+prominent critic of the day, "and he would hardly believe that they
+were an Opus I., or that Michael had not been studying music
+technically for years instead of six months.  But that's the odd
+thing about Mike; he's so mature."
+
+It was not unusual for the brother and sister to sit up like this,
+till any hour, after their guests had gone; and Sylvia collected a
+bundle of cushions and lay full length on the floor, with her feet
+towards the fire.  For both of them the week was too busy on six
+days for them to indulge that companionship, sometimes full of
+talk, sometimes consisting of those dropped words and long
+silences, on which intimacy lives; and they both enjoyed, above all
+hours in the week, this time that lay between the friendly riot of
+Sunday evening and the starting of work again on Monday.  There was
+between them that bond which can scarcely exist between husband and
+wife, since it almost necessarily implies the close consanguinity
+of brother and sister, and postulates a certain sort of essential
+community of nature, founded not on tastes, nor even on affection,
+but on the fact that the same blood beats in the two.  Here an
+intense affection, too strong to be ever demonstrative, fortified
+it, and both brother and sister talked to each other, as if they
+were speaking to some physically independent piece of themselves.
+
+Sylvia had nothing apparently to add on the subject of Michael's
+maturity.  Instead she just raised her head, which was not quite
+high enough.
+
+"Stuff another cushion under my head, Hermann," she said.  "Thanks;
+now I'm completely comfortable, you will be relieved to hear."
+
+Hermann gazed at the fire in silence.
+
+"That's a weight off my mind," he said.  "About Michael now.  He's
+been suppressed all his life, you know, and instead of being
+dwarfed he has just gone on growing inside.  Good Lord! I wish
+somebody would suppress me for a year or two.  What a lot there
+would be when I took the cork out again.  We dissipate too much,
+Sylvia, both you and I."
+
+She gave a little grunt, which, from his knowledge of her
+inarticulate expressions, he took to mean dissent.
+
+"I suppose you mean we don't," he remarked.
+
+"Yes.  How much one dissipates is determined for one just as is the
+shape of your nose or the colour of your eyes.  By the way, I fell
+madly in love with that cousin of Michael's who came with him to-
+night.  He's the most attractive creature I ever saw in my life.
+Of course, he's too beautiful: no boy ought to be as beautiful as
+that."
+
+"You flirted with him," remarked Hermann.  "Mike will probably
+murder him on the way home."
+
+Sylvia moved her feet a little farther from the blaze.
+
+"Funny?" she asked.
+
+Instantly Falbe knew that her mind was occupied with exactly the
+same question as his.
+
+"No, not funny at all," he said.  "Quite serious.  Do you want to
+talk about it or not?"
+
+She gave a little groan.
+
+"No, I don't want to, but I've got to," she said.  "Aunt Barbara--
+we became Sylvia and Aunt Barbara an hour or two ago, and she's a
+dear--Aunt Barbara has been talking to me about it already."
+
+"And what did Aunt Barbara say?"
+
+"Just what you are going to," said Sylvia; "namely, that I had
+better make up my mind what I mean to say when Michael says what he
+means to say."
+
+She shifted round so as to face her brother as he stood in front of
+the fire, and pulled his trouser-leg more neatly over the top of
+his shoe.
+
+"But what's to happen if I can't make up my mind?" she said.  "I
+needn't tell you how much I like Michael; I believe I like him as
+much as I possibly can.  But I don't know if that is enough.
+Hermann, is it enough?  You ought to know.  There's no use in you
+unless you know about me."
+
+She put out her arm, and clasped his two legs in the crook of her
+elbow.  That expressed their attitude, what they were to each
+other, as absolutely as any physical demonstration allowed.  Had
+there not been the difference of sex which severed them she could
+never have got the sense of support that this physical contact gave
+her; had there not been her sisterhood to chaperon her, so to
+speak, she could never have been so at ease with a man.  The two
+were lover-like, without the physical apexes and limitations that
+physical love must always bring with it.  The complement of sex
+that brought them so close annihilated the very existence of sex.
+They loved as only brother and sister can love, without trouble.
+
+The closer contact of his fire-warmed trousers to the calf of his
+leg made Hermann step out of her encircling arm without any
+question of hurting her feelings.
+
+"I won't be burned," he said.  "Sorry, but I won't be burned.  It
+seems to me, Sylvia, that you ought to like Michael a little more
+and a little less."
+
+"It's no use saying what I ought to do," she said.  "The idea of
+what I 'ought' doesn't come in.  I like him just as much as I like
+him, neither more nor less."
+
+He clawed some more cushions together, and sat down on the floor by
+her.  She raised herself a little and rested her body against his
+folded knees.
+
+"What's the trouble, Sylvia?" he said.
+
+"Just what I've been trying to tell you."
+
+"Be more concrete, then.  You're definite enough when you sing."
+
+She sighed and gave a little melancholy laugh.
+
+"That's just it," she said.  "People like you and me, and Michael,
+too, for that matter, are most entirely ourselves when we are at
+our music.  When Michael plays for me I can sing my soul at him.
+While he and I are in music, if you understand--and of course you
+do--we belong to each other.  Do you know, Hermann, he finds me
+when I'm singing, without the slightest effort, and even you, as
+you have so often told me, have to search and be on the lookout.
+And then the song is over, and, as somebody says, 'When the feast
+is finished and the lamps expire,' then--well, the lamps expire,
+and he isn't me any longer, but Michael, with the--the ugly face,
+and--oh, isn't it horrible of me--the long arms and the little
+stumpy legs--if only he was rather different in things that don't
+matter, that CAN'T matter!  But--but, Hermann, if only Michael was
+rather like you, and you like Michael, I should love you exactly as
+much as ever, and I should love Michael, too."
+
+She was leaning forward, and with both hands was very carefully
+tying and untying one of Hermann's shoelaces.
+
+"Oh, thank goodness there is somebody in the world to whom I can
+say just whatever I feel, and know he understands," she said.  "And
+I know this, too--and follow me here, Hermann--I know that all that
+doesn't really matter; I am sure it doesn't.  I like Michael far
+too well to let it matter.  But there are other things which I
+don't see my way through, and they are much more real--"
+
+She was silent again, so long that Hermann reached out for a
+cigarette, lit it, and threw away the match before she spoke.
+
+"There is Michael's position," she said.  "When Michael asks me if
+I will have him, as we both know he is going to do, I shall have to
+make conditions.  I won't give up my career.  I must go on working--
+in other words, singing--whether I marry him or not.  I don't call
+it singing, in my sense of the word, to sing 'The Banks of Allan
+Water' to Michael and his father and mother at Ashbridge, any more
+than it is being a politician to read the morning papers and argue
+about the Irish question with you.  To have a career in politics
+means that you must be a member of Parliament--I daresay the House
+of Lords would do--and make speeches and stand the racket.  In the
+same way, to be a singer doesn't mean to sing after dinner or to go
+squawking anyhow in a workhouse, but it means to get up on a
+platform before critical people, and if you don't do your very best
+be damned by them.  If I marry Michael I must go on singing as a
+professional singer, and not become an amateur--the Viscountess
+Comber, who sings so charmingly.  I refuse to sing charmingly; I
+will either sing properly or not at all.  And I couldn't not sing.
+I shall have to continue being Miss Falbe, so to speak."
+
+"You say you insist on it," said Hermann; "but whether you did or
+not, there is nothing more certain than that Michael would."
+
+"I am sure he would.  But by so doing he would certainly quarrel
+irrevocably with his people.  Even Aunt Barbara, who, after all, is
+very liberally minded, sees that.  They can none of them, not even
+she, who are born to a certain tradition imagine that there are
+other traditions quite as stiff-necked.  Michael, it is true, was
+born to one tradition, but he has got the other, as he has shown
+very clearly by refusing to disobey it.  He will certainly, as you
+say, insist on my endorsing the resolution he has made for himself.
+What it comes to is this, that I can't marry him without his
+father's complete consent to all that I have told you.  I can't
+have my career disregarded, covered up with awkward silences,
+alluded to as a painful subject; and, as I say, even Aunt Barbara
+seemed to take it for granted that if I became Lady Comber I should
+cease to be Miss Falbe.  Well, there she's wrong, my dear; I shall
+continue to be Miss Falbe whether I'm Lady Comber, or Lady
+Ashbridge, or the Duchess of anything you please.  And--here the
+difficulty really comes in--they must all see how right I am.
+Difficulty, did I say?  It's more like an impossibility."
+
+Hermann threw the end of his cigarette into the ashes of the dying
+fire.
+
+"It's clear, then," he said, "you have made up your mind not to
+marry him."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Oh, Hermann, you fail me," she said.  "If I had made up my mind
+not to I shouldn't have kept you up an hour talking about it."
+
+He stretched his hands out towards the embers already coated with
+grey ash.
+
+"Then it's like that with you," he said, pointing.  "If there is
+the fire in you, it is covered up with ashes."
+
+She did not reply for a moment.
+
+"I think you've hit it there," she said.  "I believe there is the
+fire; when, as I said, he plays for me I know there is.  But the
+ashes?  What are they?  And who shall disperse them for me?"
+
+She stood up swiftly, drawing herself to her full height and
+stretching her arms out.
+
+"There's something bigger than we know coming," she said.  "Whether
+it's storm or sunshine I have no idea.  But there will be something
+that shall utterly sever Michael and me or utterly unite us."
+
+"Do you care which it is?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I care," said she.
+
+He held out his hands to her, and she pulled him up to his feet.
+
+"What are you going to say, then, when he asks you?" he said.
+
+"Tell him he must wait."
+
+He went round the room putting out the electric lamps and opening
+the big skylight in the roof.  There was a curtain in front of
+this, which he pulled aside, and from the frosty cloudless heavens
+the starshine of a thousand constellations filtered down.
+
+"That's a lot to ask of any man," he said.  "If you care, you
+care."
+
+"And if you were a girl you would know exactly what I mean," she
+said.  "They may know they care, but, unless they are marrying for
+perfectly different reasons, they have to feel to the end of their
+fingers that they care before they can say 'Yes.'"
+
+He opened the door for her to pass out, and they walked up the
+passage together arm-in-arm.
+
+"Well, perhaps Michael won't ask you," he said, "in which case all
+bother will be saved, and we shall have sat up talking till--
+Sylvia, did you know it is nearly three--sat up talking for
+nothing!"
+
+Sylvia considered this.
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" she said.
+
+And Hermann was inclined to agree with her.
+
+
+This view of the case found confirmation next day, for Michael,
+after his music lesson, lingered so firmly and determinedly when
+the three chatted together over the fire that in the end Hermann
+found nothing to do but to leave them together.  Sylvia had given
+him no sign as to whether she wished him to absent himself or not,
+and he concluded, since she did not put an end to things by going
+away herself, that she intended Michael to have his say.
+
+The latter rose as the door closed behind Hermann, and came and
+stood in front of her.  And at the moment Sylvia could notice
+nothing of him except his heaviness, his plainness, all the things
+that she had told herself before did not really matter.  Now her
+sensation contradicted that; she was conscious that the ash somehow
+had vastly accumulated over her fire, that all her affection and
+regard for him were suddenly eclipsed.  This was a complete
+surprise to her; for the moment she found Michael's presence and
+his proximity to her simply distasteful.
+
+"I thought Hermann was never going," he said.
+
+For a second or two she did not reply; it was clearly no use to
+continue the ordinary banter of conversation, to suggest that as
+the room was Hermann's he might conceivably be conceded the right
+to stop there if he chose.  There was no transition possible
+between the affairs of every day and the affair for which Michael
+had stopped to speak.  She gave up all attempt to make one;
+instead, she just helped him.
+
+"What is it, Michael?" she asked.
+
+Then to her, at any rate, Michael's face completely changed.  There
+burned in it all of a sudden the full glow of that of which she had
+only seen glimpses.
+
+"You know," he said.
+
+His shyness, his awkwardness, had all vanished; the time had come
+for him to offer to her all that he had to offer, and he did it
+with the charm of perfect manliness and simplicity.
+
+"Whether you can accept me or not," he said, "I have just to tell
+you that I am entirely yours.  Is there any chance for me, Sylvia?"
+
+He stood quite still, making no movement towards her.  She, on her
+side, found all her distaste of him suddenly vanished in the mere
+solemnity of the occasion.  His very quietness told her better than
+any protestations could have done of the quality of what he
+offered, and that quality vastly transcended all that she had known
+or guessed of him.
+
+"I don't know, Michael," she said at length.
+
+She came a step forward, and without any sense of embarrassment
+found that she, without conscious intention, had put her hands on
+his shoulders.  The moment that was done she was conscious of the
+impulse that made her do it.  It expressed what she felt.
+
+"Yes, I feel like that to you," she said.  "You're a dear.  I
+expect you know how fond I am of you, and if you don't I assure you
+of it now.  But I have got to give you more than that."
+
+Michael looked up at her.
+
+"Yes, Sylvia," he said, "much more than that."
+
+A few minutes ago only she had not liked him at all; now she liked
+him immensely.
+
+"But how, Michael?" she asked.  "How can I find it?"
+
+"Oh, it's I who have got to find it for you," he said.  "That is to
+say, if you want it to be found.  Do you?"
+
+She looked at him gravely, without the tremor of a smile in her
+eyes.
+
+"What does that mean exactly?" she said.
+
+"It is very simple.  Do you want to love me?"
+
+She did not move her hands; they still rested on his shoulders like
+things at ease, like things at home.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I want to," she said.
+
+"And is that the most you can do for me at present?" he asked.
+
+That reached her again; all the time the plain words, the plain
+face, the quiet of him stabbed her with daggers of which he had no
+idea.  She was dismayed at the recollection of her talk with her
+brother the evening before, of the ease and certitude with which
+she had laid down her conditions, of not giving up her career, of
+remaining the famous Miss Falbe, of refusing to take a dishonoured
+place in the sacred circle of the Combers.  Now, when she was face
+to face with his love, so ineloquently expressed, so radically a
+part of him, she knew that there was nothing in the world, external
+to him and her, that could enter into their reckonings; but into
+their reckonings there had not entered the one thing essential.
+She gave him sympathy, liking, friendliness, but she did not want
+him with her blood.  And though it was not humanly possible that
+she could want him with more than that, it was not possible that
+she could take him with less.
+
+"Yes, that is the most I can do for you at present," she said.
+
+Still quite quietly he moved away from her, so that he stood free
+of her hands.
+
+"I have been constantly here all these last months," he said.  "Now
+that you know what I have told you, do you want not to see me?"
+
+That stabbed her again.
+
+"Have I implied that?" she asked.
+
+"Not directly.  But I can easily understand its being a bore to
+you.  I don't want to bore you.  That would be a very stupid way of
+trying to make you care for me.  As I said, that is my job.  I
+haven't accomplished it as yet.  But I mean to.  I only ask you for
+a hint."
+
+She understood her own feeling better than he.  She understood at
+least that she was dealing with things that were necessarily
+incalculable.
+
+"I can't give you a hint," she said.  "I can't make any plans about
+it.  If you were a woman perhaps you would understand.  Love is, or
+it isn't.  That is all I know about it."
+
+But Michael persisted.
+
+"I only know what you have taught me," he said.  "But you must know
+that."
+
+In a flash she became aware that it would be impossible for her to
+behave to Michael as she had behaved to him for several months
+past.  She could not any longer put a hand on his shoulder, beat
+time with her fingers on his arm, knowing that the physical contact
+meant nothing to her, and all--all to him.  The rejection of him as
+a lover rendered the sisterly attitude impossible.  And not only
+must she revise her conduct, but she must revise the mental
+attitude of which it was the physical counterpart.  Up till this
+moment she had looked at the situation from her own side only, had
+felt that no plans could be made, that the natural thing was to go
+on as before, with the intimacy that she liked and the familiarity
+that was the obvious expression of it.  But now she began to see
+the question from his side; she could not go on doing that which
+meant nothing particular to her, if that insouciance meant
+something so very particular to him.  She realised that if she had
+loved him the touch of his hand, the proximity of his face would
+have had significance for her, a significance that would have been
+intolerable unless there was something mutual and secret between
+them.  It had seemed so easy, in anticipation, to tell him that he
+must wait, so simple for him just--well, just to wait until she
+could make up her mind.  She believed, as she had told her brother,
+that she cared for Michael, or as she had told him that she wanted
+to--the two were to the girl's mind identical, though expressed to
+each in the only terms that were possible--but until she came face
+to face with the picture of the future, that to her wore the same
+outline and colour as the past, she had not known the impossibility
+of such a presentment.  The desire of the lover on Michael's part
+rendered unthinkable the sisterly attitude on hers.  That her
+instinct told her, but her reason revolted against it.
+
+"Can't we go on as we were, Michael?" she said.
+
+He looked at her incredulously.
+
+"Oh, no, of course not that," he said.
+
+She moved a step towards him.
+
+"I can't think of you in any other way," she said, as if making an
+appeal.
+
+He stood absolutely unresponsive.  Something within him longed that
+she should advance a step more, that he should again have the touch
+of her hands on his shoulders, but another instinct stronger than
+that made him revoke his desire, and if she had moved again he
+would certainly have fallen back before her.
+
+"It may seem ridiculous to you," he said, "since you do not care.
+But I can't do that.  Does that seem absurd to you I?  I am afraid
+it does; but that is because you don't understand.  By all means
+let us be what they call excellent friends.  But there are certain
+little things which seem nothing to you, and they mean so much to
+me.  I can't explain; it's just the brotherly relation which I
+can't stand.  It's no use suggesting that we should be as we were
+before--"
+
+She understood well enough for his purposes.
+
+"I see," she said.
+
+Michael paused for a moment.
+
+"I think I'll be going now," he said.  "I am off to Ashbridge in
+two days.  Give Hermann my love, and a jolly Christmas to you both.
+I'll let you know when I am back in town."
+
+She had no reply to this; she saw its justice, and acquiesced.
+
+"Good-bye, then," said Michael.
+
+
+He walked home from Chelsea in that utterly blank and unfeeling
+consciousness which almost invariably is the sequel of any event
+that brings with it a change of attitude towards life generally.
+Not for a moment did he tell himself that he had been awakened from
+a dream, or abandon his conviction that his dream was to be made
+real.  The rare, quiet determination that had made him give up his
+stereotyped mode of life in the summer and take to music was still
+completely his, and, if anything, it had been reinforced by
+Sylvia's emphatic statement that "she wanted to care."  Only her
+imagining that their old relations could go on showed him how far
+she was from knowing what "to care" meant.  At first without
+knowing it, but with a gradually increasing keenness of
+consciousness, he had become aware that this sisterly attitude of
+hers towards him had meant so infinitely much, because he had taken
+it to be the prelude to something more.  Now he saw that it was, so
+to speak, a piece complete in itself.  It bore no relation to what
+he had imagined it would lead into.  No curtain went up when the
+prelude was over; the curtain remained inexorably hanging there,
+not acknowledging the prelude at all.  Not for a moment did he
+accuse her of encouraging him to have thought so; she had but given
+him a frankness of comradeship that meant to her exactly what it
+expressed.  But he had thought otherwise; he had imagined that it
+would grow towards a culmination.  All that (and here was the
+change that made his mind blank and unfeeling) had to be cut away,
+and with it all the budding branches that his imagination had
+pictured as springing from it.  He could not be comrade to her as
+he was to her brother--the inexorable demands of sex forbade it.
+
+He went briskly enough through the clean, dry streets.  The frost
+of last night had held throughout the morning, and the sunlight
+sparkled with a rare and seasonable brightness of a traditional
+Christmas weather.  Hecatombs of turkeys hung in the poulterers'
+windows, among sprigs of holly, and shops were bright with
+children's toys.  The briskness of the day had flushed the colour
+into the faces of the passengers in the street, and the festive air
+of the imminent holiday was abroad.  All this Michael noticed with
+a sense of detachment; what had happened had caused a veil to fall
+between himself and external things; it was as if he was sealed
+into some glass cage, and had no contact with what passed round
+him.  This lasted throughout his walk, and when he let himself into
+his flat it was with the same sense of alienation that he found his
+cousin Francis gracefully reclining on the sofa that he had pulled
+up in front of the fire.
+
+Francis was inclined to be querulous.
+
+"I was just wondering whether I should give you up," he said.  "The
+hour that you named for lunch was half-past one.  And I have almost
+forgotten what your clock sounded like when it struck two."
+
+This also seemed to matter very little.
+
+"Did I ask you to lunch?" he said.  "I really quite forgot; I can't
+even remember doing it now."
+
+"But there will be lunch?" asked Francis rather anxiously.
+
+"Of course.  It'll be ready in ten minutes."
+
+Michael came and stood in front of the fire, and looked with a
+sudden spasm of envy on the handsome boy who lay there.  If he
+himself had been anything like that--
+
+"I was distinctly chippy this morning," remarked Francis, "and so I
+didn't so much mind waiting for lunch.  I attribute it to too much
+beer and bacon last night at your friend's house.  I enjoyed it--I
+mean the evening, and for that matter the bacon--at the time.  It
+really was extremely pleasant."
+
+He yawned largely and openly.
+
+"I had no idea you could frolic like that, Mike," he said.  "It was
+quite a new light on your character.  How did you learn to do it?
+It's quite a new accomplishment."
+
+Here again the veil was drawn.  Was it last night only that Falbe
+had played the Variations, and that they had acted charades?
+Francis proceeded in bland unconsciousness.
+
+"I didn't know Germans could be so jolly," he continued.  "As a
+rule I don't like Germans.  When they try to be jolly they
+generally only succeed in being top-heavy.  But, of course, your
+friend is half-English.  Can't he play, too?  And to think of your
+having written those ripping tunes.  His sister, too--no wonder we
+haven't seen much of you, Mike, if that's where you've been
+spending your time.  She's rather like the new girl at the Gaiety,
+but handsomer.  I like big girls, don't you?  Oh, I forgot, you
+don't like girls much, anyhow.  But are you learning your mistake,
+Mike?  You looked last night as if you were getting more sensible."
+
+Michael moved away impatiently.
+
+"Oh, shut it, Francis," he observed.
+
+Francis raised himself on his elbow.
+
+"Why, what's up?" he asked.  "Won't she turn a favourable eye?"
+
+Michael wheeled round savagely.
+
+"Please remember you are talking about a lady, and not a Gaiety
+lady," he remarked.
+
+This brought Francis to his feet.
+
+"Sorry," he said.  "I was only indulging in badinage until lunch
+was ready."
+
+Michael could not make up his mind to tell his cousin what had
+happened; but he was aware of having spoken more strongly than the
+situation, as Francis knew of it, justified.
+
+"Let's have lunch, then," he said.  "We shall be better after
+lunch, as one's nurse used to say.  And are you coming to
+Ashbridge, Francis?"
+
+"Yes; I've been talking to Aunt Bar about it this morning.  We're
+both coming; the family is going to rally round you, Mike, and
+defend you from Uncle Robert.  There's sure to be some duck
+shooting, too, isn't there?"
+
+This was a considerable relief to Michael.
+
+"Oh, that's ripping," he said.  "You and Aunt Barbara always make
+me feel that there's a good deal of amusement to be extracted from
+the world."
+
+"To be sure there is.  Isn't that what the world is for?  Lunch and
+amusement, and dinner and amusement.  Aunt Bar told me she dined
+with you the other night, and had a quantity of amusement as well
+as an excellent dinner.  She hinted--"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Barbara's always hinting," said Michael.
+
+"I know.  After all, everything that isn't hints is obvious, and so
+there's nothing to say about it.  Tell me more about the Falbes,
+Mike.  Will they let me go there again, do you think?  Was I
+popular?  Don't tell me if I wasn't."
+
+Michael smiled at this egoism that could not help being charming.
+
+"Would you care if you weren't?" he asked.
+
+"Very much.  One naturally wants to please delightful people.  And
+I think they are both delightful.  Especially the girl; but then
+she starts with the tremendous advantage of being--of being a girl.
+I believe you are in love with her, Mike, just as I am.  It's that
+which makes you so grumpy.  But then you never do fall in love.
+It's a pity; you miss a lot of jolly trouble."
+
+Michael felt a sudden overwhelming desire to make Francis stop this
+maddening twaddle; also the events of the morning were beginning to
+take on an air of reality, and as this grew he felt the need of
+sympathy of some kind.  Francis might not be able to give him
+anything that was of any use, but it would do no harm to see if his
+cousin's buoyant unconscious philosophy, which made life so
+exciting and pleasant a thing to him, would in any way help.
+Besides, he must stop this light banter, which was like drawing
+plaster off a sore and unhealed wound.
+
+"You're quite right," he said.  "I am in love with her.
+Furthermore, I asked her to marry me this morning."
+
+This certainly had an effect.
+
+"Good Lord!" said Francis.  "And do you mean to say she refused
+you?"
+
+"She didn't accept me," said Michael.  "We--we adjourned."
+
+"But why on earth didn't she take you?" asked Francis.
+
+All Michael's old sensitiveness, his self-consciousness of his
+plainness, his awkwardness, his big hands, his short legs, came
+back to him.
+
+"I should think you could see well enough if you look at me," he
+said, "without my telling you."
+
+"Oh, that silly old rot," said Francis cheerfully.  "I thought you
+had forgotten all about it."
+
+"I almost had--in fact I quite had until this morning," said
+Michael.  "If I had remembered it I shouldn't have asked her."
+
+He corrected himself.
+
+"No, I don't think that's true," he said.  "I should have asked
+her, anyhow; but I should have been prepared for her not to take
+me.  As a matter of fact, I wasn't."
+
+Francis turned sideways to the table, throwing one leg over the
+other.
+
+"That's nonsense," he said.  "It doesn't matter whether a man's
+ugly or not."
+
+"It doesn't as long as he is not," remarked Michael grimly.
+
+"It doesn't matter much in any case.  We're all ugly compared to
+girls; and why ever they should consent to marry any of us awful
+hairy things, smelling of smoke and drink, is more than I can make
+out; but, as a matter of fact, they do.  They don't mind what we
+look like; what they care about is whether we want them.  Of
+course, there are exceptions--"
+
+"You see one," said Michael.
+
+"No, I don't.  Good Lord, you've only asked her once.  You've got
+to make yourself felt.  You're not intending to give up, are you?"
+
+"I couldn't give up."
+
+"Well then, just hold on.  She likes you, doesn't she?"
+
+"Certainly," said Michael, without hesitation.  "But that's a long
+way from the other thing."
+
+"It's on the same road."
+
+Michael got up.
+
+"It may be," he said, "but it strikes me it's round the corner.
+You can't even see one from the other."
+
+"Possibly not.  But you never know how near the corner really is.
+Go for her, Mike, full speed ahead."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"Oh, there are hundreds of ways.  I'm not sure that one of the best
+isn't to keep away for a bit.  Even if she doesn't want you just
+now, when you are there, she may get to want you when you aren't.
+I don't think I should go on the mournful Byronic plan if I were
+you; I don't think it would suit your style; you're too heavily
+built to stand leaning against the chimney-piece, gazing at her and
+dishevelling your hair."
+
+Michael could not help laughing.
+
+"Oh, for God's sake, don't make a joke of it," he said.
+
+"Why not?  It isn't a tragedy yet.  It won't be a tragedy till she
+marries somebody else, or definitely says no.  And until a thing is
+proved to be tragic, the best way to deal with it is to treat it
+like a comedy which is going to end well.  It's only the second act
+now, you see, when everything gets into a mess.  By the merciful
+decrees of Providence, you see, girls on the whole want us as much
+as we want them.  That's what makes it all so jolly."
+
+
+Michael went down next day to Ashbridge, where Aunt Barbara and
+Francis were to follow the day after, and found, after the freedom
+and interests of the last six months, that the pompous formal life
+was more intolerable than ever.  He was clearly in disgrace still,
+as was made quite clear to him by his father's icy and awful
+politeness when it was necessary to speak to him, and by his utter
+unconsciousness of his presence when it was not.  This he had
+expected.  Christmas had ushered in a truce in which no guns were
+discharged, but remained sighted and pointed, ready to fire.
+
+But though there was no change in his father, his mother seemed to
+Michael to be curiously altered; her mind, which, as has been
+already noticed, was usually in a stunned condition, seemed to have
+awakened like a child from its sleep, and to have begun vaguely
+crying in an inarticulate discomfort.  It was true that Petsy was
+no more, having succumbed to a bilious attack of unusual severity,
+but a second Petsy had already taken her place, and Lady Ashbridge
+sat with him--it was a gentleman Petsy this time--in her lap as
+before, and occasionally shed a tear or two over Petsy II. in
+memory of Petsy I.  But this did not seem to account for the
+wakening up of her mind and emotions into this state of depression
+and anxiety.  It was as if all her life she had been quietly dozing
+in the sun, and that the place where she sat had passed into the
+shade, and she had awoke cold and shivering from a bitter wind.
+She had become far more talkative, and though she had by no means
+abandoned her habit of upsetting any conversation by the extreme
+obviousness of her remarks, she asked many more questions, and, as
+Michael noticed, often repeated a question to which she had
+received an answer only a few minutes before.  During dinner
+Michael constantly found her looking at him in a shy and eager
+manner, removing her gaze when she found it was observed, and when,
+later, after a silent cigarette with his father in the smoking-
+room, during which Lord Ashbridge, with some ostentation, studied
+an Army List, Michael went to his bedroom, he was utterly
+astonished, when he gave a "Come in" to a tapping at his door, to
+see his mother enter.  Her maid was standing behind her holding the
+inevitable Petsy, and she herself hovered hesitatingly in the
+doorway.
+
+"I heard you come up, Michael," she said, "and I wondered if it
+would annoy you if I came in to have a little talk with you.  But I
+won't come in if it would annoy you.  I only thought I should like
+a little chat with you, quietly, secure from interruptions."
+
+Michael instantly got up from the chair in front of his fire, in
+which he had already begun to see images of Sylvia.  This intrusion
+of his mother's was a thing utterly unprecedented, and somehow he
+at once connected its innovation with the strange manner he had
+remarked already.  But there was complete cordiality in his
+welcome, and he wheeled up a chair for her.
+
+"But by all means come in, mother," he said.  "I was not going to
+bed yet."
+
+Lady Ashbridge looked round for her maid.
+
+"And will Petsy not annoy you if he sits quietly on my knee?" she
+asked.
+
+"Of course not."
+
+Lady Ashbridge took the dog.
+
+"There, that is nice," she said.  "I told them to see you had a
+good fire on this cold night.  Has it been very cold in London?"
+
+This question had already been asked and answered twice, now for
+the third time Michael admitted the severity of the weather.
+
+"I hope you wrap up well," she said.  "I should be sorry if you
+caught cold, and so, I am sure, your father would be.  I wish you
+could make up your mind not to vex him any more, but go back into
+the Guards."
+
+"I'm afraid that's impossible, mother," he said.
+
+"Well, if it's impossible there is no use in saying anything more
+about it.  But it vexed him very much.  He is still vexed with you.
+I wish he was not vexed.  It is a sad thing when father and son
+fall out.  But you do wrap up, I hope, in the cold weather?"
+
+Michael felt a sudden pang of anxiety and alarm.  Each separate
+thing that his mother said was sensible enough, but in the sum they
+were nonsense.
+
+"You have been in London since September," she went on.  "That is a
+long time to be in London.  Tell me about your life there.  Do you
+work hard?  Not too hard, I hope?"
+
+"No! hard enough to keep me busy," he said.
+
+"Tell me about it all.  I am afraid I have not been a very good
+mother to you; I have not entered into your life enough.  I want to
+do so now.  But I don't think you ever wanted to confide in me.  It
+is sad when sons don't confide in their mothers.  But I daresay it
+was my fault, and now I know so little about you."
+
+She paused a moment, stroking her dog's ears, which twitched under
+her touch.
+
+"I hope you are happy, Michael," she said.  "I don't think I am so
+happy as I used to be.  But don't tell your father; I feel sure he
+does not notice it, and it would vex him.  But I want you to be
+happy; you used not to be when you were little; you were always
+sensitive and queer.  But you do seem happier now, and that's a
+good thing."
+
+Here again this was all sensible, when taken in bits, but its
+aspect was different when considered together.  She looked at
+Michael anxiously a moment, and then drew her chair closer to him,
+laying her thin, veined hand, sparkling with many rings, on his
+knee.
+
+"But it wasn't I who made you happier," she said, "and that's so
+dreadful.  I never made anybody happy.  Your father always made
+himself happy, and he liked being himself, but I suspect you
+haven't liked being yourself, poor Michael.  But now that you're
+living the life you chose, which vexes your father, is it better
+with you?"
+
+The shyness had gone from the gaze that he had seen her direct at
+him at dinner, which fugitively fluttered away when she saw that it
+was observed, and now that it was bent so unwaveringly on him he
+saw shining through it what he had never seen before, namely, the
+mother-love which he had missed all his life.  Now, for the first
+time, he saw it; recognising it, as by divination, when, with ray
+serene and untroubled, it burst through the mists that seemed to
+hang about his mother's mind.  Before, noticing her change of
+manner, her restless questions, he had been vaguely alarmed, and as
+they went on the alarm had become more pronounced; but at this
+moment, when there shone forth the mother-instinct which had never
+come out or blossomed in her life, but had been overlaid completely
+with routine and conventionality, rendering it too indolent to put
+forth petals, Michael had no thought but for that which she had
+never given him yet, and which, now it began to expand before him,
+he knew he had missed all his life.
+
+She took up his big hand that lay on his knee and began timidly
+stroking it.
+
+"Since you have been away," she said, "and since your father has
+been vexed with you, I have begun to see how lonely you must have
+been.  What taught me that, I am afraid, was only that I have begun
+to feel lonely, too.  Nobody wants me; even Petsy, when she died,
+didn't want me to be near her, and then it began to strike me that
+perhaps you might want me.  There was no one else, and who should
+want me if my son did not?  I never gave you the chance before, God
+forgive me, and now perhaps it is too late.  You have learned to do
+without me."
+
+That was bitterly true; the truth of it stabbed Michael.  On his
+side, as he knew, he had made no effort either, or if he had they
+had been but childish efforts, easily repulsed.  He had not
+troubled about it, and if she was to blame, the blame was his also.
+She had been slow to show the mother-instinct, but he had been just
+as wanting in the tenderness of the son.
+
+He was profoundly touched by this humble timidity, by the
+sincerity, vague but unquestionable, that lay behind it.
+
+"It's never too late, is it?" he said, bending down and kissing the
+thin white hands that held his.  "We are in time, after all, aren't
+we?"
+
+She gave a little shiver.
+
+"Oh, don't kiss my hands, Michael," she said.  "It hurts me that
+you should do that.  But it is sweet of you to say that I am not
+too late, after all.  Michael, may I just take you in my arms--may
+I?"
+
+He half rose.
+
+"Oh, mother, how can you ask?" he said.
+
+"Then let me do it.  No, my darling, don't move.  Just sit still as
+you are, and let me just get my arms about you, and put my head on
+your shoulder, and hold me close like that for a moment, so that I
+can realise that I am not too late."
+
+She got up, and, leaning over him, held him so for a moment,
+pressing her cheek close to his, and kissing him on the eyes and on
+the mouth.
+
+"Ah, that is nice," she said.  "It makes my loneliness fall away
+from me.  I am not quite alone any more.  And now, if you are not
+tired will you let me talk to you a little more, and learn a little
+more about you?"
+
+She pulled her chair again nearer him, so that sitting there she
+could clasp his arm.
+
+"I want your happiness, dear," she said, "but there is so little
+now that I can do to secure it.  I must put that into other hands.
+You are twenty-five, Michael; you are old enough to get married.
+All Combers marry when they are twenty-five, don't they?  Isn't
+there some girl you would like to be yours?  But you must love her,
+you know, you must want her, you mustn't be able to do without her.
+It won't do to marry just because you are twenty-five."
+
+It would no more have entered into Michael's head this morning to
+tell to his mother about Sylvia than to have discussed counterpoint
+with her.  But then this morning he had not been really aware that
+he had a mother.  But to tell her now was not unthinkable, but
+inevitable.
+
+"Yes, there is a girl whom I can't do without," he said.
+
+Lady Ashbridge's face lit up.
+
+"Ah, tell me about her--tell me about her," she said.  "You want
+her, you can't do without her; that is the right wife for you."
+
+Michael caught at his mother's hand as it stroked his sleeve.
+
+"But she is not sure that she can do with me," he said.
+
+Her face was not dimmed at this.
+
+"Oh, you may be sure she doesn't know her own mind," she said.
+"Girls so often don't.  You must not be down-hearted about it.  Who
+is she?  Tell me about her."
+
+"She's the sister of my great friend, Hermann Falbe," he said, "who
+teaches me music."
+
+This time the gladness faded from her.
+
+"Oh, my dear, it will vex your father again," she said, "that you
+should want to marry the sister of a music-teacher.  It will never
+do to vex him again.  Is she not a lady?"
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"But certainly she is," he said.  "Her father was German, her
+mother was a Tracy, just as well-born as you or I."
+
+"How odd, then, that her brother should have taken to giving music
+lessons.  That does not sound good.  Perhaps they are poor, and
+certainly there is no disgrace in being poor.  And what is her
+name?"
+
+"Sylvia," said Michael.  "You have probably heard of her; she is
+the Miss Falbe who made such a sensation in London last season by
+her singing."
+
+The old outlook, the old traditions were beginning to come to the
+surface again in poor Lady Ashbridge's mind.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" she said.  "A singer!  That would vex your father
+terribly.  Fancy the daughter of a Miss Tracy becoming a singer.
+And yet you want her--that seems to me to matter most of all."
+
+Then came a step at the door; it opened an inch or two, and Michael
+heard his father's voice.
+
+"Is your mother with you, Michael?" he asked.
+
+At that Lady Ashbridge got up.  For one second she clung to her
+son, and then, disengaging herself, froze up like the sudden
+congealment of a spring.
+
+"Yes, Robert," she said.  "I was having a little talk to Michael."
+
+"May I come in?"
+
+"It's our secret," she whispered to Michael.
+
+"Yes, come in, father," he said.
+
+Lord Ashbridge stood towering in the doorway.
+
+"Come, my dear," he said, not unkindly, "it's time for you to go to
+bed."
+
+She had become the mask of herself again.
+
+"Yes, Robert," she said.  "I suppose it must be late.  I will come.
+Oh, there's Petsy.  Will you ring, Michael? then Fedden will come
+and take him to bed.  He sleeps with Fedden."
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Michael, in desperate conversational efforts next morning at
+breakfast, mentioned the fact that the German Emperor had engaged
+him in a substantial talk at Munich, and had recommended him to
+pass the winter at Berlin.  It was immediately obvious that he rose
+in his father's estimation, for, though no doubt primarily the fact
+that Michael was his son was the cause of this interest, it gave
+Michael a sort of testimonial also to his respectability.  If the
+Emperor had thought that his taking up a musical career was
+indelibly disgraceful--as Lord Ashbridge himself had done--he would
+certainly not have made himself so agreeable.  On anyone of Lord
+Ashbridge's essential and deep-rooted snobbishness this could not
+fail to make a certain effect; his chilly politeness to Michael
+sensibly thawed; you might almost have detected a certain
+cordiality in his desire to learn as much as possible of this
+gratifying occurrence.
+
+"And you mean to go to Berlin?" he asked.
+
+"I'm afraid I shan't be able to," said Michael; "my master is in
+London."
+
+"I should be inclined to reconsider that, Michael," said the
+father.  "The Emperor knows what he is talking about on the subject
+of music."
+
+Lady Ashbridge looked up from the breakfast she was giving Petsy
+II.  His dietary was rather less rich than that of the defunct, and
+she was afraid sometimes that his food was not nourishing enough.
+
+"I remember the concert we had here," she said.  "We had the 'Song
+to Aegir' twice."
+
+Lord Ashbridge gave her a quick glance.  Michael felt he would not
+have noticed it the evening before.
+
+"Your memory is very good, my dear," he said with encouragement.
+
+"And then we had a torchlight procession," she remarked.
+
+"Quite so.  You remember it perfectly.  And about his visit here,
+Michael.  Did he talk about that?"
+
+"Yes, very warmly; also about our international relations."
+
+Lord Ashbridge gave a little giggle.
+
+"I must tell Barbara that," he said.  "She has become a sort of
+Cassandra, since she became a diplomatist, and sits on her tripod
+and prophesies woe."
+
+"She asked me about it," said Michael.  "I don't think she believes
+in his sincerity."
+
+He giggled again.
+
+"That's because I didn't ask her down for his visit," he said.
+
+He rose.
+
+"And what are you going to do, my dear?" he said to his wife.
+
+She looked across to Michael.
+
+"Perhaps Michael will come for a stroll with me," she said.
+
+"No doubt he will.  I shall have a round of golf, I think, on this
+fine morning.  I should like to have a word with you, Michael, when
+you've finished your breakfast."
+
+The moment he had gone her whole manner changed: it was suffused
+with the glow that had lit her last night.
+
+"And we shall have another talk, dear?" she said.  "It was tiresome
+being interrupted last night.  But your father was better pleased
+with you this morning."
+
+
+Michael's understanding of the situation grew clearer.  Whatever
+was the change in his mother, whatever, perhaps, it portended, it
+was certainly accompanied by two symptoms, the one the late dawning
+of mother-love for himself, the other a certain fear of her
+husband; for all her married life she had been completely dominated
+by him, and had lived but in a twilight of her own; now into that
+twilight was beginning to steal a dread of him.  His pleasure or
+his vexation had begun to affect her emotionally, instead of being
+as before, merely recorded in her mind, as she might have recorded
+an object quite exterior to herself, and seen out of the window.
+Now it was in the room with her.  Even as Michael left her to speak
+with him, the consciousness of him rose again in her, making her
+face anxious.
+
+"And you'll try not to vex him, won't you?" she said.
+
+His father was in the smoking-room, standing enormously in front of
+the fire, and for the first time the sense of his colossal fatuity
+struck Michael.
+
+"There are several things I want to tell you about," he said.
+"Your career, first of all.  I take it that you have no intention
+of deferring to my wishes on the subject."
+
+"No, father, I am afraid not," said Michael.
+
+"I want you to understand, then, that, though I shall not speak to
+you again about it, my wishes are no less strong than they were.
+It is something to me to know that a man whom I respect so much as
+the Emperor doesn't feel as I do about it, but that doesn't alter
+my view."
+
+"I understand," said Michael.
+
+"The next is about your mother," he said.  "Do you notice any
+change in her?"
+
+"Yes," said Michael.
+
+"Can you describe it at all?"
+
+Michael hesitated.
+
+"She shows quite a new affection for myself," he said.  "She came
+and talked to me last night in a way she had never done before."
+
+The irritation which Michael's mere presence produced on his father
+was beginning to make itself felt.  The fact that Michael was squat
+and long-armed and ugly had always a side-blow to deal at Lord
+Ashbridge in the reminder that he was his father.  He tried to
+disregard this--he tried to bring his mind into an impartial
+attitude, without seeing for a moment the bitter irony of
+considering impartiality the ideal quality when dealing with his
+son.  He tried to be fair, and Michael was perfectly conscious of
+the effort it cost him.
+
+"I had noticed something of the sort," he said.  "Your mother was
+always asking after you.  You have not been writing very regularly,
+Michael.  We know little about your life."
+
+"I have written to my mother every week," said Michael.
+
+The magical effects of the Emperor's interest were dying out.  Lord
+Ashbridge became more keenly aware of the disappointment that
+Michael was to him.
+
+"I have not been so fortunate, then," he said.
+
+Michael remembered his mother's anxious face, but he could not let
+this pass.
+
+"No, sir," he said, "but you never answered any of my letters.  I
+thought it quite probable that it displeased you to hear from me."
+
+"I should have expressed my displeasure if I had felt it," said his
+father with all the pomposity that was natural to him.
+
+"That had not occurred to me," said Michael.  "I am afraid I took
+your silence to mean that my letters didn't interest you."
+
+He paused a moment, and his rebellion against the whole of his
+father's attitude flared up.
+
+"Besides, I had nothing particular to say," he said.  "My life is
+passed in the pursuit of which you entirely disapprove."
+
+He felt himself back in boyhood again with this stifling and leaden
+atmosphere of authority and disapproval to breathe.  He knew that
+Francis in his place would have done somehow differently; he could
+almost hear Aunt Barbara laughing at the pomposity of the situation
+that had suddenly erected itself monstrously in front of him.  The
+fact that he was Michael Comber vexed his father--there was no
+statement of the case so succinctly true.
+
+Lord Ashbridge moved away towards the window, turning his back on
+Michael.  Even his back, his homespun Norfolk jacket, his loose
+knickerbockers, his stalwart calves expressed disapproval; but when
+his father spoke again he realised that he had moved away like
+that, and obscured his face for a different reason.
+
+"Have you noticed anything else about your mother?" he asked.
+
+That made Michael understand.
+
+"Yes, father," he said.  "I daresay I am wrong about it--"
+
+"Naturally I may not agree with you; but I should like to know what
+it is."
+
+"She's afraid of you," said Michael.
+
+Lord Ashbridge continued looking out of the window a little longer,
+letting his eyes dwell on his own garden and his own fields, where
+towered the leafless elms and the red roofs of the little town
+which had given him his own name, and continued to give him so
+satisfactory an income.  There presented itself to his mind his own
+picture, painted and framed and glazed and hung up by himself, the
+beneficent nobleman, the conscientious landlord, the essential
+vertebra of England's backbone.  It was really impossible to impute
+blame to such a fine fellow.  He turned round into the room again,
+braced and refreshed, and saw Michael thus.
+
+"It is quite true what you say," he said, with a certain pride in
+his own impartiality.  "She has developed an extraordinary timidity
+towards me.  I have continually noticed that she is nervous and
+agitated in my presence--I am quite unable to account for it.  In
+fact, there is no accounting for it.  But I am thinking of going up
+to London before long, and making her see some good doctor.  A
+little tonic, I daresay; though I don't suppose she has taken a
+dozen doses of medicine in as many years.  I expect she will be
+glad to go up, for she will be near you.  The one delusion--for it
+is no less than that--is as strange as the other."
+
+He drew himself up to his full magnificent height.
+
+"I do not mean that it is not very natural she should be devoted to
+her son," he said with a tremendous air.
+
+What he did mean was therefore uncertain, and again he changed the
+subject.
+
+"There is a third thing," he said.  "This concerns you.  You are of
+the age when we Combers usually marry.  I should wish you to marry,
+Michael.  During this last year your mother has asked half a dozen
+girls down here, all of whom she and I consider perfectly suitable,
+and no doubt you have met more in London.  I should like to know
+definitely if you have considered the question, and if you have
+not, I ask you to set about it at once."
+
+Michael was suddenly aware that never for a moment had Sylvia been
+away from his mind.  Even when his mother was talking to him last
+night Sylvia had sat at the back, in the inmost place, throned and
+secure.  And now she stepped forward.  Apart from the impossibility
+of not acknowledging her, he wished to do it.  He wanted to wear
+her publicly, though she was not his; he wanted to take his
+allegiance oath, though his sovereign heeded not.
+
+"I have considered the question," he said, "and I have quite made
+up my mind whom I want to marry.  She is Miss Falbe, Miss Sylvia
+Falbe, of whom you may have heard as a singer.  She is the sister
+of my music-master, and I can certainly marry nobody else."
+
+It was not merely defiance of the dreadful old tradition, which
+Lord Ashbridge had announced in the manner of Moses stepping down
+from Sinai, that prompted this appalling statement of the case; it
+was the joy in the profession of his love.  It had to be flung out
+like that.  Lord Ashbridge looked at him a moment in dead silence.
+
+"I have not the honour of knowing Miss--Miss Falbe, is it?" he
+said; "nor shall I have that honour."
+
+Michael got up; there was that in his father's tone that stung him
+to fury.
+
+"It is very likely that you will not," he said, "since when I
+proposed to her yesterday she did not accept me."
+
+Somehow Lord Ashbridge felt that as an insult to himself.  Indeed,
+it was a double insult.  Michael had proposed to this singer, and
+this singer had not instantly clutched him.  He gave his dreadful
+little treble giggle.
+
+"And I am to bind up your broken heart?" he asked.
+
+Michael drew himself up to his full height.  This was an
+indiscretion, for it but made his father recognise how short he
+was.  It brought farce into the tragic situation.
+
+"Oh, by no means," he said.  "My heart is not going to break yet.
+I don't give up hope."
+
+Then, in a flash, he thought of his mother's pale, anxious face,
+her desire that he should not vex his father.
+
+"I am sorry," he said, "but that is the case.  I wish--I wish you
+would try to understand me."
+
+"I find you incomprehensible," said Lord Ashbridge, and left the
+room with his high walk and his swinging elbows.
+
+Well, it was done now, and Michael felt that there were no new
+vexations to be sprung on his father.  It was bound to happen, he
+supposed, sooner or later, and he was not sorry that it had
+happened sooner than he expected or intended.  Sylvia so held sway
+in him that he could not help acknowledging her.  His announcement
+had broken from him irresistibly, in spite of his mother's
+whispered word to him last night, "This is our secret."  It could
+not be secret when his father spoke like that. . . .  And then,
+with a flare of illumination he perceived how intensely his father
+disliked him.  Nothing but sheer basic antipathy could have been
+responsible for that miserable retort, "Am I to bind up your broken
+heart?"  Anger, no doubt, was the immediate cause, but so utterly
+ungenerous a rejoinder to Michael's announcement could not have
+been conceived, except in a heart that thoroughly and rootedly
+disliked him.  That he was a continual monument of disappointment
+to his father he knew well, but never before had it been quite
+plainly shown him how essential an object of dislike he was.  And
+the grounds of the dislike were now equally plain--his father
+disliked him exactly because he was his father.  On the other hand,
+the last twenty-four hours had shown him that his mother loved him
+exactly because he was her son.  When these two new and undeniable
+facts were put side by side, Michael felt that he was an infinite
+gainer.
+
+He went rather drearily to the window.  Far off across the field
+below the garden he could see Lord Ashbridge walking airily along
+on his way to the links, with his head held high, his stick
+swinging in his hand, his two retrievers at his heels.  No doubt
+already the soothing influences of Nature were at work--Nature, of
+course, standing for the portion of trees and earth and houses that
+belonged to him--and were expunging the depressing reflection that
+his wife and only son inspired in him.  And, indeed, such was
+actually the case: Lord Ashbridge, in his amazing fatuity, could
+not long continue being himself without being cheered and
+invigorated by that fact, and though when he set out his big white
+hands were positively trembling with passion, he carried his balsam
+always with him.  But he had registered to himself, even as Michael
+had registered, the fact that he found his son a most intolerable
+person.  And what vexed him most of all, what made him clang the
+gate at the end of the field so violently that it hit one of his
+retrievers shrewdly on the nose, was the sense of his own
+impotence.  He knew perfectly well that in point of view of
+determination (that quality which in himself was firmness, and in
+those who opposed him obstinacy) Michael was his match.  And the
+annoying thing was that, as his wife had once told him, Michael
+undoubtedly inherited that quality from him.  It was as inalienable
+as the estates of which he had threatened to deprive his son, and
+which, as he knew quite well, were absolutely entailed.  Michael,
+in this regard, seemed no better than a common but successful
+thief.  He had annexed his father's firmness, and at his death
+would certainly annex all his pictures and trees and acres and the
+red roofs of Ashbridge.
+
+Michael saw the gate so imperially slammed, he heard the despairing
+howl of Robin, and though he was sorry for Robin, he could not help
+laughing.  He remembered also a ludicrous sight he had seen at the
+Zoological Gardens a few days ago: two seals, sitting bolt upright,
+quarrelling with each other, and making the most absurd grimaces
+and noises.  They neither of them quite dared to attack the other,
+and so sat with their faces close together, saying the rudest
+things.  Aunt Barbara would certainly have seen how inimitably his
+father and he had, in their interview just now, resembled the two
+seals.
+
+And then he became aware that all the time, au fond, he had thought
+about nothing but Sylvia, and of Sylvia, not as the subject of
+quarrel, but as just Sylvia, the singing Sylvia, with a hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+The winter sun was warm on the south terrace of the house, when, an
+hour later, he strolled out, according to arrangement, with his
+mother.  It had melted the rime of the night before that lay now on
+the grass in threads of minute diamonds, though below the terrace
+wall, and on the sunk rims of the empty garden beds it still
+persisted in outline of white heraldry.  A few monthly roses, weak,
+pink blossoms, weary with the toil of keeping hope alive till the
+coming of spring, hung dejected heads in the sunk garden, where the
+hornbeam hedge that carried its russet leaves unfallen, shaded them
+from the wind.  Here, too, a few bulbs had pricked their way above
+ground, and stood with stout, erect horns daintily capped with
+rime.  All these things, which for years had been presented to Lady
+Ashbridge's notice without attracting her attention; now filled her
+with minute childlike pleasure; they were discoveries as entrancing
+and as magical as the first finding of the oval pieces of blue sky
+that a child sees one morning in a hedge-sparrow's nest.  Now that
+she was alone with her son, all her secret restlessness and anxiety
+had vanished, and she remarked almost with glee that her husband
+had telephoned from the golf links to say that he would not be back
+for lunch; then, remembering that Michael had gone to talk to his
+father after breakfast, she asked him about the interview.
+
+Michael had already made up his mind as to what to say here.
+Knowing that his father was anxious about her, he felt it highly
+unlikely that he would tell her anything to distress her, and so he
+represented the interview as having gone off in perfect amity.
+Later in the day, on his father's return, he had made up his mind
+to propose a truce between them, as far as his mother was
+concerned.  Whether that would be accepted or not he could not
+certainly tell, but in the interval there was nothing to be gained
+by grieving her.
+
+A great weight was lifted off her mind.
+
+"Ah, my dear, that is good," she said.  "I was anxious.  So now
+perhaps we shall have a peaceful Christmas.  I am glad your Aunt
+Barbara and Francis are coming, for though your aunt always laughs
+at your father, she does it kindly, does she not?  And as for
+Francis--my dear, if God had given me two sons, I should have liked
+the other to be like Francis.  And shall we walk a little farther
+this way, and see poor Petsy's grave?"
+
+Petsy's grave proved rather agitating.  There were doleful little
+stories of the last days to be related, and Petsy II. was tiresome,
+and insisted on defying the world generally with shrill barkings
+from the top of the small mound, conscious perhaps that his
+helpless predecessor slept below.  Then their walk brought them to
+the band of trees that separated the links from the house, from
+which Lady Ashbridge retreated, fearful, as she vaguely phrased it,
+"of being seen," and by whom there was no need for her to explain.
+Then across the field came a group of children scampering home from
+school.  They ceased their shouting and their games as the others
+came near, and demurely curtsied and took off their caps to Lady
+Ashbridge.
+
+"Nice, well-behaved children," said she.  "A merry Christmas to you
+all.  I hope you are all good children to your mothers, as my son
+is to me."
+
+She pressed his arm, nodded and smiled at the children, and walked
+on with him.  And Michael felt the lump in his throat.
+
+The arrival of Aunt Barbara and Francis that afternoon did
+something, by the mere addition of numbers to the party, to relieve
+the tension of the situation.  Lord Ashbridge said little but ate
+largely, and during the intervals of empty plates directed an
+impartial gaze at the portraits of his ancestors, while wholly
+ignoring his descendant.  But Michael was too wise to put himself
+into places where he could be pointedly ignored, and the
+resplendent dinner, with its six footmen and its silver service,
+was not really more joyless than usual.  But his father's majestic
+displeasure was more apparent when the three men sat alone
+afterwards, and it was in dead silence that port was pushed round
+and cigarettes handed.  Francis, it is true, made a couple of
+efforts to enliven things, but his remarks produced no response
+whatever from his uncle, and he subsided into himself, thinking
+with regret of what an amusing evening he would have had if he had
+only stopped in town.  But when they rose Michael signed to his
+cousin to go on, and planted himself firmly in the path to the
+door.  It was evident that his father did not mean to speak to him,
+but he could not push by him or walk over him.
+
+"There is one thing I want to say to you, father," said he.  "I
+have told my mother that our interview this morning was quite
+amicable.  I do not see why she should be distressed by knowing
+that it was not."
+
+His father's face softened a moment.
+
+"Yes, I agree to that," he said.
+
+
+As far as that went, the compact was observed, and whenever Lady
+Ashbridge was present her husband made a point of addressing a few
+remarks to Michael, but there their intercourse ended.  Michael
+found opportunity to explain to Aunt Barbara what had happened,
+suggesting as a consolatory simile the domestic difficulties of the
+seals at the Zoological Gardens, and was pleased to find her
+recognise the aptness of this description.  But heaviest of all on
+the spirits of the whole party sat the anxiety about Lady
+Ashbridge.  There could be no doubt that some cerebral degeneration
+was occurring, and Lady Barbara's urgent representation to her
+brother had the effect of making him promise to take her up to
+London without delay after Christmas, and let a specialist see her.
+For the present the pious fraud practised on her that Michael and
+his father had had "a good talk" together, and were excellent
+friends, sufficed to render her happy and cheerful.  She had long,
+dim talks, full of repetition, with Michael, whose presence
+appeared to make her completely content, and when he was out or
+away from her she would sit eagerly waiting for his return.  Petsy,
+to the great benefit of his health, got somewhat neglected by her;
+her whole nature and instincts were alight with the mother-love
+that had burnt so late into flame, with this tragic accompaniment
+of derangement.  She seemed to be groping her way back to the days
+when Michael was a little boy, and she was a young woman; often she
+would seat herself at her piano, if Michael was not there to play
+to her, and in a thin, quavering voice sing the songs of twenty
+years ago.  She would listen to his playing, beating time to his
+music, and most of all she loved the hour when the day was drawing
+in, and the first shadow and flame of dusk and firelight; then,
+with her hand in his, sitting in her room, where they would not be
+interrupted, she would whisper fresh inquiries about Sylvia,
+offering to go herself to the girl and tell her how lovable her
+suitor was.  She lived in a dim, subaqueous sort of consciousness,
+physically quite well, and mentally serene in the knowledge that
+Michael was in the house, and would presently come and talk to her.
+
+For the others it was dismal enough; this shadow, that was to her a
+watery sunlight, lay over them all--this, and the further quarrel,
+unknown to her, between Michael and his father.  When they all met,
+as at meal times, there was the miserable pretence of friendliness
+and comfortable ease kept up, for fear of distressing Lady
+Ashbridge.  It was dreary work for all concerned, but, luckily, not
+difficult of accomplishment.  A little chatter about the weather,
+the merest small change of conversation, especially if that
+conversation was held between Michael and his father, was
+sufficient to wreathe her in smiles, and she would, according to
+habit, break in with some wrecking remark, that entailed starting
+this talk all afresh.  But when she left the room a glowering
+silence would fall; Lord Ashbridge would pick up a book or leave
+the room with his high-stepping walk and erect head, the picture of
+insulted dignity.
+
+Of the three he was far most to be pitied, although the situation
+was the direct result of his own arrogance and self-importance; but
+arrogance and self-importance were as essential ingredients of his
+character as was humour of Aunt Barbara's.  They were very awkward
+and tiresome qualities, but this particular Lord Ashbridge would
+have no existence without them.  He was deeply and mortally
+offended with Michael; that alone was sufficient to make a sultry
+and stifling atmosphere, and in addition to that he had the burden
+of his anxiety about his wife.  Here came an extra sting, for in
+common humanity he had, by appearing to be friends with Michael, to
+secure her serenity, and this could only be done by the continued
+profanation of his own highly proper and necessary attitude towards
+his son.  He had to address friendly words to Michael that really
+almost choked him; he had to practise cordiality with this wretch
+who wanted to marry the sister of a music-master.  Michael had
+pulled up all the old traditions, that carefully-tended and pompous
+flower-garden, as if they had been weeds, and thrown them in his
+father's face.  It was indeed no wonder that, in his wife's
+absence, he almost burst with indignation over the desecrated beds.
+More than that, his own self-esteem was hurt by his wife's fear of
+him, just as if he had been a hard and unkind husband to her, which
+he had not been, but merely a very self-absorbed and dominant one,
+while the one person who could make her quite happy was his
+despised son.  Michael's person, Michael's tastes, Michael's whole
+presence and character were repugnant to him, and yet Michael had
+the power which, to do Lord Ashbridge justice, he would have given
+much to be possessed of himself, of bringing comfort and serenity
+to his wife.
+
+On the afternoon of the day following Christmas the two cousins had
+been across the estuary to Ashbridge together.  Francis, who, in
+spite of his habitual easiness of disposition and general good
+temper, had found the conditions of anger and anxiety quite
+intolerable, had settled to leave next day, instead of stopping
+till the end of the week, and Michael acquiesced in this without
+any sense of desertion; he had really only wondered why Francis had
+stopped three nights, instead of finding urgent private business in
+town after one.  He realised also, somewhat with surprise, that
+Francis was "no good" when there was trouble about; there was no
+one so delightful when there was, so to speak, a contest of who
+should enjoy himself the most, and Francis invariably won.  But if
+the subject of the contest was changed, and the prize given for the
+individual who, under depressing circumstances, should contrive to
+show the greatest serenity of aspect, Francis would have lost with
+an even greater margin.  Michael, in fact, was rather relieved than
+otherwise at his cousin's immediate departure, for it helped nobody
+to see the martyred St. Sebastian, and it was merely odious for St.
+Sebastian himself.  In fact, at this moment, when Michael was
+rowing them back across the full-flooded estuary, Francis was
+explaining this with his customary lucidity.
+
+"I don't do any good here, Mike," he said.  "Uncle Robert doesn't
+speak to me any more than he does to you, except when Aunt Marion
+is there.  And there's nothing going on, is there?  I practically
+asked if I might go duck-shooting to-day, and Uncle Robert merely
+looked out of the window.  But if anybody, specially you, wanted me
+to stop, why, of course I would."
+
+"But I don't," said Michael.
+
+"Thanks awfully.  Gosh, look at those ducks!  They're just wanting
+to be shot.  But there it is, then.  Certainly Uncle Robert doesn't
+want me, nor Aunt Marion.  I say, what do they think is the matter
+with her?"
+
+Michael looked round, then took, rather too late, another pull on
+his oars, and the boat gently grated on the pebbly mud at the side
+of the landing-place.  Francis's question, the good-humoured
+insouciance of it grated on his mind in rather similar fashion.
+
+"We don't know yet," he said.  "I expect we shall all go back to
+town in a couple of days, so that she may see somebody."
+
+Francis jumped out briskly and gracefully, and stood with his hands
+in his pockets while Michael pushed off again, and brought the boat
+into its shed.
+
+"I do hope it's nothing serious," he said.  "She looks quite well,
+doesn't she?  I daresay it's nothing; but she's been alone, hasn't
+she, with Uncle Robert all these weeks.  That would give her the
+hump, too."
+
+Michael felt a sudden spasm of impatience at these elegant and
+consoling reflections.  But now, in the light of his own increasing
+maturity, he saw how hopeless it was to feel Francis's
+deficiencies, his entire lack of deep feeling.  He was made like
+that; and if you were fond of anybody the only possible way of
+living up to your affection was to attach yourself to their
+qualities.
+
+They strolled a little way in silence.
+
+"And why did you tell Uncle Robert about Sylvia Falbe?" asked
+Francis.  "I can't understand that.  For the present, anyhow, she
+had refused you.  There was nothing to tell him about.  If I was
+fond of a girl like that I should say nothing about it, if I knew
+my people would disapprove, until I had got her."
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"Oh, yes you would," he said, "if you were to use your own words,
+fond of her 'like that.'  You couldn't help it.  At least, I
+couldn't.  It's--it's such a glory to be fond like that."
+
+He stopped.
+
+"We won't talk about it," he said--"or, rather, I can't talk about
+it, if you don't understand."
+
+"But she had refused you," said the sensible Francis.
+
+"That makes no difference.  She shines through everything, through
+the infernal awfulness of these days, through my father's anger,
+and my mother's illness, whatever it proves to be--I think about
+them really with all my might, and at the end I find I've been
+thinking about Sylvia.  Everything is she--the woods, the tide--oh,
+I can't explain."
+
+They had walked across the marshy land at the edge of the estuary,
+and now in front of them was the steep and direct path up to the
+house, and the longer way through the woods.  At this point the
+estuary made a sudden turn to the left, sweeping directly seawards,
+and round the corner, immediately in front of them was the long
+reach of deep water up which, even when the tide was at its lowest,
+an ocean-going steamer could penetrate if it knew the windings of
+the channel.  To-day, in the windless, cold calm of mid-winter,
+though the sun was brilliant in a blue sky overhead, an opaque
+mist, thick as cotton-wool, lay over the surface of the water, and,
+taking the winding road through the woods, which, following the
+estuary, turned the point, they presently found themselves, as they
+mounted, quite clear of the mist that lay below them on the river.
+Their steps were noiseless on the mossy path, and almost
+immediately after they had turned the corner, as Francis paused to
+light a cigarette, they heard from just below them the creaking of
+oars in their rowlocks.  It caught the ears of them both, and
+without conscious curiosity they listened.  On the moment the sound
+of rowing ceased, and from the dense mist just below them there
+came a sound which was quite unmistakable, namely, the "plop" of
+something heavy dropped into the water.  That sound, by some remote
+form of association, suddenly recalled to Michael's mind certain
+questions Aunt Barbara had asked him about the Emperor's stay at
+Ashbridge, and his own recollection of his having gone up and down
+the river in a launch.  There was something further, which he did
+not immediately recollect.  Yes, it was the request that if when he
+was here at Christmas he found strangers hanging about the deep-
+water reach, of which the chart was known only to the Admiralty, he
+should let her know.  Here at this moment they were overlooking the
+mist-swathed water, and here at this moment, unseen, was a boat
+rowing stealthily, stopping, and, perhaps, making soundings.
+
+He laid his hand on Francis's arm with a gesture for silence, then,
+invisible below, someone said, "Fifteen fathoms," and again the
+oars creaked audibly in the rowlocks.
+
+Michael took a step towards his cousin, so that he could whisper to
+him.
+
+"Come back to the boat," he said.  "I want to row round and see who
+that is.  Wait a moment, though."
+
+The oars below made some half-dozen strokes, and then were still
+again.  Once more there came the sound of something heavy dropped
+into the water.
+
+"Someone is making soundings in the channel there," he said.
+"Come."
+
+They went very quietly till they were round the point, then
+quickened their steps, and Michael spoke.
+
+"That's the uncharted channel," he said; "at least, only the
+Admiralty have the soundings.  The water's deep enough right across
+for a ship of moderate draught to come up, but there is a channel
+up which any man-of-war can pass.  Of course, it may be an
+Admiralty boat making fresh soundings, but not likely on Boxing
+Day."
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked Francis, striding easily along by
+Michael's short steps.
+
+"Just see if we can find out who it is.  Aunt Barbara asked me
+about it.  I'll tell you afterwards.  Now the tide's going out we
+can drop down with it, and we shan't be heard.  I'll row just
+enough to keep her head straight.  Sit in the bow, Francis, and
+keep a sharp look-out."
+
+Foot by foot they dropped down the river, and soon came into the
+thick mist that lay beyond the point.  It was impossible to see
+more than a yard or two ahead, but the same dense obscurity would
+prevent any further range of vision from the other boat, and, if it
+was still at its work, the sound of its oars or of voices, Michael
+reflected, might guide him to it.  From the lisp of little wavelets
+lapping on the shore below the woods, he knew he was quite close in
+to the bank, and close also to the place where the invisible boat
+had been ten minutes before.  Then, in the bewildering, unlocalised
+manner in which sound without the corrective guidance of sight
+comes to the ears, he heard as before the creaking of invisible
+oars, somewhere quite close at hand.  Next moment the dark prow of
+a rowing-boat suddenly loomed into sight on their starboard, and he
+took a rapid stroke with his right-hand scull to bring them up to
+it.  But at the same moment, while yet the occupants of the other
+boat were but shadows in the mist, they saw him, and a quick word
+of command rang out.
+
+"Row--row hard!" it cried, and with a frenzied churning of oars in
+the water, the other boat shot by them, making down the estuary.
+Next moment it had quite vanished in the mist, leaving behind it
+knots of swirling water from its oar-blades.
+
+Michael started in vain pursuit; his craft was heavy and clumsy,
+and from the retreating and faint-growing sound of the other, it
+was clear that he could get no pace to match, still less to
+overtake them.  Soon he pantingly desisted.
+
+"But an Admiralty boat wouldn't have run away," he said.  "They'd
+have asked us who the devil we were."
+
+"But who else was it?" asked Francis.
+
+Michael mopped his forehead.
+
+"Aunt Barbara would tell you," he said.  "She would tell you that
+they were German spies."
+
+Francis laughed.
+
+"Or Timbuctoo niggers," he remarked.
+
+"And that would be an odd thing, too," said Michael.
+
+But at that moment he felt the first chill of the shadow that
+menaced, if by chance Aunt Barbara was right, and if already the
+clear tranquillity of the sky was growing dim as with the mist that
+lay that afternoon on the waters of the deep reach, and covered
+mysterious movements which were going on below it.  England and
+Germany--there was so much of his life and his heart there.  Music
+and song, and Sylvia.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Michael had heard the verdict of the brain specialist, who
+yesterday had seen his mother, and was sitting in his room beside
+his unopened piano quietly assimilating it, and, without making
+plans of his own initiative, contemplating the forms into which the
+future was beginning to fall, mapping itself out below him,
+outlining itself as when objects in a room, as the light of morning
+steals in, take shape again.  And even as they take the familiar
+shapes, so already he felt that he had guessed all this in that
+week down at Ashbridge, from which he had returned with his father
+and mother a couple of days before.
+
+She was suffering, without doubt, from some softening of the brain;
+nothing of remedial nature could possibly be done to arrest or cure
+the progress of the disease, and all that lay in human power was to
+secure for her as much content and serenity as possible.  In her
+present condition there was no question of putting her under
+restraint, nor, indeed, could she be certified by any doctor as
+insane.  She would have to have a trained attendant, she would live
+a secluded life, from which must be kept as far as possible
+anything that could agitate or distress her, and after that there
+was nothing more that could be done except to wait for the
+inevitable development of her malady.  This might come quickly or
+slowly; there was no means of forecasting that, though the rapid
+deterioration of her brain, which had taken place during those last
+two months, made it, on the whole, likely that the progress of the
+disease would be swift.  It was quite possible, on the other hand,
+that it might remain stationary for months. . . .  And in answer to
+a question of Michael's, Sir James had looked at him a moment in
+silence.  Then he answered.
+
+"Both for her sake and for the sake of all of you," he had said,
+"one hopes that it will be swift."
+
+
+Lord Ashbridge had just telephoned that he was coming round to see
+Michael, a message that considerably astonished him, since it would
+have been more in his manner, in the unlikely event of his wishing
+to see his son, to have summoned him to the house in Curzon Street.
+However, he had announced his advent, and thus, waiting for him,
+and not much concerning himself about that, Michael let the future
+map itself.  Already it was sharply defined, its boundaries and
+limits were clear, and though it was yet untravelled it presented
+to him a familiar aspect, and he felt that he could find his
+allotted road without fail, though he had never yet traversed it.
+It was strongly marked; there could be no difficulty or question
+about it.  Indeed, a week ago, when first the recognition of his
+mother's condition, with the symptoms attached to it, was known to
+him, he had seen the signpost that directed him into the future.
+
+Lord Ashbridge made his usual flamboyant entry, prancing and
+swinging his elbows.  Whatever happened he would still be Lord
+Ashbridge, with his grey top-hat and his large carnation and his
+enviable position.
+
+"You will have heard what Sir James's opinion is about your poor
+mother," he said.  "It was in consequence of what he recommended
+when he talked over the future with me that I came to see you."
+
+Michael guessed very well what this recommendation was, but with a
+certain stubbornness and sense of what was due to himself, he let
+his father proceed with the not very welcome task of telling him.
+
+"In fact, Michael," he said, "I have a favour to ask of you."
+
+The fact of his being Lord Ashbridge, and the fact of Michael being
+his unsatisfactory son, stiffened him, and he had to qualify the
+favour.
+
+"Perhaps I should not say I am about to ask you a favour," he
+corrected himself, "but rather to point out to you what is your
+obvious duty."
+
+Suddenly it struck Michael that his father was not thinking about
+Lady Ashbridge at all, nor about him, but in the main about
+himself.  All had to be done from the dominant standpoint; he owed
+it to himself to alleviate the conditions under which his wife must
+live; he owed it to himself that his son should do his part as a
+Comber.  There was no longer any possible doubt as to what this
+favour, or this direction of duty, must be, but still Michael chose
+that his father should state it.  He pushed a chair forward for
+him.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" he said.
+
+"Thank you, I would rather stand.  Yes; it is not so much a favour
+as the indication of your duty.  I do not know if you will see it
+in the same light as I; you have shown me before now that we do not
+take the same view."
+
+Michael felt himself bristling.  His father certainly had the
+effect of drawing out in him all the feelings that were better
+suppressed.
+
+"I think we need not talk of that now, sir," he remarked.
+
+"Certainly it is not the subject of my interview with you now.  The
+fact is this.  In some way your presence gives a certain serenity
+and content to your mother.  I noticed that at Ashbridge, and,
+indeed, there has been some trouble with her this morning because I
+could not take her to come to see you with me.  I ask you,
+therefore, for her sake, to be with us as much as you can, in
+short, to come and live with us."
+
+Michael nodded, saluting, so to speak, the signpost into the future
+as he passed it.
+
+"I had already determined to do that," he said. "I had determined,
+at any rate, to ask your permission to do so.  It is clear that my
+mother wants me, and no other consideration can weigh with that."
+
+Lord Ashbridge still remained completely self-sufficient.
+
+"I am glad you take that view of it," he said. "I think that is all
+I have to say."
+
+Now Michael was an adept at giving; as indicated before, when he
+gave, he gave nobly, and he could not only outwardly disregard, but
+he inwardly cancelled the wonderful ungenerosity with which his
+father received.  That did not concern him.
+
+"I will make arrangements to come at once," he said, "if you can
+receive me to-day."
+
+"That will hardly be worth while, will it?  I am taking your mother
+back to Ashbridge tomorrow."
+
+Michael got up in silence.  After all, this gift of himself, of his
+time, of his liberty, of all that constituted life to him, was made
+not to his father, but to his mother.  It was made, as his heart
+knew, not ungrudgingly only, but eagerly, and if it had been
+recommended by the doctor that she should go to Ashbridge, he would
+have entirely disregarded the large additional sacrifice on himself
+which it entailed.  Thus it was not owing to any retraction of his
+gift, or reconsideration of it, that he demurred.
+
+"I hope you will--will meet me half-way about this, sir," he said.
+"You must remember that all my work lies in London.  I want,
+naturally, to continue that as far as I can.  If you go to
+Ashbridge it is completely interrupted.  My friends are here too;
+everything I have is here."
+
+His father seemed to swell a little; he appeared to fill the room.
+
+"And all my duties lie at Ashbridge," he said. "As you know, I am
+not of the type of absentee landlords.  It is quite impossible that
+I should spend these months in idleness in town.  I have never done
+such a thing yet, nor, I may say, would our class hold the position
+they do if we did.  We shall come up to town after Easter, should
+your mother's health permit it, but till then I could not dream of
+neglecting my duties in the country."
+
+Now Michael knew perfectly well what his father's duties on that
+excellently managed estate were.  They consisted of a bi-weekly
+interview in the "business-room" (an abode of files and stags'
+heads, in which Lord Ashbridge received various reports of building
+schemes and repairs), of a round of golf every afternoon, and of
+reading the lessons and handing the offertory-box on Sunday.  That,
+at least, was the sum-total as it presented itself to him, and on
+which he framed his conclusions.  But he left out altogether the
+moral effect of the big landlord living on his own land, and being
+surrounded by his own dependents, which his father, on the other
+hand, so vastly over-estimated.  It was clear that there was not
+likely to be much accord between them on this subject.
+
+"But could you not go down there perhaps once or twice a week, and
+get Bailey to come and consult you here?" he asked.
+
+Lord Ashbridge held his head very high.
+
+"That would be completely out of the question," he said.
+
+All this, Michael felt, had nothing to do with the problem of his
+mother and himself.  It was outside it altogether, and concerned
+only his father's convenience.  He was willing to press this point
+as far as possible.
+
+"I had imagined you would stop in London," he said.  "Supposing
+under these circumstances I refuse to live with you?"
+
+"I should draw my own conclusion as to the sincerity of your
+profession of duty towards your mother."
+
+"And practically what would you do?" asked Michael.
+
+"Your mother and I would go to Ashbridge tomorrow all the same."
+
+Another alternative suddenly suggested itself to Michael which he
+was almost ashamed of proposing, for it implied that his father put
+his own convenience as outweighing any other consideration.  But he
+saw that if only Lord Ashbridge was selfish enough to consent to
+it, it had manifest merits.  His mother would be alone with him,
+free of the presence that so disconcerted her.
+
+"I propose, then," he said, "that she and I should remain in town,
+as you want to be at Ashbridge."
+
+He had been almost ashamed of suggesting it, but no such shame was
+reflected in his father's mind.  This would relieve him of the
+perpetual embarrassment of his wife's presence, and the perpetual
+irritation of Michael's.  He had persuaded himself that he was
+making a tremendous personal sacrifice in proposing that Michael
+should live with them, and this relieved him of the necessity.
+
+"Upon my word, Michael," he said, with the first hint of cordiality
+that he had displayed, "that is very well thought of.  Let us
+consider; it is certainly the case that this derangement in your
+poor mother's mind has caused her to take what I might almost call
+a dislike to me.  I mentioned that to Sir James, though it was very
+painful for me to do so, and he said that it was a common and most
+distressing symptom of brain disease, that the sufferer often
+turned against those he loved best.  Your plan would have the
+effect of removing that."
+
+He paused a moment, and became even more sublimely fatuous.
+
+"You, too," he said, "it would obviate the interruption of your
+work, about which you feel so keenly.  You would be able to go on
+with it.  Of myself, I don't think at all.  I shall be lonely, no
+doubt, at Ashbridge, but my own personal feelings must not be taken
+into account.  Yes; it seems to me a very sensible notion.  We
+shall have to see what your mother says to it.  She might not like
+me to be away from her, in spite of her apparent--er--dislike of
+me.  It must all depend on her attitude.  But for my part I think
+very well of your scheme.  Thank you, Michael, for suggesting it."
+
+He left immediately after this to ascertain Lady Ashbridge's
+feelings about it, and walked home with a complete resumption of
+his usual exuberance.  It indeed seemed an admirable plan.  It
+relieved him from the nightmare of his wife's continual presence,
+and this he expressed to himself by thinking that it relieved her
+from his.  It was not that he was deficient in sympathy for her,
+for in his self-centred way he was fond of her, but he could
+sympathise with her just as well at Ashbridge.  He could do no good
+to her, and he had not for her that instinct of love which would
+make it impossible for him to leave her.  He would also be spared
+the constant irritation of having Michael in the house, and this he
+expressed to himself by saying that Michael disliked him, and would
+be far more at his ease without him.  Furthermore, Michael would be
+able to continue his studies . . . of this too, in spite of the
+fact that he had always done his best to discourage them, he made a
+self-laudatory translation, by telling himself that he was very
+glad not to have to cause Michael to discontinue them.  In fine, he
+persuaded himself, without any difficulty, that he was a very fine
+fellow in consenting to a plan that suited him so admirably, and
+only wondered that he had not thought of it himself.  There was
+nothing, after his wife had expressed her joyful acceptance of it,
+to detain him in town, and he left for Ashbridge that afternoon,
+while Michael moved into the house in Curzon Street.
+
+Michael entered upon his new life without the smallest sense of
+having done anything exceptional or even creditable.  It was so
+perfectly obvious to him that he had to be with his mother that he
+had no inclination to regard himself at all in the matter; the
+thing was as simple as it had been to him to help Francis out of
+financial difficulties with a gift of money.  There was no effort
+of will, no sense of sacrifice about it, it was merely the
+assertion of a paramount instinct.  The life limited his freedom,
+for, for a great part of the day he was with his mother, and
+between his music and his attendance on her, he had but little
+leisure.  Occasionally he went out to see his friends, but any
+prolonged absence on his part always made her uneasy, and he would
+often find her, on his return, sitting in the hall, waiting for
+him, so as to enjoy his presence from the first moment that he re-
+entered the house.  But though he found no food for reflection in
+himself, Aunt Barbara, who came to see them some few days after
+Michael had been installed here, found a good deal.
+
+They had all had tea together, and afterwards Lady Ashbridge's
+nurse had come down to fetch her upstairs to rest.  And then Aunt
+Barbara surprised Michael, for she came across the room to him,
+with her kind eyes full of tears, and kissed him.
+
+"My dear, I must say it once," she said, "and then you will know
+that it is always in my mind.  You have behaved nobly, Michael;
+it's a big word, but I know no other.  As for your father--"
+
+Michael interrupted her.
+
+"Oh, I don't understand him," he said.  "At least, that's the best
+way to look at it.  Let's leave him out."
+
+He paused a moment.
+
+"After all, it is a much better plan than our living all three of
+us at Ashbridge.  It's better for my mother, and for me, and for
+him."
+
+"I know, but how he could consent to the better plan," she said.
+"Well, let us leave him out.  Poor Robert!  He and his golf.  My
+dear, your father is a very ludicrous person, you know.  But about
+you, Michael, do you think you can stand it?"
+
+He smiled at her.
+
+"Why, of course I can," he said.  "Indeed, I don't think I'll
+accept that statement of it.  It's--it's such a score to be able to
+be of use, you know.  I can make my mother happy.  Nobody else can.
+I think I'm getting rather conceited about it."
+
+"Yes, dear; I find you insufferable," remarked Aunt Barbara
+parenthetically.
+
+"Then you must just bear it.  The thing is"--Michael took a moment
+to find the words he searched for--"the thing is I want to be
+wanted.  Well, it's no light thing to be wanted by your mother,
+even if--"
+
+He sat down on the sofa by his aunt.
+
+"Aunt Barbara, how ironically gifts come," he said.  "This was
+rather a sinister way of giving, that my mother should want me like
+this just as her brain was failing.  And yet that failure doesn't
+affect the quality of her love.  Is it something that shines
+through the poor tattered fabric?  Anyhow, it has nothing to do
+with her brain.  It is she herself, somehow, not anything of hers,
+that wants me.  And you ask if I can stand it?"
+
+Michael with his ugly face and his kind eyes and his simple heart
+seemed extraordinarily charming just then to Aunt Barbara.  She
+wished that Sylvia could have seen him then in all the
+unconsciousness of what he was doing so unquestioningly, or that
+she could have seen him as she had with his mother during the last
+hour.  Lady Ashbridge had insisted on sitting close to him, and
+holding his hand whenever she could possess herself of it, of
+plying him with a hundred repeated questions, and never once had
+she made Michael either ridiculous or self-conscious.  And this,
+she reflected, went on most of the day, and for how many days it
+would go on, none knew.  Yet Michael could not consider even
+whether he could stand it; he rejected the expression as
+meaningless.
+
+"And your friends?" she said.  "Do you manage to see them?"
+
+"Oh, yes, occasionally," said Michael.  "They don't come here, for
+the presence of strangers makes my mother agitated.  She thinks
+they have some design of taking her or me away.  But she wants to
+see Sylvia.  She knows about--about her and me, and I can't make up
+my mind what to do about it.  She is always asking if I can't take
+her to see Sylvia, or get her to come here."
+
+"And why not?  Sylvia knows about your mother, I suppose."
+
+"I expect so.  I told Hermann.  But I am afraid my mother will--
+well, you can't call it arguing--but will try to persuade her to
+have me.  I can't let Sylvia in for that.  Nor, if it comes to
+that, can I let myself in for that."
+
+"Can't you impress on your mother that she mustn't?"
+
+Michael leaned forward to the fire, pondering this, and stretching
+out his big hands to the blaze.
+
+"Yes, I might," he said.  "I should love to see Sylvia again, just
+see her, you know.  We settled that the old terms we were on
+couldn't continue.  At least, I settled that, and she understood."
+
+"Sylvia is a gaby," remarked Aunt Barbara.
+
+"I'm rather glad you think so."
+
+"Oh, get her to come," said she.  "I'm sure your mother will do as
+you tell her.  I'll be here too, if you like, if that will do any
+good.  By the way, I see your Hermann's piano recital comes off to-
+morrow."
+
+"I know.  My mother wants to go to that, and I think I shall take
+her.  Will you come too, Aunt Barbara, and sit on the other side of
+her?  My 'Variations' are going to be played.  If they are a
+success, Hermann tells me I shall be dragged screaming on to the
+platform, and have to bow.  Lord!  And if they're not, well, 'Lord'
+also."
+
+"Yes, my dear, of course I'll come.  Let me see, I shall have to
+lie, as I have another engagement, but a little thing like that
+doesn't bother me."
+
+Suddenly she clapped her hands together.
+
+"My dear, I quite forgot," she said.  "Michael, such excitement.
+You remember the boat you heard taking soundings on the deep-water
+reach?  Of course you do!  Well, I sent that information to the
+proper quarter, and since then watch has been kept in the woods
+just above it.  Last night only the coastguard police caught four
+men at it--all Germans.  They tried to escape as they did before,
+by rowing down the river, but there was a steam launch below which
+intercepted them.  They had on them a chart of the reach, with
+soundings, nearly complete; and when they searched their houses--
+they are all tenants of your astute father, who merely laughed at
+us--they found a very decent map of certain private areas at
+Harwich.  Oh, I'm not such a fool as I look.  They thanked me, my
+dear, for my information, and I very gracefully said that my
+information was chiefly got by you."
+
+"But did those men live in Ashbridge?" asked Michael.
+
+"Yes; and your father will have four decorous houses on his hands.
+I am glad: he should not have laughed at us.  It will teach him, I
+hope.  And now, my dear, I must go."
+
+She stood up, and put her hand on Michael's arm.
+
+"And you know what I think of you," she said.  "To-morrow evening,
+then.  I hate music usually; but then I adore Mr. Hermann.  I only
+wish he wasn't a German.  Can't you get him to naturalise himself
+and his sister?"
+
+"You wouldn't ask that if you had seen him in Munich," said
+Michael.
+
+"I suppose not.  Patriotism is such a degrading emotion when it is
+not English."
+
+
+Michael's "Variations" came some half-way down the programme next
+evening, and as the moment for them approached, Lady Ashbridge got
+more and more excited.
+
+"I hope he knows them by heart properly, dear," she whispered to
+Michael.  "I shall be so nervous for fear he'll forget them in the
+middle, which is so liable to happen if you play without your
+notes."
+
+Michael laid his hand on his mother's.
+
+"Hush, mother," he said, "you mustn't talk while he's playing."
+
+"Well, I was only whispering.  But if you tell me I mustn't--"
+
+The hall was crammed from end to end, for not only was Hermann a
+person of innumerable friends, but he had already a considerable
+reputation, and, being a German, all musical England went to hear
+him.  And to-night he was playing superbly, after a couple of days
+of miserable nervousness over his debut as a pianist; but his
+temperament was one of those that are strung up to their highest
+pitch by such nervous agonies; he required just that to make him do
+full justice to his own personality, and long before he came to the
+"Variations," Michael felt quite at ease about his success.  There
+was no question about it any more: the whole audience knew that
+they were listening to a master.  In the row immediately behind
+Michael's party were sitting Sylvia and her mother, who had not
+quite been torn away from her novels, since she had sought "The
+Love of Hermione Hogarth" underneath her cloak, and read it
+furtively in pauses.  They had come in after Michael, and until the
+interval between the classical and the modern section of the
+concert he was unaware of their presence; then idly turning round
+to look at the crowded hall, he found himself face to face with the
+girl.
+
+"I had no idea you were there," he said.  "Hermann will do, won't
+he?  I think--"
+
+And then suddenly the words of commonplace failed him, and he
+looked at her in silence.
+
+"I knew you were back," she said.  "Hermann told me about--
+everything."
+
+Michael glanced sideways, indicating his mother, who sat next him,
+and was talking to Barbara.
+
+"I wondered whether perhaps you would come and see my mother and
+me," he said.  "May I write?"
+
+She looked at him with the friendliness of her smiling eyes and her
+grave mouth.
+
+"Is it necessary to ask?" she said.
+
+Michael turned back to his seat, for his mother had had quite
+enough of her sister-in-law, and wanted him again.  She looked over
+her shoulder for a moment to see whom Michael was talking to.
+
+"I'm enjoying my concert, dear," she said.  "And who is that nice
+young lady?  Is she a friend of yours?"
+
+The interval was over, and Hermann returned to the platform, and
+waiting for a moment for the buzz of conversation to die down, gave
+out, without any preliminary excursion on the keys, the text of
+Michael's "Variations."  Then he began to tell them, with light and
+flying fingers, what that simple tune had suggested to Michael, how
+he imagined himself looking on at an old-fashioned dance, and while
+the dancers moved to the graceful measure of a minuet, or daintily
+in a gavotte, the tune of "Good King Wenceslas" still rang in his
+head, or, how in the joy of the sunlight of a spring morning it
+still haunted him.  It lay behind a cascade of foaming waters that,
+leaping, roared into a ravine; it marched with flying banners on
+some day of victorious entry, it watched a funeral procession wind
+by, with tapers and the smell of incense; it heard, as it got
+nearer back to itself again, the peals of Christmas bells, and
+stood forth again in its own person, decorated and emblazoned.
+
+Hermann had already captured his audience; now he held them tame in
+the hollow of his hand.  Twice he bowed, and then, in answer to the
+demand, just beckoned with his finger to Michael, who rose.  For a
+moment his mother wished to detain him.
+
+"You're not going to leave me, my dear, are you?" she asked
+anxiously.
+
+He waited to explain to her quietly, left her, and, feeling rather
+dazed, made his way round to the back and saw the open door on to
+the platform confronting him.  He felt that no power on earth could
+make him step into the naked publicity there, but at the moment
+Hermann appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Come on, Mike," he said, laughing.  "Thank the pretty ladies and
+gentlemen!  Lord, isn't it all a lark!"
+
+Michael advanced with him, stared and hoped he smiled properly,
+though he felt that he was nailing some hideous grimace to his
+face; and then just below him he saw his mother eagerly pointing
+him out to a total stranger, with gesticulation, and just behind
+her Sylvia looking at her, and not at him, with such tenderness,
+such kindly pity.  There were the two most intimately bound into
+his life, the mother who wanted him, the girl whom he wanted; and
+by his side was Hermann, who, as Michael always knew, had thrown
+open the gates of life to him.  All the rest, even including Aunt
+Barbara, seemed of no significance in that moment.  Afterwards, no
+doubt, he would be glad they were pleased, be proud of having
+pleased them; but just now, even when, for the first time in his
+life, that intoxicating wine of appreciation was given him, he
+stood with it bubbling and yellow in his hand, not drinking of it.
+
+
+Michael had prepared the way of Sylvia's coming by telling his
+mother the identity of the "nice young lady" at the concert; he had
+also impressed on her the paramount importance of not saying
+anything with regard to him that could possibly embarrass the nice
+young lady, and when Sylvia came to tea a few days later, he was
+quite without any uneasiness, while for himself he was only
+conscious of that thirst for her physical presence, the desire, as
+he had said to Aunt Barbara, "just to see her."  Nor was there the
+slightest embarrassment in their meeting! it was clear that there
+was not the least difficulty either for him or her in being
+natural, which, as usually happens, was the complete solution.
+
+"That is good of you to come," he said, meeting her almost at the
+door.  "My mother has been looking forward to your visit.  Mother
+dear, here is Miss Falbe."
+
+Lady Ashbridge was pathetically eager to be what she called "good."
+Michael had made it clear to her that it was his wish that Miss
+Falbe should not be embarrassed, and any wish just now expressed by
+Michael was of the nature of a divine command to her.
+
+"Well, this is a pleasure," she said, looking across to Michael
+with the eyes of a dog on a beloved master.  "And we are not
+strangers quite, are we, Miss Falbe?  We sat so near each other to
+listen to your brother, who I am sure plays beautifully, and the
+music which Michael made.  Haven't I got a clever son, and such a
+good one?"
+
+Sylvia was unerring.  Michael had known she would be.
+
+"Indeed, you have," she said, sitting down by her.  "And Michael
+mustn't hear what we say about him, must he, or he'll be getting
+conceited."
+
+Lady Ashbridge laughed.
+
+"And that would never do, would it?" she said, still retaining
+Sylvia's hand.  Then a little dim ripple of compunction broke in
+her mind.  "Michael," she said, "we are only joking about your
+getting conceited.  Miss Falbe and I are only joking.  And--and
+won't you take off your hat, Miss Falbe, for you are not going to
+hurry away, are you?  You are going to pay us a long visit."
+
+Michael had not time to remind his mother that ladies who come to
+tea do not usually take their hats off, for on the word Sylvia's
+hands were busy with her hatpins.
+
+"I'm so glad you suggested that," she said.  "I always want to take
+my hat off.  I don't know who invented hats, but I wish he hadn't."
+
+Lady Ashbridge looked at her masses of bright hair, and could not
+help telegraphing a note of admiration, as it were, to Michael.
+
+"Now, that's more comfortable," she said.  "You look as if you
+weren't going away next minute.  When I like to see people, I hate
+their going away.  I'm afraid sometimes that Michael will go away,
+but he tells me he won't.  And you liked Michael's music, Miss
+Falbe?  Was it not clever of him to think of all that out of one
+simple little tune?  And he tells me you sing so nicely.  Perhaps
+you would sing to us when we've had tea.  Oh, and here is my
+sister-in-law.  Do you know her--Lady Barbara?  My dear, what is
+your husband's name?"
+
+Seeing Sylvia uncovered, Lady Barbara, with a tact that was
+creditable to her, but strangely unsuccessful, also began taking
+off her hat.  Her sister-in-law was too polite to interfere, but,
+as a matter of fact, she did not take much pleasure in the notion
+that Barbara was going to stay a very long time, too.  She was fond
+of her, but it was not Barbara whom Michael wanted.  She turned her
+attention to the girl again.
+
+"My husband's away," she said, confidentially; "he is very busy
+down at Ashbridge, and I daresay he won't find time to come up to
+town for many weeks yet.  But, you know, Michael and I do very well
+without him, very well, indeed, and it would never do to take him
+away from his duties--would it, Michael?"
+
+Here was a shoal to be avoided.
+
+"No, you mustn't think of tempting him to come up to town," said
+Michael.  "Give me some tea for Aunt Barbara."
+
+This answer entranced Lady Ashbridge; she had to nudge Michael
+several times to show that she understood the brilliance of it, and
+put lump after lump of sugar into Barbara's cup in her rapt
+appreciation of it.  But very soon she turned to Sylvia again.
+
+"And your brother is a friend of Michael's, too, isn't he?" she
+said.  "Some day perhaps he will come to see me.  We don't see many
+people, Michael and I, for we find ourselves very well content
+alone.  But perhaps some day he will come and play his concert over
+again to us; and then, perhaps, if you ask me, I will sing to you.
+I used to sing a great deal when I was younger.  Michael--where has
+Michael gone?"
+
+Michael had just left the room to bring some cigarettes in from
+next door, and Lady Ashbridge ran after him, calling him.  She
+found him in the hall, and brought him back triumphantly.
+
+"Now we will all sit and talk for a long time," she said.  "You one
+side of me, Miss Falbe, and Michael the other.  Or would you be so
+kind as to sing for us?  Michael will play for you, and would it
+annoy you if I came and turned over the pages?  It would give me a
+great deal of pleasure to turn over for you, if you will just nod
+each time when you are ready."
+
+Sylvia got up.
+
+"Why, of course," she said.  "What have you got, Michael?  I
+haven't anything with me."
+
+Michael found a volume of Schubert, and once again, as on the first
+time he had seen her, she sang "Who is Sylvia?" while he played,
+and Lady Ashbridge had her eyes fixed now on one and now on the
+other of them, waiting for their nod to do her part; and then she
+wanted to sing herself, and with some far-off remembrance of the
+airs and graces of twenty-five years ago, she put her handkerchief
+and her rings on the top of the piano, and, playing for herself,
+emitted faint treble sounds which they knew to be "The Soldier's
+Farewell."
+
+Then presently her nurse came for her to lie down before dinner,
+and she was inclined to be tearful and refuse to go till Michael
+made it clear that it was his express and sovereign will that she
+should do so.  Then very audibly she whispered to him.  "May I ask
+her to give me a kiss?" she said.  "She looks so kind, Michael, I
+don't think she would mind."
+
+
+Sylvia went back home with a little heartache for Michael,
+wondering, if she was in his place, if her mother, instead of being
+absorbed in her novels, demanded such incessant attentions, whether
+she had sufficient love in her heart to render them with the
+exquisite simplicity, the tender patience that Michael showed.
+Well as she knew him, greatly as she liked him, she had not
+imagined that he, or indeed any man could have behaved quite like
+that.  There seemed no effort at all about it; he was not trying to
+be patient; he had the sense of "patience's perfect work" natural
+to him; he did not seem to have to remind himself that his mother
+was ill, and thus he must be gentle with her.  He was gentle with
+her because he was in himself gentle.  And yet, though his
+behaviour was no effort to him, she guessed how wearying must be
+the continual strain of the situation itself.  She felt that she
+would get cross from mere fatigue, however excellent her intentions
+might be, however willing the spirit.  And no one, so she had
+understood from Barbara, could take Michael's place.  In his
+occasional absences his mother was fretful and miserable, and day
+by day Michael left her less.  She would sit close to him when he
+was practising--a thing that to her or to Hermann would have
+rendered practice impossible--and if he wrestled with one hand over
+a difficult bar, she would take the other into hers, would ask him
+if he was not getting tired, would recommend him to rest for a
+little; and yet Michael, who last summer had so stubbornly insisted
+on leading his own life, and had put his determination into effect
+in the teeth of all domestic opposition, now with more than
+cheerfulness laid his own life aside in order to look after his
+mother.  Sylvia felt that the real heroisms of life were not so
+much the fine heady deeds which are so obviously admirable, as such
+serene steadfastness, such unvarying patience as that which she had
+just seen.
+
+Her whole soul applauded Michael, and yet below her applause was
+this heartache for him, the desire to be able to help him to bear
+the burden which must be so heavy, though he bore it so blithely.
+But in the very nature of things there was but one way in which she
+could help him, and in that she was powerless.  She could not give
+him what he wanted.  But she longed to be able to.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was a morning of early March, and Michael, looking out from the
+dining-room window at the house in Curzon Street, where he had just
+breakfasted alone, was smitten with wonder and a secret ecstasy,
+for he suddenly saw and felt that it was winter no longer, but that
+spring had come.  For the last week the skies had screamed with
+outrageous winds and had been populous with flocks of sullen clouds
+that discharged themselves in sleet and snowy rain, and half last
+night, for he had slept very badly, he had heard the dashing of
+showers, as of wind-driven spray, against the window-panes, and had
+listened to the fierce rattling of the frames.  Towards morning he
+had slept, and during those hours it seemed that a new heaven and a
+new earth had come into being; vitally and essentially the world
+was a different affair altogether.
+
+At the back of the house on to which these windows looked was a
+garden of some half acre, a square of somewhat sooty grass, bounded
+by high walls, with a few trees at the further end.  Into it, too,
+had the message that thrilled through his bones penetrated, and
+this little oasis of doubtful grass and blackened shrubs had a
+totally different aspect to-day from that which it had worn all
+those weeks.  The sparrows that had sat with fluffed-up feathers in
+corners sheltered from the gales, were suddenly busy and shrilly
+vocal, chirruping and dragging about straws, and flying from limb
+to limb of the trees with twigs in their beaks.  For the first time
+he noticed that little verdant cabochons of folded leaf had globed
+themselves on the lilac bushes below the window, crocuses had
+budded, and in the garden beds had shot up the pushing spikes of
+bulbs, while in the sooty grass he could see specks and patches of
+vivid green, the first growth of the year.
+
+He opened the window and strolled out.  The whole taste and savour
+of the air was changed, and borne on the primrose-coloured sunshine
+came the smell of damp earth, no longer dead and reeking of the
+decay of autumn, but redolent with some new element, something
+fertile and fecund, something daintily, indefinably laden with the
+secret of life and restoration.  The grey, lumpy clouds were gone,
+and instead chariots of dazzling white bowled along the infinite
+blue expanse, harnessed to the southwest wind.  But, above all, the
+sparrows dragged straws to and fro, loudly chirruping.  All spring
+was indexed there.
+
+For a moment Michael was entranced with the exquisite moment, and
+stood sunning his soul in spring.  But then he felt the fetters of
+his own individual winter heavy on him again, and he could only see
+what was happening without feeling it.  For that moment he had felt
+the leap in his blood, but the next he was conscious again of the
+immense fatigue that for weeks had been growing on him.  The task
+which he had voluntarily taken on himself had become no lighter
+with habit, the incessant attendance on his mother and the strain
+of it got heavier day by day.  For some time now her childlike
+content in his presence had been clouded and, instead, she was
+constantly depressed and constantly querulous with him, finding
+fault with his words and his silences, and in her confused and
+muffled manner blaming him and affixing sinister motives to his
+most innocent actions.  But she was still entirely dependent on
+him, and if he left her for an hour or two, she would wait in an
+agony of anxiety for his return, and when he came back overwhelmed
+him with tearful caresses and the exaction of promises not to go
+away again.  Then, feeling certain of him once more, she would
+start again on complaints and reproaches.  Her doctor had warned
+him that it looked as if some new phase of her illness was
+approaching, which might necessitate the complete curtailment of
+her liberty; but day had succeeded to day and she still remained in
+the same condition, neither better nor worse, but making every
+moment a burden to Michael.
+
+It had been necessary that Sylvia should discontinue her visits,
+for some weeks ago Lady Ashbridge had suddenly taken a dislike to
+her, and, when she came, would sit in silent and lofty displeasure,
+speaking to her as little as possible, and treating her with a
+chilling and awful politeness.  Michael had enough influence with
+his mother to prevent her telling the girl what her crime had been,
+which was her refusal to marry him; but, when he was alone with his
+mother, he had to listen to torrents of these complaints.  Lady
+Ashbridge, with a wealth of language that had lain dormant in her
+all her life, sarcastically supposed that Miss Falbe was a princess
+in disguise ("very impenetrable disguise, for I'm sure she reminds
+me of a barmaid more than a princess"), and thought that such a
+marriage would be beneath her.  Or, another time, she hinted that
+Miss Falbe might be already married; indeed, this seemed a very
+plausible explanation of her attitude.  She desired, in fact, that
+Sylvia should not come to see her any more, and now, when she did
+not, there was scarcely a day in which Lady Ashbridge would not
+talk in a pointed manner about pretended friends who leave you
+alone, and won't even take the trouble to take a two-penny 'bus (if
+they are so poor as all that) to come from Chelsea to Curzon
+Street.
+
+Michael knew that his mother's steps were getting nearer and nearer
+to that border line which separates the sane from the insane, and
+with all the wearing strain of the days as they passed, had but the
+one desire in his heart, namely, to keep her on the right side for
+as long as was humanly possible.  But something might happen, some
+new symptom develop which would make it impossible for her to go on
+living with him as she did now, and the dread of that moment
+haunted his waking hours and his dreams.  Two months ago her doctor
+had told him that, for the sake of everyone concerned, it was to be
+hoped that the progress of her disease would be swift; but, for his
+part, Michael passionately disclaimed such a wish.  In spite of her
+constant complaints and strictures, she was still possessed of her
+love for him, and, wearing though every day was, he grudged the
+passing of the hours that brought her nearer to the awful boundary
+line.  Had a deed been presented to him for his signature, which
+bound him indefinitely to his mother's service, on the condition
+that she got no worse, his pen would have spluttered with his
+eagerness to sign.
+
+In consequence of his mother's dislike to Sylvia, Michael had
+hardly seen her during this last month.  Once, when owing to some
+small physical disturbance, Lady Ashbridge had gone to bed early on
+a Sunday evening, he had gone to one of the Falbes' weekly parties,
+and had tried to fling himself with enjoyment into the friendly
+welcoming atmosphere.  But for the present, he felt himself
+detached from it all, for this life with his mother was close round
+him with a sort of nightmare obsession, through which outside
+influence and desire could only faintly trickle.  He knew that the
+other life was there, he knew that in his heart he longed for
+Sylvia as much as ever; but, in his present detachment, his desire
+for her was a drowsy ache, a remote emptiness, and the veil that
+lay over his mother seemed to lie over him also.  Once, indeed,
+during the evening, when he had played for her, the veil had lifted
+and for the drowsy ache he had the sunlit, stabbing pang; but, as
+he left, the veil dropped again, and he let himself into the big,
+mute house, sorry that he had left it.  In the same way, too, his
+music was in abeyance: he could not concentrate himself or find it
+worth while to make the effort to absorb himself in it, and he knew
+that short of that, there was neither profit nor pleasure for him
+in his piano.  Everything seemed remote compared with the immediate
+foreground: there was a gap, a gulf between it and all the rest of
+the world.
+
+His father wrote to him from time to time, laying stress on the
+extreme importance of all he was doing in the country, and giving
+no hint of his coming up to town at present.  But he faintly
+adumbrated the time when in the natural course of events he would
+have to attend to his national duties in the House of Lords, and
+wondered whether it would not (about then) be good for his wife to
+have a change, and enjoy the country when the weather became more
+propitious.  Michael, with an excusable unfilialness, did not
+answer these amazing epistles; but, having basked in their
+unconscious humour, sent them on to Aunt Barbara.  Weekly reports
+were sent by Lady Ashbridge's nurse to his father, and Michael had
+nothing whatever to add to these.  His fear of him had given place
+to a quiet contempt, which he did not care to think about, and
+certainly did not care to express.
+
+Every now and then Lady Ashbridge had what Michael thought of as a
+good hour or two, when she went back to her content and childlike
+joy in his presence, and it was clear, when presently she came
+downstairs as he still lingered in the garden, reading the daily
+paper in the sun, that one of these better intervals had visited
+her.  She, too, it appeared, felt the waving of the magic wand of
+spring, and she noted the signs of it with a joy that was
+infinitely pathetic.
+
+"My dear," she said, "what a beautiful morning!  Is it wise to sit
+out of doors without your hat, Michael?  Shall not I go and fetch
+it for you?  No?  Then let us sit here and talk.  It is spring, is
+it not?  Look how the birds are collecting twigs for their nests! I
+wonder how they know that the time has come round again.  Sweet
+little birds!  How bold and merry they are."
+
+She edged her way a little nearer him, so that her shoulder leaned
+on his arm.
+
+"My dear, I wish you were going to nest, too," she said.  "I
+wonder--do you think I have been ill-natured and unkind to your
+Sylvia, and that makes her not come to see me now?  I do remember
+being vexed at her for not wanting to marry you, and perhaps I
+talked unkindly about her.  I am sorry, for my being cross to her
+will do no good; it will only make her more unwilling than ever to
+marry a man who has such an unpleasant mamma.  Will she come to see
+me again, do you think, if I ask her?"
+
+These good hours were too rare in their appearances and swift in
+their vanishings to warrant the certainty that she would feel the
+same this afternoon, and Michael tried to turn the subject.
+
+"Ah, we shall have to think about that, mother," he said.  "Look,
+there is a quarrel going on between those two sparrows.  They both
+want the same straw."
+
+She followed his pointing finger, easily diverted.
+
+"Oh, I wish they would not quarrel," she said.  "It is so sad and
+stupid to quarrel, instead of being agreeable and pleasant.  I do
+not like them to do that.  There, one has flown away!  And see, the
+crocuses are coming up.  Indeed it is spring.  I should like to see
+the country to-day.  If you are not busy, Michael, would you take
+me out into the country?  We might go to Richmond Park perhaps, for
+that is in the opposite direction from Ashbridge, and look at the
+deer and the budding trees.  Oh, Michael, might we take lunch with
+us, and eat it out of doors?  I want to enjoy as much as I can of
+this spring day."
+
+She clung closer to Michael.
+
+"Everything seems so fragile, dear," she whispered.  "Everything
+may break. . . .  Sometimes I am frightened."
+
+The little expedition was soon moving, after a slight altercation
+between Lady Ashbridge and her nurse, whom she wished to leave
+behind in order to enjoy Michael's undiluted society.  But Miss
+Baker, who had already spoken to Michael, telling him she was not
+quite happy in her mind about her patient, was firm about
+accompanying them, though she obligingly effaced herself as far as
+possible by taking the box-seat by the chauffeur as they drove
+down, and when they arrived, and Michael and his mother strolled
+about in the warm sunshine before lunch, keeping carefully in the
+background, just ready to come if she was wanted.  But indeed it
+seemed as if no such precautions were necessary, for never had Lady
+Ashbridge been more amenable, more blissfully content in her son's
+companionship.  The vernal hour, that first smell of the
+rejuvenated earth, as it stirred and awoke from its winter sleep
+had reached her no less than it had reached the springing grass and
+the heart of buried bulbs, and never perhaps in all her life had
+she been happier than on that balmy morning of early March.  Here
+the stir of spring that had crept across miles of smoky houses to
+the gardens behind Curzon Street, was more actively effervescent,
+and the "bare, leafless choirs" of the trees, which had been empty
+of song all winter, were once more resonant with feathered
+worshippers.  Through the tussocks of the grey grass of last year
+were pricking the vivid shoots of green, and over the grove of
+young birches and hazel the dim, purple veil of spring hung
+mistlike.  Down by the water-edge of the Penn ponds they strayed,
+where moor-hens scuttled out of rhododendron bushes that overhung
+the lake, and hurried across the surface of the water, half
+swimming, half flying, for the shelter of some securer retreat.
+There, too, they found a plantation of willows, already in bud with
+soft moleskin buttons, and a tortoiseshell butterfly, evoked by the
+sun from its hibernation, settled on one of the twigs, opening and
+shutting its diapered wings, and spreading them to the warmth to
+thaw out the stiffness and inaction of winter.  Blackbirds fluted
+in the busy thickets, a lark shot up near them soaring and singing
+till it became invisible in the luminous air, a suspended carol in
+the blue, and bold male chaffinches, seeking their mates with
+twittered songs, fluttered with burr of throbbing wings.  All the
+promise of spring was there--dim, fragile, but sure, on this day of
+days, this pearl that emerged from the darkness and the stress of
+winter, iridescent with the tender colours of the dawning year.
+
+They lunched in the open motor, Miss Baker again obligingly
+removing herself to the box seat, and spreading rugs on the grass
+sat in the sunshine, while Lady Ashbridge talked or silently
+watched Michael as he smoked, but always with a smile.  The one
+little note of sadness which she had sounded when she said she was
+frightened lest everything should break, had not rung again, and
+yet all day Michael heard it echoing somewhere dimly behind the
+song of the wind and the birds, and the shoots of growing trees.
+It lurked in the thickets, just eluding him, and not presenting
+itself to his direct gaze; but he felt that he saw it out of the
+corner of his eye, only to lose it when he looked at it.  And yet
+for weeks his mother had never seemed so well: the cloud had lifted
+off her this morning, and, but for some vague presage of trouble
+that somehow haunted his mind, refusing to be disentangled, he
+could have believed that, after all, medical opinion might be at
+fault, and that, instead of her passing more deeply into the
+shadows as he had been warned was inevitable, she might at least
+maintain the level to which she had returned to-day.  All day she
+had been as she was before the darkness and discontent of those
+last weeks had come upon her: he who knew her now so well could
+certainly have affirmed that she had recovered the serenity of a
+month ago.  It was so much, so tremendously much that she should do
+this, and if only she could remain as she had been all day, she
+would at any rate be happy, happier, perhaps, than she had
+consciously been in all the stifled years which had preceded this.
+Nothing else at the moment seemed to matter except the preservation
+to her of such content, and how eagerly would he have given all the
+service that his young manhood had to offer, if by that he could
+keep her from going further into the bewildering darkness that he
+had been told awaited her.
+
+There was some little trouble, though no more than the shadow of a
+passing cloud, when at last he said that they must be getting back
+to town, for the afternoon was beginning to wane.  She besought him
+for five minutes more of sitting here in the sunshine that was
+still warm, and when those minutes were over, she begged for yet
+another postponement.  But then the quiet imposition of his will
+suddenly conquered her, and she got up.
+
+"My dear, you shall do what you like with me," she said, "for you
+have given me such a happy day.  Will you remember that, Michael?
+It has been a nice day.  And might we, do you think, ask Miss Falbe
+to come to tea with us when we get back?  She can but say 'no,' and
+if she comes, I will be very good and not vex her."
+
+As she got back into the motor she stood up for a moment, her vague
+blue eyes scanning the sky, the trees, the stretch of sunlit park.
+
+"Good-bye, lake, happy lake and moor-hens," she said.  "Good-bye,
+trees and grass that are growing green again.  Good-bye, all
+pretty, peaceful things."
+
+
+Michael had no hesitation in telephoning to Sylvia when they got
+back to town, asking her if she could come and have tea with his
+mother, for the gentle, affectionate mood of the morning still
+lasted, and her eagerness to see Sylvia was only equalled by her
+eagerness to be agreeable to her.  He was greedy, whenever it could
+be done, to secure a pleasure for his mother, and this one seemed
+in her present mood a perfectly safe one.  Added to that impulse,
+in itself sufficient, there was his own longing to see her again,
+that thirst that never left him, and soon after they had got back
+to Curzon Street Sylvia was with them, and, as before, in
+preparation for a long visit, she had taken off her hat.  To-day
+she divested herself of it without any suggestion on Lady
+Ashbridge's part, and this immensely pleased her.
+
+"Look, Michael," she said.  "Miss Falbe means to stop a long time.
+That is sweet of her, is it not?  She is not in such a hurry to get
+away today.  Sugar, Miss Falbe?  Yes, I remember you take sugar and
+milk, but no cream.  Well, I do think this is nice!"
+
+Sylvia had seen neither mother nor son for a couple of weeks, and
+her eyes coming fresh to them noticed much change in them both.  In
+Lady Ashbridge this change, though marked, was indefinable enough:
+she seemed to the girl to have somehow gone much further off than
+she had been before; she had faded, become indistinct.  It was
+evident that she found, except when she was talking to Michael, a
+far greater difficulty in expressing herself, the channels of
+communication, as it were, were getting choked. . . .  With
+Michael, the change was easily stated, he looked terribly tired,
+and it was evident that the strain of these weeks was telling
+heavily on him.  And yet, as Sylvia noticed with a sudden sense of
+personal pride in him, not one jot of his patient tenderness for
+his mother was abated.  Tired as he was, nervous, on edge, whenever
+he dealt with her, either talking to her, or watching for any
+little attention she might need, his face was alert with love.  But
+she noticed that when the footman brought in tea, and in arranging
+the cups let a spoon slip jangling from its saucer, Michael jumped
+as if a bomb had gone off, and under his breath said to the man,
+"You clumsy fool!"  Little as the incident was, she, knowing
+Michael's courtesy and politeness, found it significant, as bearing
+on the evidence of his tired face.  Then, next moment his mother
+said something to him, and instantly his love transformed and
+irradiated it.
+
+To-day, more than ever before, Lady Ashbridge seemed to exist only
+through him.  As Sylvia knew, she had been for the last few weeks
+constantly disagreeable to him; but she wondered whether this
+exacting, meticulous affection was not harder to bear.  Yet
+Michael, in spite of the nervous strain which now showed itself so
+clearly, seemed to find no difficulty at all in responding to it.
+It might have worn his nerves to tatters, but the tenderness and
+love of him passed unhampered through the frayed communications,
+for it was he himself who was brought into play.  It was of that
+Michael, now more and more triumphantly revealed, that Sylvia felt
+so proud, as if he had been a possession, an achievement wholly
+personal to her.  He was her Michael--it was just that which was
+becoming evident, since nothing else would account for her claim of
+him, unconsciously whispered by herself to herself.
+
+It was not long before Lady Ashbridge's nurse appeared, to take her
+upstairs to rest.  At that her patient became suddenly and
+unaccountably agitated: all the happy content of the day was wiped
+off her mind.  She clung to Michael.
+
+"No, no, Michael," she said, "they mustn't take me away.  I know
+they are going to take me away from you altogether.  You mustn't
+leave me."
+
+Nurse Baker came towards her.
+
+"Now, my lady, you mustn't behave like that," she said.  "You know
+you are only going upstairs to rest as usual before dinner.  You
+will see Lord Comber again then."
+
+She shrank from her, shielding herself behind Michael's shoulder.
+
+"No, Michael, no!" she repeated.  "I'm going to be taken away from
+you.  And look, Miss--ah, my dear, I have forgotten your name--
+look, she has got no hat on.  She was going to stop with me a long
+time.  Michael, must I go?"
+
+Michael saw the nurse looking at her, watching her with that quiet
+eye of the trained attendant.
+
+Then she spoke to Michael.
+
+"Well, if Lord Comber will just step outside with me," she said,
+"we'll see if we can arrange for you to stop a little longer."
+
+"And you'll come back, Michael," said she.
+
+Michael saw that the nurse wanted to say something to him, and with
+infinite gentleness disentangled the clinging of Lady Ashbridge's
+hand.
+
+"Why, of course I will," he said.  "And won't you give Miss Falbe
+another cup of tea?"
+
+Lady Ashbridge hesitated a moment.
+
+"Yes, I'll do that," she said.  "And by the time I've done that you
+will be back again, won't you?"
+
+Michael followed the nurse from the room, who closed the door
+without shutting it.
+
+"There's something I don't like about her this evening," she said.
+"All day I have been rather anxious.  She must be watched very
+carefully.  Now I want you to get her to come upstairs, and I'll
+try to make her go to bed."
+
+Michael felt his mouth go suddenly dry.
+
+"What do you expect?" he said.
+
+"I don't expect anything, but we must be prepared.  A change comes
+very quickly."
+
+Michael nodded, and they went back together.
+
+"Now, mother darling," he said, "up you go with Nurse Baker.
+You've been out all day, and you must have a good rest before
+dinner.  Shall I come up and see you soon?"
+
+A curious, sly look came into Lady Ashbridge's face.
+
+"Yes, but where am I going to?" she said.  "How do I know Nurse
+Baker will take me to my own room?"
+
+"Because I promise you she will," said Michael.
+
+That instantly reassured her.  Mood after mood, as Michael saw,
+were passing like shadows over her mind.
+
+"Ah, that's enough!" she said.  "Good-bye, Miss--there! the name's
+gone again!  But won't you sit here and have a talk to Michael, and
+let him show you over the house to see if you like it against the
+time--  Oh, Michael said I mustn't worry you about that.  And won't
+you stop and have dinner with us, and afterwards we can sing."
+
+Michael put his arm around her.
+
+"We'll talk about that while you're resting," he said.  "Don't keep
+Nurse Baker waiting any longer, mother."
+
+She nodded and smiled.
+
+"No, no; mustn't keep anybody waiting," she said.  "Your father
+taught me to be punctual."
+
+When they had left the room together, Sylvia turned to Michael.
+
+"Michael, my dear," she said, "I think you are--well, I think you
+are Michael."
+
+She saw that at the moment he was not thinking of her at all, and
+her heart honoured him for that.
+
+"I'm anxious about my mother to-night," he said.  "She has been so--
+I suppose you must call it--well all day, but the nurse isn't easy
+about her."
+
+Suddenly all his fears and his fatigue and his trouble looked out
+of his eyes.
+
+"I'm frightened," he said, "and it's so unutterably feeble of me.
+And I'm tired: you don't know how tired, and try as I may I feel
+that all the time it is no use.  My mother is slipping, slipping
+away."
+
+"But, my dear, no wonder you are tired," she said.  "Michael, can't
+anybody help?  It isn't right you should do everything."
+
+He shook his head, smiling.
+
+"They can't help," he said.  "I'm the only person who can help her.
+And I--"
+
+He stood up, bracing mind and body.
+
+"And I'm so brutally proud of it," he said.  "She wants me.  Well,
+that's a lot for a son to be able to say.  Sylvia, I would give
+anything to keep her."
+
+Still he was not thinking of her, and knowing that, she came close
+to him and put her arm in his.  She longed to give him some feeling
+of comradeship.  She could be sisterly to him over this without
+suggesting to him what she could not be to him.  Her instinct had
+divined right, and she felt the answering pressure of his elbow
+that acknowledged her sympathy, welcomed it, and thought no more
+about it.
+
+"You are giving everything to keep her," she said.  "You are giving
+yourself.  What further gift is there, Michael?"
+
+He kept her arm close pressed by him, and she knew by the frankness
+of that holding caress he was thinking of her still either not at
+all, or, she hoped, as a comrade who could perhaps be of assistance
+to courage and clear-sightedness in difficult hours.  She wanted to
+be no more than that to him just now; it was the most she could do
+for him, but with a desire, the most acute she had ever felt for
+him, she wanted him to accept that--to take her comradeship as he
+would have surely taken her brother's.  Once, in the last intimate
+moments they had had together, he had refused to accept that
+attitude from her--had felt it a relationship altogether
+impossible.  She had seen his point of view, and recognised the
+justice of the embarrassment.  Now, very simply but very eagerly,
+she hoped, as with some tugging strain, that he would not reject
+it.  She knew she had missed this brother, who had refused to be
+brother to her.  But he had been about his own business, and he had
+been doing his own business, with a quiet splendour that drew her
+eyes to him, and as they stood there, thus linked, she wondered if
+her heart was following. . . .  She had seen, last December, how
+reasonable it was of him to refuse this domestic sort of intimacy
+with her; now, she found herself intensely longing that he would
+not persist in his refusal.
+
+Suddenly Michael awoke to the fact of her presence, and abruptly he
+moved away from her.
+
+"Thanks, Sylvia," he said.  "I know I have your--your good wishes.
+But--well, I am sure you understand."
+
+She understood perfectly well.  And the understanding of it cut her
+to the quick.
+
+"Have you got any right to behave like that to me, Michael?" she
+asked.  "What have I done that you should treat me quite like
+that?"
+
+He looked at her, completely recalled in mind to her alone.  All
+the hopes and desires of the autumn smote him with encompassing
+blows.
+
+"Yes, every right," he said.  "I wasn't heeding you.  I only
+thought of my mother, and the fact that there was a very dear
+friend by me.  And then I came to myself: I remembered who the
+friend was."
+
+They stood there in silence, apart, for a moment.  Then Michael
+came closer.  The desire for human sympathy, and that the sympathy
+he most longed for, gripped him again.
+
+"I'm a brute," he said.  "It was awfully nice of you to--to offer
+me that.  I accept it so gladly.  I'm wretchedly anxious."
+
+He looked up at her.
+
+"Take my arm again," he said.
+
+She felt the crook of his elbow tighten again on her wrist.  She
+had not known before how much she prized that.
+
+"But are you sure you are right in being anxious, Mike?" she asked.
+"Isn't it perhaps your own tired nerves that make you anxious?"
+
+"I don't think so," he said.  "I've been tired a long time, you
+see, and I never felt about my mother like this.  She has been so
+bright and content all day, and yet there were little lapses, if
+you understand.  It was as if she knew: she said good-bye to the
+lake and the jolly moor-hens and the grass.  And her nurse thinks
+so, too.  She called me out of the room just now to tell me
+that. . . .  I don't know why I should tell you these depressing
+things."
+
+"Don't you?" she asked.  "But I do.  It's because you know I care.
+Otherwise you wouldn't tell me: you couldn't."
+
+For a moment the balance quavered in his mind between Sylvia the
+beloved and Sylvia the friend.  It inclined to the friend.
+
+"Yes, that's why," he said.  "And I reproach myself, you know.  All
+these years I might, if I had tried harder, have been something to
+my mother.  I might have managed it.  I thought--at least I felt--
+that she didn't encourage me.  But I was a beast to have been
+discouraged.  And now her wanting me has come just when it isn't
+her unclouded self that wants me.  It's as if--as if it had been
+raining all day, and just on sunset there comes a gleam in the
+west.  And so soon after it's night."
+
+"You made the gleam," said Sylvia.
+
+"But so late; so awfully late."
+
+Suddenly he stood stiff, listening to some sound which at present
+she did not hear.  It sounded a little louder, and her ears caught
+the running of footsteps on the stairs outside.  Next moment the
+door opened, and Lady Ashbridge's maid put in a pale face.
+
+"Will you go to her ladyship, my lord?" she said.  "Her nurse wants
+you.  She told me to telephone to Sir James."
+
+Sylvia moved with him, not disengaging her arm, towards the door.
+
+"Michael, may I wait?" she said.  "You might want me, you know.
+Please let me wait."
+
+
+Lady Ashbridge's room was on the floor above, and Michael ran up
+the intervening stairs three at a time.  He knocked and entered and
+wondered why he had been sent for, for she was sitting quietly on
+her sofa near the window.  But he noticed that Nurse Baker stood
+very close to her.  Otherwise there was nothing that was in any way
+out of the ordinary.
+
+"And here he is," said the nurse reassuringly as he entered.
+
+Lady Ashbridge turned towards the door as Michael came in, and when
+he met her eyes he knew why he had been sent for, why at this
+moment Sir James was being summoned.  For she looked at him not
+with the clouded eyes of affection, not with the mother-spirit
+striving to break through the shrouding trouble of her brain, but
+with eyes of blank non-recognition.  She saw him with the bodily
+organs of her vision, but the picture of him was conveyed no
+further: there was a blank wall behind her eyes.
+
+Michael did not hesitate.  It was possible that he still might be
+something to her, that he, his presence, might penetrate.
+
+"But you are not resting, mother," he said.  "Why are you sitting
+up?  I came to talk to you, as I said I would, while you rested."
+
+Suddenly into those blank, irresponsive eyes there leaped
+recognition.  He saw the pupils contract as they focused themselves
+on him, and hand in hand with recognition there leaped into them
+hate.  Instantly that was veiled again.  But it had been there, and
+now it was not banished; it lurked behind in the shadows, crouching
+and waiting.
+
+She answered him at once, but in a voice that was quite toneless.
+It seemed like that of a child repeating a lesson which it had
+learned by heart, and could be pronounced while it was thinking of
+something quite different.
+
+"I was waiting till you came, my dear," she said.  "Now I will lie
+down.  Come and sit by me, Michael."
+
+She watched him narrowly while she spoke, then gave a quick glance
+at her nurse, as if to see that they were not making signals to
+each other.  There was an easy chair just behind her head, and as
+Michael wheeled it up near her sofa, he looked at the nurse.  She
+moved her hand slightly towards the left, and interpreting this, he
+moved the chair a little to the left, so that he would not sit, as
+he had intended, quite close to the sofa.
+
+"And you enjoyed your day in the country, mother?" asked Michael.
+
+She looked at him sideways and slowly.  Then again, as if
+recollecting a task she had committed to memory, she answered.
+
+"Yes, so much," she said.  "All the trees and the birds and the
+sunshine.  I enjoyed them so much."
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"Bring your chair a little closer, my darling," she said.  "You are
+so far off.  And why do you wait, nurse?  I will call you if I want
+you."
+
+Michael felt one moment of sickening spiritual terror.  He
+understood quite plainly why Nurse Baker did not want him to go
+near to his mother, and the reason of it gave him this pang, not of
+nervousness but of black horror, that the sane and the sensitive
+must always feel when they are brought intimately in contact with
+some blind derangement of instinct in those most nearly allied to
+them.  Physically, on the material plane, he had no fear at all.
+
+He made a movement, grasping the arm of his chair, as if to wheel
+it closer, but he came actually no nearer her.
+
+"Why don't you go away, nurse?" said Lady Ashbridge, "and leave my
+son and me to talk about our nice day in the country?"
+
+Nurse Baker answered quite naturally.
+
+"I want to talk, too, my lady," she said.  "I went with you and
+Lord Comber.  We all enjoyed it together."
+
+It seemed to Michael that his mother made some violent effort
+towards self-control.  He saw one of her hands that were lying on
+her knee clench itself, so that the knuckles stood out white.
+
+"Yes, we will all talk together, then," she said.  "Or--er--shall I
+have a little doze first?  I am rather sleepy with so much pleasant
+air.  And you are sleepy, too, are you not, Michael?  Yes, I see
+you look sleepy.  Shall we have a little nap, as I often do after
+tea?  Then, when I am fresh again, you shall come back, nurse, and
+we will talk over our pleasant day."
+
+When he entered the room, Michael had not quite closed the door,
+and now, as half an hour before, he heard steps on the stairs.  A
+moment afterwards his mother heard them too.
+
+"What is that?" she said.  "Who is coming now to disturb me, just
+when I wanted to have a nap?"
+
+There came a knock at the door.  Nurse Baker did not move her head,
+but continued watching her patient, with hands ready to act.
+
+"Come in," she said, not looking round.
+
+Lady Ashbridge's face was towards the door.  As Sir James entered,
+she suddenly sprang up, and in her right hand that lay beside her
+was a knife, which she had no doubt taken from the tea-table when
+she came upstairs.  She turned swiftly towards Michael, and stabbed
+at him with it.
+
+"It's a trap," she cried.  "You've led me into a trap.  They are
+going to take me away."
+
+Michael had thrown up his arm to shield his head.  The blow fell
+between shoulder and elbow, and he felt the edge of the knife grate
+on his bone.
+
+And from deep in his heart sprang the leaping fountains of
+compassion and love and yearning pity.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Michael was sitting in the big studio at the Falbes' house late one
+afternoon at the end of June, and the warmth and murmur of the
+full-blown summer filled the air.  The day had so far declined that
+the rays of the sun, level in its setting, poured slantingly in
+through the big window to the north, and shining through the
+foliage of the plane-trees outside made a diaper of rosy
+illuminated spots and angled shadows on the whitewashed wall.  As
+the leaves stirred in the evening breeze, this pattern shifted and
+twinkled; now, as the wind blew aside a bunch of foliage, a lake of
+rosy gold would spring up on the wall; then, as the breath of
+movement died, the green shadows grew thicker again faintly
+stirring.  Through the window to the south, which Hermann had
+caused to be cut there, since the studio was not used for painting
+purposes, Michael could see into the patch of high-walled garden,
+where Mrs. Falbe was sitting in a low basket chair, completely
+absorbed in a book of high-born and ludicrous adventures.  She had
+made a mild attempt when she found that Michael intended to wait
+for Sylvia's return to entertain him till she came; but, with a
+little oblique encouragement, remarking on the beauty and warmth of
+the evening, and the pleasure of sitting out of doors, Michael had
+induced her to go out again, and leave him alone in the studio,
+free to live over again that which, twenty-four hours ago, had
+changed life for him.
+
+He reconstructed it as he sat on the sofa and dwelt on the pearl-
+moments of it.  Just this time yesterday he had come in and found
+Sylvia alone.  She had got up, he remembered, to give him greeting,
+and just opposite the fireplace they had come face to face.  She
+held in her hand a small white rose which she had plucked in the
+tiny garden here in the middle of London.  It was not a very fine
+specimen, but it was a rose, and she had said in answer to his
+depreciatory glance: "But you must see it when I have washed it.
+One has to wash London flowers."
+
+Then . . . the miracle happened.  Michael, with the hand that had
+just taken hers, stroked a petal of this prized vegetable, with no
+thought in his mind stronger than the thoughts that had been
+indigenous there since Christmas.  As his finger first touched the
+rim of the town-bred petals, undersized yet not quite lacking in
+"rose-quality," he had intended nothing more than to salute the
+flower, as Sylvia made her apology for it.  "One has to wash London
+flowers."  But as he touched it he looked up at her, and the quiet,
+usual song of his thoughts towards her grew suddenly loud and
+stupefyingly sweet.  It was as if from the vacant hive-door the
+bees swarmed.  In her eyes, as they met his, he thought he saw an
+expectancy, a welcome, and his hand, instead of stroking the rose-
+petals, closed on the rose and on the hand that held it, and kept
+them close imprisoned and strongly gripped.  He could not remember
+if he had spoken any word, but he had seen that in her face which
+rendered all speech unnecessary, and, knowing in the bones and the
+blood of him that he was right, he kissed her.  And then she had
+said, "Yes, Michael."
+
+His hand still was tight on hers that held the crumpled rose, and
+when he opened it, lover-like, to stroke and kiss it, there was a
+spot of blood in the palm of it, where a rose-thorn had pricked
+her, just one drop of Sylvia's blood.  As he kissed it, he had
+wiped it away with the tip of his tongue between his lips, and she
+smiling had said, "Oh, Michael, how silly!"
+
+They had sat together on the sofa where this afternoon he sat alone
+waiting for her.  Every moment of that half hour was as distinct as
+the outline of trees and hills just before a storm, and yet it was
+still entirely dream-like.  He knew it had happened, for nothing
+but the happening of it would account now for the fact of himself;
+but, though there was nothing in the world so true, there was
+nothing so incredible.  Yet it was all as clean-cut in his mind as
+etched lines, and round each line sprang flowers and singing birds.
+For a long space there was silence after they had sat down, and
+then she said, "I think I always loved you, Michael, only I didn't
+know it. . . ."  Thereafter, foolish love talk: he had claimed a
+superiority there, for he had always loved her and had always known
+it.  Much time had been wasted owing to her ignorance . . . she
+ought to have known.  But all the time that existed was theirs now.
+In all the world there was no more time than what they had.  The
+crumpled rose had its petals rehabilitated, the thorn that had
+pricked her was peeled off.  They wondered if Hermann had come in
+yet.  Then, by some vague process of locomotion, they found
+themselves at the piano, and with her arm around his neck Sylvia
+has whispered half a verse of the song of herself. . . .
+
+They became a little more definite over lover-confessions.  Michael
+had, so to speak, nothing to confess: he had loved all along--he
+had wanted her all along; there never had been the least pretence
+or nonsense about it.  Her path was a little more difficult to
+trace, but once it had been traversed it was clear enough.  She had
+liked him always; she had felt sister-like from the moment when
+Hermann brought him to the house, and sister-like she had continued
+to feel, even when Michael had definitely declared there was "no
+thoroughfare" there.  She had missed that relationship when it
+stopped: she did not mind telling him that now, since it was
+abandoned by them both; but not for the world would she have
+confessed before that she had missed it.  She had loved being asked
+to come and see his mother, and it was during those visits that she
+had helped to pile the barricade across the "sister-thoroughfare"
+with her own hands.  She began to share Michael's sense of the
+impossibility of that road.  They could not walk down it together,
+for they had to be either more or less to each other than that.
+And, during these visits, she had begun to understand (and her face
+a little hid itself) what Michael's love meant.  She saw it
+manifested towards his mother; she was taught by it; she learned
+it; and, she supposed, she loved it.  Anyhow, having seen it, she
+could not want Michael as a brother any longer, and if he still
+wanted anything else, she supposed (so she supposed) that some time
+he would mention that fact.  Yes: she began to hope that he would
+not be very long about it. . . .
+
+
+Michael went over this very deliberately as he sat waiting for her
+twenty-four hours later.  He rehearsed this moment and that over
+and over again: in mind he followed himself and Sylvia across to
+the piano, not hurrying their steps, and going through the verse of
+the song she sang at the pace at which she actually sang it.  And,
+as he dreamed and recollected, he heard a little stir in the quiet
+house, and Sylvia came.
+
+They met just as they met yesterday in front of the fireplace.
+
+"Oh, Michael, have you been waiting long?" she said.
+
+"Yes, hours, or perhaps a couple of minutes.  I don't know."
+
+"Ah, but which?  If hours, I shall apologise, and then excuse
+myself by saying that you must have come earlier than you intended.
+If minutes I shall praise myself for being so exceedingly
+punctual."
+
+"Minutes, then," said he.  "I'll praise you instead.  Praise is
+more convincing if somebody else does it."
+
+"Yes, but you aren't somebody else.  Now be sensible.  Have you
+done all the things you told me you were going to do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Sylvia released her hands from his.
+
+"Tell me, then," she said.  "You've seen your father?"
+
+There was no cloud on Michael's face.  There was such sunlight
+where his soul sat that no shadow could fall across it.
+
+"Oh, yes, I saw him," he said.
+
+He captured Sylvia's hand again.
+
+"And what is more he saw me, so to speak," he said.  "He realised
+that I had an existence independent of him.  I used to be a--a sort
+of clock to him; he could put its hands to point to any hour he
+chose.  Well, he has realised--he has really--that I am ticking
+along on my own account.  He was quite respectful, not only to me,
+which doesn't matter, but to you--which does."  Michael laughed, as
+he plaited his fingers in with hers.
+
+"My father is so comic," he said, "and unlike most great humourists
+his humour is absolutely unconscious.  He was perfectly well aware
+that I meant to marry you, for I told him that last Christmas,
+adding that you did not mean to marry me.  So since then I think
+he's got used to you.  Used to you--fancy getting used to you!"
+
+"Especially since he had never seen me," said the girl.
+
+"That makes it less odd.  Getting used to you after seeing you
+would be much more incredible.  I was saying that in a way he had
+got used to you, just as he's got used to my being a person, and
+not a clock on his chimney-piece, and what seems to have made so
+much difference is what Aunt Barbara told him last night, namely,
+that your mother was a Tracy.  Sylvia, don't let it be too much for
+you, but in a certain far-away manner he realises that you are 'one
+of us.'  Isn't he a comic?  He's going to make the best of you, it
+appears.  To make the best of you!  You can't beat that, you know.
+In fact, he told me to ask if he might come and pay his respects to
+your mother to-morrow.
+
+"And what about my singing, my career?" she asked.
+
+Michael laughed again.
+
+"He was funny about that also," he said.  "My father took it
+absolutely for granted that having made this tremendous social
+advance, you would bury your past, all but the Tracy part of it, as
+if it had been something disgraceful which the exalted Comber
+family agreed to overlook."
+
+"And what did you say?"
+
+"I?  Oh, I told him that, of course, you would do as you pleased
+about that, but that for my part I should urge you most strongly to
+do nothing of the kind."
+
+"And he?"
+
+"He got four inches taller.  What is so odd is that as long as I
+never opposed my father's wishes, as long as I was the clock on the
+chimney piece, I was terrified at him.  The thought of opposing
+myself to him made my knees quake.  But the moment I began doing
+so, I found there was nothing to be frightened at."
+
+Sylvia got up and began walking up and down the long room.
+
+"But what am I to do about it, Michael?" she asked.  "Oh, I blush
+when I think of a conversation I had with Hermann about you, just
+before Christmas, when I knew you were going to propose to me.  I
+said that I could never give up my singing.  Can you picture the
+self-importance of that?  Why, it doesn't seem to me to matter two
+straws whether I do or not.  Naturally, I don't want to earn my
+living by it any more, but whether I sing or not doesn't matter.
+And even as the words are in my mouth I try to imagine myself not
+singing any more, and I can't.  It's become part of me, and while I
+blush to think of what I said to Hermann, I wonder whether it's not
+true."
+
+She came and sat down by him again.
+
+"I believe you have got enough artistic instinct to understand
+that, Michael," she said, "and to know what a tremendous help it is
+to one's art to be a professional, and to be judged seriously.  I
+suppose that, ideally, if one loves music as I do one ought to be
+able to do one's very best, whether one is singing professionally
+or not, but it is hardly possible.  Why, the whole difference
+between amateurs and professionals is that amateurs sing charmingly
+and professionals just sing.  Only they sing as well as they
+possibly can, not only because they love it, but because if they
+don't they will be dropped on to, and if they continue not singing
+their best, will lose their place which they have so hardly won.  I
+can see myself, perhaps, not singing at all, literally never
+opening my lips in song again, but I can't see myself coming down
+to the Drill Hall at Brixton, extremely beautifully dressed, with
+rows of pearls, and arriving rather late, and just singing
+charmingly.  It's such a spur to know that serious musicians judge
+one's performance by the highest possible standard.  It's so
+relaxing to think that one can easily sing well enough, that one
+can delight ninety-nine hundredths of the audience without any real
+effort.  I could sing 'The Lost Chord' and move the whole Drill
+Hall at Brixton to tears.  But there might be one man there who
+knew, you or Hermann or some other, and at the end he would just
+shrug his shoulders ever so slightly, and I would wish I had never
+been born."
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"I'll not sing any more at all, ever," she said, "or I must sing to
+those who will take me seriously and judge me ruthlessly.  To sing
+just well enough to please isn't possible.  I'll do either you
+like."
+
+Mrs. Falbe strayed in at this moment with her finger in her book,
+but otherwise as purposeless as a wandering mist.
+
+"I was afraid it might be going to get chilly," she remarked.
+"After a hot day there is often a cool evening.  Will you stop and
+dine, Lord--I mean, Michael?"
+
+"Please; certainly!" said Michael.
+
+"Then I hope there will be something for you to eat.  Sylvia, is
+there something to eat?  No doubt you will see to that, darling.  I
+shall just rest upstairs for a little before dinner, and perhaps
+finish my book.  So pleased you are stopping."
+
+She drifted towards the studio door, in thistledown fashion
+catching at corners a little, and then moving smoothly on again,
+talking gently half to herself, half to the others.
+
+"And Hermann's not in yet, but if Lord--I mean, Michael, is going
+to stop here till dinnertime, it won't matter whether Hermann comes
+in in time to dress or not, as Michael is not dressed either.  Oh,
+there is the postman's knock!  What a noise!  I am not expecting
+any letters."
+
+The knock in question, however, proved to be Hermann, who, as was
+generally the case, had forgotten his latchkey.  He ran into his
+mother at the studio door, and came and sat down, regardless of
+whether he was wanted or not, between the two on the sofa, and took
+an arm of each.
+
+"I probably intrude," he said, "but such is my intention.  I've
+just seen Lady Barbara, who says that the shock has not been too
+much for Mike's father.  That is a good thing; she says he is
+taking nourishment much as usual.  I suppose I oughtn't to jest on
+so serious a subject, but I took my cue from Lady Barbara.  It
+appears that we have blue blood too, Sylvia, and we must behave
+more like aristocrats.  A Tracy in the time of King John flirted,
+if no more, with a Comber.  And what about your career, Sylvia?
+Are you going to continue to urge your wild career, or not?  I ask
+with a purpose, as Blackiston proposes we should give a concert
+together in the third week in July.  The Queen's Hall is vacant one
+afternoon, and he thinks we might sing and play to them.  I'm on if
+you are.  It will be about the last concert of the season, too, so
+we shall have to do our best.  Otherwise we, or I, anyhow, will
+start again in the autumn with a black mark.  By the way, are you
+going to start again in the autumn?  It wouldn't surprise me one
+bit to hear that you and Mike had been talking about just that."
+
+"Don't be too clever to live, Hermann," said Sylvia.
+
+"I don't propose to die, if you mean that.  Oh, Blackiston had
+another suggestion also.  He wanted to know if we would consider
+making a short tour in Germany in the autumn.  He says that the
+beloved Fatherland is rather disposed to be interested in us.  He
+thinks we should have good audiences at Leipzig, and so on.
+There's a tendency, he says, to recognise poor England, a cordial
+intention, anyhow.  I said that in your case there might be
+domestic considerations which--  But I think I shall go in any
+case.  Lord, fancy playing in Germany to Germans again.  Fancy
+being listened to by a German audience; fancy if they approved."
+
+Michael leaned forward, putting his elbow into Hermann's chest.
+Early December had already been mentioned as a date for their
+marriage, and as a pre-nuptial journey, this seemed to him a plan
+ecstatically ideal.
+
+"Yes, Sylvia," he said.  "The answer is yes.  I shall come with
+you, you know.  I can see it; a triumphal procession, you two
+making noises, and me listening.  A month's tour, Hermann.  Middle
+of October till middle of November.  Yes, yes."
+
+All his tremendous pride in her singing, dormant for the moment
+under the wonder of his love, rose to the surface.  He knew what
+her singing meant to her, and, from their conversation together
+just now, how keen was her eagerness for the strict judgment of
+those who knew, how she loved that austere pinnacle of daylight.
+Here was an ideal opportunity; never yet, since she had won her
+place as a singer, had she sung in Germany, that Mecca of the
+musical artist, and in her case, the land from which she sprung.
+Had the scheme implied a postponement of their marriage, he would
+still have declared himself for it, for he unerringly felt for her
+in this; he knew intuitively what delicious beckoning this held for
+her.
+
+"Yes, yes," he repeated, "I must have you do that, Sylvia.  I don't
+care what Hermann wants or what you want.  I want it."
+
+"Yes, but who's to do the playing and the singing?" asked Hermann.
+"Isn't it a question, perhaps, for--"
+
+Michael felt quite secure about the feelings of the other two, and
+rudely interrupted.
+
+"No," he said.  "It's a question for me.  When the Fatherland hears
+that I am there it will no doubt ask me to play and sing instead of
+you two.  Lord!  Fancy marrying into such a distinguished family.
+I burst with pride!"
+
+It required, then, little debate, since all three were agreed,
+before Hermann was empowered with authority to make arrangements,
+and they remained simultaneously talking till Mrs. Falbe, again
+drifting in, announced that the bell for dinner had sounded some
+minutes before.  She had her finger in the last chapter of "Lady
+Ursula's Ordeal," and laid it face downwards on the table to resume
+again at the earliest possible moment.  This opportunity was
+granted her when, at the close of dinner, coffee and the evening
+paper came in together.  This Hermann opened at the middle page.
+
+"Hallo!" he said.  "That's horrible!  The Heir Apparent of the
+Austrian Emperor has been murdered at Serajevo.  Servian plot,
+apparently."
+
+"Oh, what a dreadful thing," said Mrs. Falbe, opening her book.
+"Poor man, what had he done?"
+
+Hermann took a cigarette, frowning.
+
+"It may be a match--" he began.
+
+Mrs. Falbe diverted her attention from "Lady Ursula" for a moment.
+
+"They are on the chimney-piece, dear," she said, thinking he spoke
+of material matches.
+
+Michael felt that Hermann saw something, or conjectured something
+ominous in this news, for he sat with knitted brow reading, and
+letting the match burn down.
+
+"Yes; it seems that Servian officers are implicated," he said.
+"And there are materials enough already for a row between Austria
+and Servia without this."
+
+"Those tiresome Balkan States," said Mrs. Falbe, slowly immersing
+herself like a diving submarine in her book.  "They are always
+quarrelling.  Why doesn't Austria conquer them all and have done
+with it?"
+
+This simple and striking solution of the whole Balkan question was
+her final contribution to the topic, for at this moment she became
+completely submerged, and cut off, so to speak, from the outer
+world, in the lucent depths of Lady Ursula.
+
+Hermann glanced through the other pages, and let the paper slide to
+the floor.
+
+"What will Austria do?" he said.  "Supposing she threatens Servia
+in some outrageous way and Russia says she won't stand it?  What
+then?"
+
+Michael looked across to Sylvia; he was much more interested in the
+way she dabbled the tips of her hands in the cool water of her
+finger bowl than in what Hermann was saying.  Her fingers had an
+extraordinary life of their own; just now they were like a group of
+maidens by a fountain. . . .  But Hermann repeated the question to
+him personally.
+
+"Oh, I suppose there will be a lot of telegraphing," he said, "and
+perhaps a board of arbitration.  After all, one expected a European
+conflagration over the war in the Balkan States, and again over
+their row with Turkey.  I don't believe in European conflagrations.
+We are all too much afraid of each other.  We walk round each other
+like collie dogs on the tips of their toes, gently growling, and
+then quietly get back to our own territories and lie down again."
+
+Hermann laughed.
+
+"Thank God, there's that wonderful fire-engine in Germany ready to
+turn the hose on conflagrations."
+
+"What fire-engine?" asked Michael.
+
+"The Emperor, of course.  We should have been at war ten times over
+but for him."
+
+Sylvia dried her finger-tips one by one.
+
+"Lady Barbara doesn't quite take that view of him, does she, Mike?"
+she asked.
+
+Michael suddenly remembered how one night in the flat Aunt Barbara
+had suddenly turned the conversation from the discussion of cognate
+topics, on hearing that the Falbes were Germans, only to resume it
+again when they had gone.
+
+"I don't fancy she does," he said.  "But then, as you know, Aunt
+Barbara has original views on every subject."
+
+Hermann did not take the possible hint here conveyed to drop the
+matter.
+
+"Well, then, what do you think about him?" he asked.
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"My dear Hermann," he said, "how often have you told me that we
+English don't pay the smallest attention to international politics.
+I am aware that I don't; I know nothing whatever about them."
+
+Hermann shook off the cloud of preoccupation that so unaccountably,
+to Michael's thinking, had descended on him, and walked across to
+the window.
+
+"Well, long may ignorance be bliss," he said.  "Lord, what a divine
+evening!  'Uber allen gipfeln ist Ruhe.'  At least, there is peace
+on the only summits visible, which are house roofs.  There's not a
+breath of wind in the trees and chimney-pots; and it's hot, it's
+really hot."
+
+"I was afraid there was going to be a chill at sunset," remarked
+Mrs. Falbe subaqueously.
+
+"Then you were afraid even where no fear was, mother darling," said
+he, "and if you would like to sit out in the garden I'll take a
+chair out for you, and a table and candles.  Let's all sit out;
+it's a divine hour, this hour after sunset.  There are but a score
+of days in the whole year when the hour after sunset is warm like
+this.  It's such a pity to waste one indoors.  The young people"--
+and he pointed to Sylvia and Michael--"will gaze into each other's
+hearts, and Mamma's will beat in unison with Lady Ursula's, and I
+will sit and look at the sky and become profoundly sentimental,
+like a good German."
+
+Hermann and Michael bestirred themselves, and presently the whole
+little party had encamped on chairs placed in an oasis of rugs
+(this was done at the special request of Mrs. Falbe, since Lady
+Ursula had caught a chill that developed into consumption) in the
+small, high-walled garden.  Beyond at the bottom lay the road along
+the embankment and the grey-blue Thames, and the dim woods of
+Battersea Park across the river.  When they came out, sparrows were
+still chirping in the ivy on the studio wall and in the tall angle-
+leaved planes at the bottom of the little plot, discussing, no
+doubt, the domestic arrangements for their comfort during the
+night.  But presently a sudden hush fell upon them, and their
+shrillness was sharp no more against the drowsy hum of the city.
+The sky overhead was of veiled blue, growing gradually more
+toneless as the light faded, and was unflecked by any cloud, except
+where, high in the zenith, a fleece of rosy vapour still caught the
+light of the sunken sun, and flamed with the soft radiance of some
+snow-summit.  Near it there burned a molten planet, growing
+momentarily brighter as the night gathered and presently beginning
+to be dimmed again as a tawny moon three days past the full rose in
+the east above the low river horizon.  Occasionally a steamer
+hooted from the Thames and the noise of churned waters sounded, or
+the crunch of a motor's wheels, or the tapping of the heels of a
+foot passenger on the pavement below the garden wall.  But such
+evidence of outside seemed but to accentuate the perfect peace of
+this secluded little garden where the four sat: the hour and the
+place were cut off from all turmoil and activities: for a moment
+the stream of all their lives had flowed into a backwater, where it
+rested immobile before the travel that was yet to come.  So it
+seemed to Michael then, and so years afterwards it seemed to him,
+as vividly as on this evening when the tawny moon grew golden as it
+climbed the empty heavens, dimming the stars around it.
+
+What they talked of, even though it was Sylvia who spoke, seemed
+external to the spirit of the hour.  They seemed to have reached a
+point, some momentary halting-place, where speech and thought even
+lay outside, and the need of the spirit was merely to exist and be
+conscious of its existence.  Sometimes for a moment his past life
+with its self-repression, its mute yearnings, its chrysalis
+stirrings, formed a mist that dispersed again, sometimes for a
+moment in wonder at what the future held, what joys and troubles,
+what achings, perhaps, and anguishes, the unknown knocked
+stealthily at the door of his mind, but then stole away unanswered
+and unwelcome, and for that hour, while Mrs. Falbe finished with
+Lady Ursula, while Hermann smoked and sighed like a sentimental
+German, and while he and Sylvia sat, speaking occasionally, but
+more often silent, he was in some kind of Nirvana for which its own
+existence was everything.  Movement had ceased: he held his breath
+while that divine pause lasted.
+
+When it was broken, there was no shattering of it: it simply died
+away like a long-drawn chord as Mrs. Falbe closed her book.
+
+"She died," she said, "I knew she would."
+
+Hermann gave a great shout of laughter.
+
+"Darling mother, I'm ever so much obliged," he said.  "We had to
+return to earth somehow.  Where has everybody else been?"
+
+Michael stirred in his chair.
+
+"I've been here," he said.
+
+"How dull!  Oh, I suppose that's not polite to Sylvia.  I've been
+in Leipzig and in Frankfort and in Munich.  You and Sylvia have
+been there, too, I may tell you.  But I've also been here: it's
+jolly here."
+
+His sentimentalism had apparently not quite passed from him.
+
+"Ah, we've stolen this hour!" he said.  "We've taken it out of the
+hurly-burly and had it to ourselves.  It's been ripping.  But I'm
+back from the rim of the world.  Oh, I've been there, too, and
+looked out over the immortal sea.  Lieber Gott, what a sea, where
+we all come from, and where we all go to!  We're just playing on
+the sand where the waves have cast us up for one little hour.  Oh,
+the pleasant warm sand and the play!  How I love it."
+
+He got out of his chair stretching himself, as Mrs. Falbe passed
+into the house, and gave a hand on each side to Michael and Sylvia.
+
+"Ah, it was a good thing I just caught that train at Victoria
+nearly a year ago," he said.  "If I had been five seconds later, I
+should have missed it, and so I should have missed my friend, and
+Sylvia would have missed hers, and Mike would have missed his.  As
+it is, here we all are.  Behold the last remnant of my German
+sentimentality evaporates, but I am filled with a German desire for
+beer.  Let us come into the studio, liebe Kinder, and have beer and
+music and laughter.  We cannot recapture this hour or prolong it.
+But it was good, oh, so good!  I thank God for this hour."
+
+Sylvia put her hand on her brother's arm, looking at him with just
+a shade of anxiety.
+
+"Nothing wrong, Hermann?" she asked.
+
+"Wrong?  There is nothing wrong unless it is wrong to be happy.
+But we have to go forward: my only quarrel with life is that.  I
+would stop it now if I could, so that time should not run on, and
+we should stay just as we are.  Ah, what does the future hold?  I
+am glad I do not know."
+
+Sylvia laughed.
+
+"The immediate future holds beer apparently," she said.  "It also
+hold a great deal of work for you and me, if it is to hold Leipzig
+and Frankfort and Munich.  Oh, Hermann, what glorious days!"
+
+They walked together into the studio, and as they entered Hermann
+looked back over her into the dim garden.  Then he pulled down the
+blind with a rattle.
+
+"'Move on there!' said the policeman," he remarked.  "And so they
+moved on."
+
+
+The news about the murder of the Austrian Grand Duke, which, for
+that moment at dinner, had caused Hermann to peer with apprehension
+into the veil of the future, was taken quietly enough by the public
+in general in England.  It was a nasty incident, no doubt, and the
+murder having been committed on Servian soil, the pundits of the
+Press gave themselves an opportunity for subsequently saying that
+they were right, by conjecturing that Austria might insist on a
+strict inquiry into the circumstances, and the due punishment of
+not only the actual culprits but of those also who perhaps were
+privy to the plot.  But three days afterwards there was but little
+uneasiness; the Stock Exchanges of the European capitals--those
+highly sensitive barometers of coming storm--were but slightly
+affected for the moment, and within a week had steadied themselves
+again.  From Austria there came no sign of any unreasonable demand
+which might lead to trouble with Servia, and so with Slavonic
+feeling generally, and by degrees that threatening of storm, that
+sudden lightning on the horizon passed out of the mind of the
+public.  There had been that one flash, no more, and even that had
+not been answered by any growl of thunder; the storm did not at
+once move up and the heavens above were still clear and sunny by
+day, and starry-kirtled at night.  But here and there were those
+who, like Hermann on the first announcement of the catastrophe,
+scented trouble, and Michael, going to see Aunt Barbara one
+afternoon early in the second week of July, found that she was one
+of them.
+
+"I distrust it all, my dear," she said to him.  "I am full of
+uneasiness.  And what makes me more uneasy is that they are taking
+it so quietly at the Austrian Embassy and at the German.  I dined
+at one Embassy last night and at the other only a few nights ago,
+and I can't get anybody--not even the most indiscreet of the
+Secretaries--to say a word about it."
+
+"But perhaps there isn't a word to be said," suggested Michael.
+
+"I can't believe that.  Austria cannot possibly let an incident of
+that sort pass.  There is mischief brewing.  If she was merely
+intending to insist--as she has every right to do--on an inquiry
+being held that should satisfy reasonable demands for justice, she
+would have insisted on that long ago.  But a fortnight has passed
+now, and still she makes no sign.  I feel sure that something is
+being arranged.  Dear me, I quite forgot, Tony asked me not to talk
+about it.  But it doesn't matter with you."
+
+"But what do you mean by something being arranged?" asked Michael.
+
+She looked round as if to assure herself that she and Michael were
+alone.
+
+"I mean this: that Austria is being persuaded to make some
+outrageous demand, some demand that no independent country could
+possibly grant."
+
+"But who is persuading her?" asked Michael.
+
+"My dear, you--like all the rest of England--are fast asleep.  Who
+but Germany, and that dangerous monomaniac who rules Germany?  She
+has long been wanting war, and she has only been delaying the
+dawning of Der Tag, till all her preparations were complete, and
+she was ready to hurl her armies, and her fleet too, east and west
+and north.  Mark my words!  She is about ready now, and I believe
+she is going to take advantage of her opportunity."
+
+She leaned forward in her chair.
+
+"It is such an opportunity as has never occurred before," she said,
+"and in a hundred years none so fit may occur again.  Here are we--
+England--on the brink of civil war with Ireland and the Home
+Rulers; our hands are tied, or, rather, are occupied with our own
+troubles.  Anyhow, Germany thinks so: that I know for a fact among
+so much that is only conjecture.  And perhaps she is right.  Who
+knows whether she may not be right, and that if she forces on war
+whether we shall range ourselves with our allies?"
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"But aren't you piling up a European conflagration rather in a
+hurry, Aunt Barbara?" he asked.
+
+"There will be hurry enough for us, for France and Russia and
+perhaps England, but not for Germany.  She is never in a hurry: she
+waits till she is ready."
+
+A servant brought in tea and Lady Barbara waited till he had left
+the room again.
+
+"It is as simple as an addition sum," she said, "if you grant the
+first step, that Austria is going to make some outrageous demand of
+Servia.  What follows?  Servia refuses that demand, and Austria
+begins mobilisation in order to enforce it.  Servia appeals to
+Russia, invokes the bond of blood, and Russia remonstrates with
+Austria.  Her representations will be of no use: you may stake all
+you have on that; and eventually, since she will be unable to draw
+back she, too, will begin in her slow, cumbrous manner, hampered by
+those immense distances and her imperfect railway system, to
+mobilise also.  Then will Germany, already quite prepared, show her
+hand.  She will demand that Russia shall cease mobilisation, and
+again will Russia refuse.  That will set the military machinery of
+France going.  All the time the governments of Europe will be
+working for peace, all, that is, except one, which is situated at
+Berlin."
+
+Michael felt inclined to laugh at this rapid and disastrous
+sequence of ominous forebodings; it was so completely
+characteristic of Aunt Barbara to take the most violent possible
+view of the situation, which no doubt had its dangers.  And what
+Michael felt was felt by the enormous majority of English people.
+
+"Dear Aunt Barbara, you do get on quick," he said.
+
+"It will happen quickly," she said.  "There is that little cloud in
+the east like a man's hand today, and rather like that mailed fist
+which our sweet peaceful friend in Germany is so fond of talking
+about.  But it will spread over the sky, I tell you, like some
+tropical storm.  France is unready, Russia is unready; only Germany
+and her marionette, Austria, the strings of which she pulls, is
+ready."
+
+"Go on prophesying," said Michael.
+
+"I wish I could.  Ever since that Sarajevo murder I have thought of
+nothing else day and night.  But how events will develop then I
+can't imagine.  What will England do?  Who knows?  I only know what
+Germany thinks she will do, and that is, stand aside because she
+can't stir, with this Irish mill-stone round her neck.  If Germany
+thought otherwise, she is perfectly capable of sending a dozen
+submarines over to our naval manoeuvres and torpedoing our
+battleships right and left."
+
+Michael laughed outright at this.
+
+"While a fleet of Zeppelins hovers over London, and drops bombs on
+the War Office and the Admiralty," he suggested.
+
+But Aunt Barbara was not in the least diverted by this.
+
+"And if England stands aside," she said, "Der Tag will only dawn a
+little later, when Germany has settled with France and Russia.  We
+shall live to see Der Tag, Michael, unless we are run over by
+motor-buses, and pray God we shall see it soon, for the sooner the
+better.  Your adorable Falbes, now, Sylvia and Hermann.  What do
+they think of it?"
+
+"Hermann was certainly rather--rather upset when he read of the
+Sarajevo murders," he said.  "But he pins his faith on the German
+Emperor, whom he alluded to as a fire-engine which would put out
+any conflagration."
+
+Aunt Barbara rose in violent incredulity.
+
+"Pish and bosh!" she remarked.  "If he had alluded to him as an
+incendiary bomb, there would have been more sense in his simile."
+
+"Anyhow, he and Sylvia are planning a musical tour in Germany in
+the autumn," said Michael.
+
+"'It's a long, long way to Tipperary,'" remarked Aunt Barbara
+enigmatically.
+
+"Why Tipperary?" asked Michael.
+
+"Oh, it's just a song I heard at a music-hall the other night.
+There's a jolly catchy tune to it, which has rung in my head ever
+since.  That's the sort of music I like, something you can carry
+away with you.  And your music, Michael?"
+
+"Rather in abeyance.  There are--other things to think about."
+
+Aunt Barbara got up.
+
+"Ah, tell me more about them," she said.  "I want to get this
+nightmare out of my head.  Sylvia, now.  Sylvia is a good cure for
+the nightmare.  Is she kind as she is fair, Michael?"
+
+Michael was silent for a moment.  Then he turned a quiet, radiant
+face to her.
+
+"I can't talk about it," he said.  "I can't get accustomed to the
+wonder of it."
+
+"That will do.  That's a completely satisfactory account.  But go
+on."
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"How can I?" he asked.  "There's no end and no beginning.  I can't
+'go on' as you order me about a thing like that.  There is Sylvia;
+there is me."
+
+"I must be content with that, then," she said, smiling.
+
+"We are," said Michael.
+
+Lady Barbara waited a moment without speaking.
+
+"And your mother?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"She still refuses to see me," he said.  "She still thinks it was I
+who made the plot to take her away and shut her up.  She is often
+angry with me, poor darling, but--but you see it isn't she who is
+angry: it's just her malady."
+
+"Yes, my dear," said Lady Barbara.  "I am so glad you see it like
+that."
+
+"How else could I see it?  It was my real mother whom I began to
+know last Christmas, and whom I was with in town for the three
+months that followed.  That's how I think of her: I can't think of
+her as anything else."
+
+"And how is she otherwise?"
+
+Again he shook his head.
+
+"She is wretched, though they say that all she feels is dim and
+veiled, that we mustn't think of her as actually unhappy.
+Sometimes there are good days, when she takes a certain pleasure in
+her walks and in looking after a little plot of ground where she
+gardens.  And, thank God, that sudden outburst when she tried to
+kill me seems to have entirely passed from her mind.  They don't
+think she remembers it at all.  But then the good days are rare,
+and are growing rarer, and often now she sits doing nothing at all
+but crying."
+
+Aunt Barbara laid her hand on him.
+
+"Oh, my dear," she said.
+
+Michael paused for a moment, his brown eyes shining.
+
+"If only she could come back just for a little to what she was in
+January," he said.  "She was happier then, I think, than she ever
+was before.  I can't help wondering if anyhow I could have
+prolonged those days, by giving myself up to her more completely."
+
+"My dear, you needn't wonder about that," said Aunt Barbara.  "Sir
+James told me that it was your love and nothing else at all that
+gave her those days."
+
+Michael's lips quivered.
+
+"I can't tell you what they were to me," he said, "for she and I
+found each other then, and we both felt we had missed each other so
+much and so long.  She was happy then, and I, too.  And now
+everything has been taken from her, and still, in spite of that, my
+cup is full to overflowing."
+
+"That's how she would have it, Michael," said Barbara.
+
+"Yes, I know that.  I remind myself of that."
+
+Again he paused.
+
+"They don't think she will live very long," he said.  "She is
+getting physically much weaker.  But during this last week or two
+she has been less unhappy, they think.  They say some new change
+may come any time: it may be only the great change--I mean her
+death; but it is possible before that that her mind will clear
+again.  Sir James told me that occasionally happened, like--like a
+ray of sunlight after a stormy day.  It would be good if that
+happened.  I would give almost anything to feel that she and I were
+together again, as we were."
+
+Barbara, childless, felt something of motherhood.  Michael's
+simplicity and his sincerity were already known to her, but she had
+never yet known the strength of him.  You could lean on Michael.
+In his quiet, undemonstrative way he supported you completely, as a
+son should; there was no possibility of insecurity. . . .
+
+"God bless you, my dear," she said.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+One close thundery morning about a week later, Michael was sitting
+at his piano in his shirtsleeves, busy practising.  He was aware
+that at the other end of the room the telephone was calling for
+him, but it seemed to be of far greater importance at the minute to
+finish the last page of one of the Bach fugues, than to attend to
+what anybody else might have to say to him.  Then it suddenly
+flashed across him that it might be Sylvia who wanted to speak to
+him, or that there might be news about his mother, and his fingers
+leaped from the piano in the middle of a bar, and he ran and slid
+across the parquet floor.
+
+But it was neither of these, and compared to them it was a case of
+"only" Hermann who wanted to see him.  But Hermann, it appeared,
+wanted to see him urgently, and, if he was in (which he was) would
+be with him in ten minutes.
+
+But the Bach thread was broken, and Michael, since it was not worth
+while trying to mend it for the sake of these few minutes, sat down
+by the open window, and idly took up the morning paper, which as
+yet he had not opened, since he had hurried over breakfast in order
+to get to his piano.  The music announcements on the outside page
+first detained him, and seeing that the concert by the Falbes,
+which was to take place in five or six days, was advertised, he
+wondered vaguely whether it was about that that Hermann wanted to
+see him, and, if so, why he could not have said whatever he had to
+say on the telephone, instead of cutting things short with the curt
+statement that he wished to see him urgently, and would come round
+at once.  Then remembering that Francis had been playing cricket
+for the Guards yesterday, he turned briskly over to the last page
+of sporting news, and found that his cousin had distinguished
+himself by making no runs at all, but by missing two expensive
+catches in the deep field.  From there, after a slight inspection
+of a couple of advertisement columns, he worked back to the middle
+leaf, where were leaders and the news of nations and the movements
+of kings.  All this last week he had scanned such items with a
+growing sense of amusement in the recollection of Hermann's
+disquiet over the Sarajevo murders, and Aunt Barbara's more
+detailed and vivid prognostications of coming danger, for nothing
+more had happened, and he supposed--vaguely only, since the affair
+had begun to fade from his mind--that Austria had made inquiries,
+and that since she was satisfied there was no public pronouncement
+to be made.
+
+The hot breeze from the window made the paper a little unmanageable
+for a moment, but presently he got it satisfactorily folded, and a
+big black headline met his eye.  A half-column below it contained
+the demands which Austria had made in the Note addressed to the
+Servian Government.  A glance was sufficient to show that they were
+framed in the most truculent and threatening manner possible to
+imagine.  They were not the reasonable proposals that one State had
+a perfect right to make of another on whose soil and with the
+connivance of whose subjects the murders had been committed; they
+were a piece of arbitrary dictation, a threat levelled against a
+dependent and an inferior.
+
+Michael had read them through twice with a growing sense of
+uneasiness at the thought of how Lady Barbara's first anticipations
+had been fulfilled, when Hermann came in.  He pointed to the paper
+Michael held.
+
+"Ah, you have seen it," he said.  "Perhaps you can guess what I
+wanted to see you about."
+
+"Connected with the Austrian Note?" asked Michael.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have not the vaguest idea."
+
+Hermann sat down on the arm of his chair.
+
+"Mike, I'm going back to Germany to-day," he said.  "Now do you
+understand?  I'm German."
+
+"You mean that Germany is at the back of this?"
+
+"It is obvious, isn't it?  Those demands couldn't have been made
+without the consent of Austria's ally.  And they won't be granted.
+Servia will appeal to Russia.  And . . . and then God knows what
+may happen.  In the event of that happening, I must be in my
+Fatherland ready to serve, if necessary."
+
+"You mean you think it possible you will go to war with Russia?"
+asked Michael.
+
+"Yes, I think it possible, and, if I am right, if there is that
+possibility, I can't be away from my country."
+
+"But the Emperor, the fire-engine whom you said would quench any
+conflagration?"
+
+"He is away yachting.  He went off after the visit of the British
+fleet to Kiel.  Who knows whether before he gets back, things may
+have gone too far?  Can't you see that I must go?  Wouldn't you go
+if you were me?  Suppose you were in Germany now, wouldn't you
+hurry home?"
+
+Michael was silent, and Hermann spoke again.
+
+"And if there is trouble with Russia, France, I take it, is bound
+to join her.  And if France joins her, what will England do?"
+
+The great shadow of the approaching storm fell over Michael, even
+as outside the sultry stillness of the morning grew darker.
+
+"Ah, you think that?" asked Michael.
+
+Hermann put his hand on Michael's shoulder.
+
+"Mike, you're the best friend I have," he said, "and soon, please
+God, you are going to marry the girl who is everything else in the
+world to me.  You two make up my world really--you two and my
+mother, anyhow.  No other individual counts, or is in the same
+class.  You know that, I expect.  But there is one other thing, and
+that's my nationality.  It counts first.  Nothing, nobody, not even
+Sylvia or my mother or you can stand between me and that.  I expect
+you know that also, for you saw, nearly a year ago, what Germany is
+to me.  Perhaps I may be quite wrong about it all--about the
+gravity, I mean, of the situation, and perhaps in a few days I may
+come racing home again.  Yes, I said 'home,' didn't I?  Well, that
+shows you just how I am torn in two.  But I can't help going."
+
+Hermann's hand remained on his shoulder gently patting it.  To
+Michael the world, life, the whole spirit of things had suddenly
+grown sinister, of the quality of nightmare.  It was true that all
+the ground of this ominous depression which had darkened round him,
+was conjectural and speculative, that diplomacy, backed by the
+horror of war which surely all civilised nations and responsible
+govermnents must share, had, so far from saying its last, not yet
+said its first word; that the wits of all the Cabinets of Europe
+were at this moment only just beginning to stir themselves so as to
+secure a peaceful solution; but, in spite of this, the darkness and
+the nightmare grew in intensity.  But as to Hermann's determination
+to go to Germany, which made this so terribly real, since it was
+beginning to enter into practical everyday life, he had neither
+means nor indeed desire to combat it.  He saw perfectly clearly
+that Hermann must go.
+
+"I don't want to dissuade you," he said, "not only because it would
+be useless, but because I am with you.  You couldn't do otherwise,
+Hermann."
+
+"I don't see that I could.  Sylvia agrees too."
+
+A terrible conjecture flashed through Michael's mind.
+
+"And she?" he asked.
+
+"She can't leave my mother, of course," said Hermann, "and, after
+all, I may be on a wild goose chase.  But I can't risk being unable
+to get to Germany, if--if the worst happens."
+
+The ghost of a smile played round his mouth for a moment.
+
+"And I'm not sure that she could leave you, Mike," he added.
+
+Somehow this, though it gave Michael a moment of intensest relief
+to know that Sylvia remained, made the shadow grow deeper,
+accentuated the lines of the storm which had begun to spread over
+the sky.  He began to see as nightmare no longer, but as stern and
+possible realities, something of the unutterable woe, the
+divisions, the heart-breaks which menaced.
+
+"Hermann, what do you think will happen?" he said.  "It is
+incredible, unfaceable--"
+
+The gentle patting on his shoulder, that suddenly and poignantly
+reminded him of when Sylvia's hand was there, ceased for a moment,
+and then was resumed.
+
+"Mike, old boy," said Hermann, "we've got to face the unfaceable,
+and believe that the incredible is possible.  I may be all wrong
+about it, and, as I say, in a few days' time I may come racing
+back.  But, on the other hand, this may be our last talk together,
+for I go off this afternoon.  So let's face it."
+
+He paused a moment.
+
+"It may be that before long I shall be fighting for my Fatherland,"
+he said.  "And if there is to be fighting, it may be that Germany
+will before long be fighting England.  There I shall be on one
+side, and, since naturally you will go back into the Guards, you
+will be fighting on the other.  I shall be doing my best to kill
+Englishmen, whom I love, and they will be doing their best to kill
+me and those of my blood.  There's the horror of it, and it's that
+we must face.  If we met in a bayonet charge, Mike, I should have
+to do my best to run you through, and yet I shouldn't love you one
+bit the less, and you must know that.  Or, if you ran me through, I
+shall have to die loving you just the same as before, and hoping
+you would live happy, for ever and ever, as the story-books say,
+with Sylvia."
+
+"Hermann, don't go," said Michael suddenly.
+
+"Mike, you didn't mean that," he said.
+
+Michael looked at him for a moment in silence.
+
+"No, it is unsaid," he replied.
+
+Hermann looked round as the clock on the chimney-piece chimed.
+
+"I must be going," he said, "I needn't say anything to you about
+Sylvia, because all I could say is in your heart already.  Well,
+we've met in this jolly world, Mike, and we've been great friends.
+Neither you nor I could find a greater friend than we've been to
+each other.  I bless God for this last year.  It's been the
+happiest in my life.  Now what else is there?  Your music: don't
+ever be lazy about your music.  It's worth while taking all the
+pains you can about it.  Lord! do you remember the evening when I
+first tried your Variations? . . .  Let me play the last one now.
+I want something jubilant.  Let's see, how does it go?"
+
+He held his hands, those long, slim-fingered hands, poised for a
+moment above the keys, then plunged into the glorious riot of the
+full chords and scales, till the room rang with it.  The last chord
+he held for a moment, and then sprang up.
+
+"Ah, that's good," he said.  "And now I'm going to say good-bye,
+and go without looking round."
+
+"But might I see you off this afternoon?" asked Michael.
+
+"No, please don't.  Station partings are fussy and disagreeable.  I
+want to say good-bye to you here in your quiet room, just as I
+shall say goodbye to Sylvia at home.  Ah, Mike, yes, both hands and
+smiling.  May God give us other meetings and talks and
+companionship and years of love, my best of friends.  Good-bye."
+
+Then, as he had said, he walked to the door without looking round,
+and next moment it had closed behind him.
+
+
+Throughout the next week the tension of the situation grew ever
+greater, strained towards the snapping-point, while the little
+cloud, the man's hand, which had arisen above the eastern horizon
+grew and overspread the heavens in a pall that became ever more
+black and threatening.  For a few days yet it seemed that perhaps
+even now the cataclysm might be averted, but gradually, in spite of
+all the efforts of diplomacy to loosen the knot, it became clear
+that the ends of the cord were held in hands that did not mean to
+release their hold till it was pulled tight.  Servia yielded to
+such demands as it was possible for her to grant as an independent
+State; but the inflexible fingers never abated one jot of their
+strangling pressure.  She appealed to Russia, and Russia's
+remonstrance fell on deaf ears, or, rather, on ears that had
+determined not to hear.  From London and Paris came proposals for
+conference, for arbitration, with welcome for any suggestion from
+the other side which might lead to a peaceful solution of the
+disputed demands, already recognised by Europe as a firebrand
+wantonly flung into the midst of dangerous and inflammable
+material.  Over that burning firebrand, preventing and warding off
+all the eager hands that were stretched to put it out, stood the
+figure of the nation at whose bidding it had been flung there.
+
+Gradually, out of the thunder-clouds and gathering darkness,
+vaguely at first and then in definite and menacing outline, emerged
+the inexorable, flint-like face of Germany, whose figure was clad
+in the shining armour so well known in the flamboyant utterances of
+her War Lord, which had been treated hitherto as mere irresponsible
+utterances to be greeted with a laugh and a shrugged shoulder.
+Deep and patient she had always been, and now she believed that the
+time had come for her patience to do its perfect work.  She had
+bided long for the time when she could best fling that lighted
+brand into the midst of civilisation, and she believed she had
+calculated well.  She cared nothing for Servia nor for her ally.
+On both her frontiers she was ready, and now on the East she heeded
+not the remonstrance of Russia, nor her sincere and cordial
+invitation to friendly discussion.  She but waited for the step
+that she had made inevitable, and on the first sign of Russian
+mobilisation she, with her mobilisation ready to be completed in a
+few days, peremptorily demanded that it should cease.  On the
+Western frontier behind the Rhine she was ready also; her armies
+were prepared, cannon fodder in uncountable store of shells and
+cartridges was prepared, and in endless battalions of men, waiting
+to be discharged in one bull-like rush, to overrun France, and
+holding the French armies, shattered and dispersed, with a mere
+handful of her troops, to hurl the rest at Russia.
+
+The whole campaign was mathematically thought out.  In a few months
+at the outside France would be lying trampled down and bleeding;
+Russia would be overrun; already she would be mistress of Europe,
+and prepared to attack the only country that stood between her and
+world-wide dominion, whose allies she would already have reduced to
+impotence.  Here she staked on an uncertainty: she could not
+absolutely tell what England's attitude would be, but she had the
+strongest reason for hoping that, distracted by the imminence of
+civil strife, she would be unable to come to the help of her allies
+until the allies were past helping.
+
+For a moment only were seen those set stern features mad for war;
+then, with a snap, Germany shut down her visor and stood with sword
+unsheathed, waiting for the horror of the stupendous bloodshed
+which she had made inevitable.  Her legions gathered on the Eastern
+front threatening war on Russia, and thus pulling France into the
+spreading conflagration and into the midst of the flame she stood
+ready to cast the torn-up fragments of the treaty that bound her to
+respect the neutrality of Belgium.
+
+All this week, while the flames of the flung fire-brand began to
+spread, the English public waited, incredulous of the inevitable.
+Michael, among them, found himself unable to believe even then that
+the bugles were already sounding, and that the piles of shells in
+their wicker-baskets were being loaded on to the military
+ammunition trains.  But all the ordinary interests in life, all the
+things that busily and contentedly occupied his day, one only
+excepted, had become without savour.  A dozen times in the morning
+he would sit down to his piano, only to find that he could not
+think it worth while to make his hands produce these meaningless
+tinkling sounds, and he would jump up to read the paper over again,
+or watch for fresh headlines to appear on the boards of news-
+vendors in the street, and send out for any fresh edition.  Or he
+would walk round to his club and spend an hour reading the tape
+news and waiting for fresh slips to be pinned up.  But, through all
+the nightmare of suspense and slowly-dying hope, Sylvia remained
+real, and after he had received his daily report from the
+establishment where his mother was, with the invariable message
+that there was no marked change of any kind, and that it was
+useless for him to think of coming to see her, he would go off to
+Maidstone Crescent and spend the greater part of the day with the
+girl.
+
+Once during this week he had received a note from Hermann, written
+at Munich, and on the same day she also had heard from him.  He had
+gone back to his regiment, which was mobilised, as a private, and
+was very busy with drill and duties.  Feeling in Germany, he said,
+was elated and triumphant: it was considered certain that England
+would stand aside, as the quarrel was none of hers, and the nation
+generally looked forward to a short and brilliant campaign, with
+the occupation of Paris to be made in September at the latest.  But
+as a postscript in his note to Sylvia he had added:
+
+
+"You don't think there is the faintest chance of England coming in,
+do you?  Please write to me fully, and get Mike to write.  I have
+heard from neither of you, and as I am sure you must have written,
+I conclude that letters are stopped.  I went to the theatre last
+night: there was a tremendous scene of patriotism.  The people are
+war-mad."
+
+
+Since then nothing had been heard from him, and to-day, as Michael
+drove down to see Sylvia, he saw on the news-boards that Belgium
+had appealed to England against the violation of her territory by
+the German armies en route for France.  Overtures had been made,
+asking for leave to pass through the neutral territory: these
+Belgium had rejected.  This was given as official news.  There came
+also the report that the Belgian remonstrances would be
+disregarded.  Should she refuse passage to the German battalions,
+that could make no difference, since it was a matter of life and
+death to invade France by that route.
+
+Sylvia was out in the garden, where, hardly a month ago, they had
+spent that evening of silent peace, and she got up quickly as
+Michael came out.
+
+"Ah, my dear," she said, "I am glad you have come.  I have got the
+horrors.  You saw the latest news?  Yes?  And have you heard again
+from Hermann?  No, I have not had a word."
+
+He kissed her and sat down.
+
+"No, I have not heard either," he said.  "I expect he is right.
+Letters have been stopped."
+
+"And what do you think will be the result of Belgium's appeal?" she
+asked.
+
+"Who can tell?  The Prime Minister is going to make a statement on
+Monday.  There have been Cabinet meetings going on all day."
+
+She looked at him in silence.
+
+"And what do you think?" she asked.
+
+Quite suddenly, at her question, Michael found himself facing it,
+even as, when the final catastrophe was more remote, he had faced
+it with Falbe.  All this week he knew he had been looking away from
+it, telling himself that it was incredible.  Now he discovered that
+the one thing he dreaded more than that England should go to war,
+was that she should not.  The consciousness of national honour, the
+thing which, with religion, Englishmen are most shy of speaking
+about, suddenly asserted itself, and he found on the moment that it
+was bigger than anything else in the world.
+
+"I think we shall go to war," he said.  "I don't see personally how
+we can exist any more as a nation if we don't.  We--we shall be
+damned if we don't, damned for ever and ever.  It's moral
+extinction not to."
+
+She kindled at that.
+
+"Yes, I know," she said, "that's what I have been telling myself;
+but, oh, Mike, there's some dreadful cowardly part of me that won't
+listen when I think of Hermann, and . . ."
+
+She broke off a moment.
+
+"Michael," she said, "what will you do, if there is war?"
+
+He took up her hand that lay on the arm of his chair.
+
+"My darling, how can you ask?" he said.  "Of course I shall go back
+to the army."
+
+For one moment she gave way.
+
+"No, no," she said.  "You mustn't do that."
+
+And then suddenly she stopped.
+
+"My dear, I ask your pardon," she said.  "Of course you will.  I
+know that really.  It's only this stupid cowardly part of me that--
+that interrupted.  I am ashamed of it.  I'm not as bad as that all
+through.  I don't make excuses for myself, but, ah, Mike, when I
+think of what Germany is to me, and what Hermann is, and when I
+think what England is to me, and what you are!  It shan't appear
+again, or if it does, you will make allowance, won't you?  At least
+I can agree with you utterly, utterly.  It's the flesh that's weak,
+or, rather, that is so strong.  But I've got it under."
+
+She sat there in silence a little, mopping her eyes.
+
+"How I hate girls who cry!" she said.  "It is so dreadfully feeble!
+Look, Mike, there are some roses on that tree from which I plucked
+the one you didn't think much of.  Do you remember?  You crushed it
+up in my hand and made it bleed."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"I have got some faint recollection of it," he said.
+
+Sylvia had got hold of her courage again.
+
+"Have you?" she asked.  "What a wonderful memory.  And that quiet
+evening out here next day.  Perhaps you remember that too.  That
+was real: that was a possession that we shan't ever part with."
+
+She pointed with her finger.
+
+"You and I sat there, and Hermann there," she said.  "And mother
+sat--why, there she is.  Mother darling, let's have tea out here,
+shall we?  I will go and tell them."
+
+Mrs. Falbe had drifted out in her usual thistledown style, and
+shook hands with Michael.
+
+"What an upset it all is," she said, "with all these dreadful
+rumours going about that we shall be at war.  I fell asleep, I
+think, a little after lunch, when I could not attend to my book for
+thinking about war."
+
+"Isn't the book interesting?" asked Michael.
+
+"No, not very.  It is rather painful.  I do not know why people
+write about painful things when there are so many pleasant and
+interesting things to write about.  It seems to me very morbid."
+
+Michael heard something cried in the streets, and at the same
+moment he heard Sylvia's step quickly crossing the studio to the
+side door that opened on to it.  In a minute she returned with a
+fresh edition of an evening paper.
+
+"They are preparing to cross the Rhine," she said.
+
+Mrs. Falbe gave a little sigh.
+
+"I don't know, I am sure," she said, "what you are in such a state
+about, Sylvia.  Of course the Germans want to get into France the
+easiest and quickest way, at least I'm sure I should.  It is very
+foolish of Belgium not to give them leave, as they are so much the
+strongest."
+
+"Mother darling, you don't understand one syllable about it," said
+Sylvia.
+
+"Very likely not, dear, but I am very glad we are an island, and
+that nobody can come marching here.  But it is all a dreadful
+upset, Lord--I mean Michael, what with Hermann in Germany, and the
+concert tour abandoned.  Still, if everything is quiet again by the
+middle of October, as I daresay it will be, it might come off after
+all.  He will be on the spot, and you and Michael can join him,
+though I'm not quite sure if that would be proper.  But we might
+arrange something: he might meet you at Ostend."
+
+"I'm afraid it doesn't look very likely," remarked Michael mildly.
+
+"Oh, and are you pessimistic too, like Sylvia?  Pray don't be
+pessimistic.  There is a dreadful pessimist in my book, who always
+thinks the worst is going to happen."
+
+"And does it?" asked Michael.
+
+"As far as I have got, it does, which makes it all the worse.  Of
+course I am very anxious about Hermann, but I feel sure he will
+come back safe to us.  I daresay France will give in when she sees
+Germany is in earnest."
+
+Mrs. Falbe pulled the shattered remnants of her mind together.  In
+her heart of hearts she knew she did not care one atom what might
+happen to armies and navies and nations, provided only that she had
+a quantity of novels to read, and meals at regular hours.  The fact
+of being on an island was an immense consolation to her, since it
+was quite certain that, whatever happened, German armies (or French
+or Soudanese, for that matter) could not march here and enter her
+sitting-room and take her books away from her.  For years past she
+had asked nothing more of the world than that she should be
+comfortable in it, and it really seemed not an unreasonable
+request, considering at how small an outlay of money all the
+comfort she wanted could be secured to her.  The thought of war had
+upset her a good deal already: she had been unable to attend to her
+book when she awoke from her after-lunch nap; and now, when she
+hoped to have her tea in peace, and find her attention restored by
+it, she found the general atmosphere of her two companions vaguely
+disquieting.  She became a little more loquacious than usual, with
+the idea of talking herself back into a tranquil frame of mind, and
+reassuring to herself the promise of a peaceful future.
+
+"Such a blessing we have a good fleet," she said.  "That will make
+us safe, won't it?  I declare I almost hate the Germans, though my
+dear husband was one himself, for making such a disturbance.  The
+papers all say it is Germany's fault, so I suppose it must be.  The
+papers know better than anybody, don't they, because they have
+foreign correspondents.  That must be a great expense!"
+
+Sylvia felt she could not endure this any longer.  It was like
+having a raw wound stroked. . . .
+
+"Mother, you don't understand," she said.  "You don't appreciate
+what is happening.  In a day or two England will be at war with
+Germany."
+
+Mrs. Falbe's book had slipped from her knee.  She picked it up and
+flapped the cover once or twice to get rid of dust that might have
+settled there.
+
+"But what then?" she said.  "It is very dreadful, no doubt, to
+think of dear Hermann being with the German army, but we are
+getting used to that, are we not?  Besides, he told me it was his
+duty to go.  I do not think for a moment that France will be able
+to stand against Germany.  Germany will be in Paris in no time, and
+I daresay Hermann's next letter will be to say that he has been
+walking down the boulevards.  Of course war is very dreadful, I
+know that.  And then Germany will be at war with Russia, too, but
+she will have Austria to help her.  And as for Germany being at war
+with England, that does not make me nervous.  Think of our fleet,
+and how safe we feel with that!  I see that we have twice as many
+boats as the Germans.  With two to one we must win, and they won't
+be able to send any of their armies here.  I feel quite comfortable
+again now that I have talked it over."
+
+Sylvia caught Michael's eye for a moment over the tea-urn.  She
+felt he acquiesced in what she was intending to say.
+
+"That is good, then," she said.  "I am glad you feel comfortable
+about it, mother dear.  Now, will you read your book out here?  Why
+not, if I fetch you a shawl in case you feel cold?"
+
+Mrs. Falbe turned a questioning eye to the motionless trees and the
+unclouded sky.
+
+"I don't think I shall even want a shawl, dear," she said.
+"Listen, how the newsboys are calling! is it something fresh, do
+you think?"
+
+A moment's listening attention was sufficient to make it known that
+the news shouted outside was concerned only with the result of a
+county cricket match, and Michael, as well as Sylvia, was conscious
+of a certain relief to know that at the immediate present there was
+no fresh clang of the bell that was beating out the seconds of
+peace that still remained.  Just for now, for this hour on Saturday
+afternoon, there was a respite: no new link was forged in the
+intolerable sequence of events.  But, even as he drew breath in
+that knowledge, there came the counter-stroke in the sense that
+those whose business it was to disseminate the news that would
+cause their papers to sell, had just a cricket match to advertise
+their wares.  Now, when the country and when Europe were on the
+brink of a bloodier war than all the annals of history contained,
+they, who presumably knew what the public desired to be informed
+on, thought that the news which would sell best was that concerned
+with wooden bats and leather balls, and strong young men in
+flannels.  Michael had heard with a sort of tender incredulity Mrs.
+Falbe's optimistic reflections, and had been more than content to
+let her rest secure in them; but was the country, the heart of
+England, like her?  Did it care more for cricket matches, as she
+for her book, than for the maintenance of the nation's honour,
+whatever that championship might cost? . . .  And the cry went on
+past the garden-walk.  "Fine innings by Horsfield!  Result of the
+Oval match!"
+
+And yet he had just had his tea as usual, and eaten a slice of
+cake, and was now smoking a cigarette.  It was natural to do that,
+not to make a fuss and refuse food and drink, and it was natural
+that people should still be interested in cricket.  And at the
+moment his attitude towards Mrs. Falbe changed.  Instead of pity
+and irritation at her normality, he was suddenly taken with a sense
+of gratitude to her.  It was restful to suspense and jangled nerves
+to see someone who went on as usual.  The sun shone, the leaves of
+the plane-trees did not wither, Mrs. Falbe read her book, the
+evening paper was full of cricket news. . . .  And then the
+reaction from that seized him again.  Supposing all the nation was
+like that.  Supposing nobody cared. . . .  And the tension of
+suspense strained more tightly than ever.
+
+For the next forty-eight hours, while day and night the telegraph
+wires of Europe tingled with momentous questions and grave replies,
+while Ministers and Ambassadors met and parted and met again,
+rumours flew this way and that like flocks of wild-fowl driven
+backwards and forwards, settling for a moment with a stir and
+splash, and then with rush of wings speeding back and on again.  A
+huge coal strike in the northern counties, fostered and financed by
+German gold, was supposed to be imminent, and this would put out of
+the country's power the ability to interfere.  The Irish Home Rule
+party, under the same suasion, was said to have refused to call a
+truce.  A letter had been received in high quarters from the German
+Emperor avowing his fixed determination to preserve peace, and this
+was honey to Lord Ashbridge.  Then in turn each of these was
+contradicted.  All thought of the coal strike in this crisis of
+national affairs was abandoned; the Irish party, as well as the
+Conservatives, were of one mind in backing up the Government, no
+matter what postponement of questions that were vital a month ago,
+their cohesion entailed; the Emperor had written no letter at all.
+But through the nebulous mists of hearsay, there fell solid the
+first drops of the imminent storm.  Even before Michael had left
+Sylvia that afternoon, Germany had declared war on Russia, on
+Sunday Belgium received a Note from Berlin definitely stating that
+should their Government not grant the passage to the German
+battalions, a way should be forced for them.  On Monday, finally,
+Germany declared war on France also.
+
+The country held its breath in suspense at what the decision of the
+Government, which should be announced that afternoon, should be.
+One fact only was publicly known, and that was that the English
+fleet, only lately dismissed from its manoeuvres and naval review,
+had vanished.  There were guard ships, old cruisers and what not,
+at certain ports, torpedo-boats roamed the horizons of Deal and
+Portsmouth, but the great fleet, the swift forts of sea-power, had
+gone, disappearing no one knew where, into the fine weather haze
+that brooded over the midsummer sea.  There perhaps was an
+indication of what the decision would be, yet there was no
+certainty.  At home there was official silence, and from abroad,
+apart from the three vital facts, came but the quacking of rumour,
+report after report, each contradicting the other.
+
+Then suddenly came certainty, a rainbow set in the intolerable
+cloud.  On Monday afternoon, when the House of Commons met, all
+parties were known to have sunk their private differences and to be
+agreed on one point that should take precedence of all other
+questions.  Germany should not, with England's consent, violate the
+neutrality of Belgium.  As far as England was concerned, all
+negotiations were at an end, diplomacy had said its last word, and
+Germany was given twenty-four hours in which to reply.  Should a
+satisfactory answer not be forthcoming, England would uphold the
+neutrality she with others had sworn to respect by force of arms.
+And at that one immense sigh of relief went up from the whole
+country.  Whatever now might happen, in whatever horrors of long-
+drawn and bloody war the nation might be involved, the nightmare of
+possible neutrality, of England's repudiating the debt of honour,
+was removed.  The one thing worse than war need no longer be
+dreaded, and for the moment the future, hideous and heart-rending
+though it would surely be, smiled like a land of promise.
+
+
+Michael woke on the morning of Tuesday, the fourth of August, with
+the feeling of something having suddenly roused him, and in a few
+seconds he knew that this was so, for the telephone bell in the
+room next door sent out another summons.  He got straight out of
+bed and went to it, with a hundred vague shadows of expectation
+crossing his mind.  Then he learned that his mother was gravely
+ill, and that he was wanted at once.  And in less than half an hour
+he was on his way, driving swiftly through the serene warmth of the
+early morning to the private asylum where she had been removed
+after her sudden homicidal outburst in March.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Michael was sitting that same afternoon by his mother's bedside.
+He had learned the little there was to be told him on his arrival
+in the morning; how that half an hour before he had been summoned,
+she had had an attack of heart failure, and since then, after
+recovering from the acute and immediate danger, she had lain there
+all day with closed eyes in a state of but semi-conscious
+exhaustion.  Once or twice only, and that but for a moment she had
+shown signs of increasing vitality, and then sank back into this
+stupor again.  But in those rare short intervals she had opened her
+eyes, and had seemed to see and recognise him, and Michael thought
+that once she had smiled at him.  But at present she had spoken no
+word.  All the morning Lord Ashbridge had waited there too, but
+since there was no change he had gone away, saying that he would
+return again later, and asking to be telephoned for if his wife
+regained consciousness.  So, but for the nurse and the occasional
+visits of the doctor, Michael was alone with his mother.
+
+In this long period of inactive waiting, when there was nothing to
+be done, Michael did not seem to himself to be feeling very
+vividly, and but for one desire, namely, that before the end his
+mother would come back to him, even if only for a moment, his mind
+felt drugged and stupefied.  Sometimes for a little it would
+sluggishly turn over thoughts about his father, wondering with a
+sort of blunt, remote contempt how it was possible for him not to
+be here too; but, except for the one great longing that his mother
+should cleave to him once more in conscious mind, he observed
+rather than felt.  The thought of Sylvia even was dim.  He knew
+that she was somewhere in the world, but she had become for the
+present like some picture painted in his mind, without reality.
+Dim, too, was the tension of those last days.  Somewhere in Europe
+was a country called Germany, where was his best friend, drilling
+in the ranks to which he had returned, or perhaps already on his
+way to bloodier battlefields than the world had ever dreamed of;
+and somewhere set in the seas was Germany's arch-foe, who already
+stood in her path with open cannon mouths pointing.  But all this
+had no real connection with him.  From the moment when he had come
+into this quiet, orderly room and saw his mother lying on the bed,
+nothing beyond those four walls really concerned him.
+
+But though the emotional side of his mind lay drugged and
+insensitive to anything outside, he found himself observing the
+details of the room where he waited with a curious vividness.
+There was a big window opening down to the ground in the manner of
+a door on to the garden outside, where a smooth lawn, set with
+croquet hoops and edged with bright flower-beds, dozed in the haze
+of the August heat.  Beyond was a row of tall elms, against which a
+copper beech glowed metallically, and somewhere out of sight a
+mowing-machine was being used, for Michael heard the click of its
+cropping journey, growing fainter as it receded, followed by the
+pause as it turned, and its gradual crescendo as it approached
+again.  Otherwise everything outside was strangely silent; as the
+hot hours of midday and early afternoon went by there was no note
+of bird-music, nor any sound of wind in the elm-tops.  Just a
+little breeze stirred from time to time, enough to make the slats
+of the half-drawn Venetian blind rattle faintly.  Earlier in the
+day there had come in from the window the smell of dew-damp earth,
+but now that had been sucked up by the sun.
+
+Close beside the window, with her back to the light and facing the
+bed, which projected from one of the side walls out into the room,
+sat Lady Ashbridge's nurse.  She was reading, and the rustle of the
+turned page was regular; but regular and constant also were her
+glances towards the bed where her patient lay.  At intervals she
+put down her book, marking the place with a slip of paper, and came
+to watch by the bed for a moment, looking at Lady Ashbridge's face
+and listening to her breathing.  Her eye met Michael's always as
+she did this, and in answer to his mute question, each time she
+gave him a little head-shake, or perhaps a whispered word or two,
+that told him there was no change.  Opposite the bed was the empty
+fireplace, and at the foot of it a table, on which stood a vase of
+roses.  Michael was conscious of the scent of these every now and
+then, and at intervals of the faint, rather sickly smell of ether.
+A Japan screen, ornamented with storks in gold thread, stood near
+the door and half-concealed the washing-stand.  There was a chest
+of drawers on one side of the fireplace, a wardrobe with a looking-
+glass door on the other, a dressing-table to one side of the
+window, a few prints on the plain blue walls, and a dark blue
+drugget carpet on the floor; and all these ordinary appurtenances
+of a bedroom etched themselves into Michael's mind, biting their
+way into it by the acid of his own suspense.
+
+Finally there was the bed where his mother lay.  The coverlet of
+blue silk upon it he knew was somehow familiar to him, and after
+fitful gropings in his mind to establish the association, he
+remembered that it had been on the bed in her room in Curzon
+Street, and supposed that it had been brought here with others of
+her personal belongings.  A little core of light, focused on one of
+the brass balls at the head of the bed, caught his eye, and he saw
+that the sun, beginning to decline, came in under the Venetian
+blind.  The nurse, sitting in the window, noticed this also, and
+lowered it.  The thought of Sylvia crossed his brain for a moment;
+then he thought of his father; but every train of reflection
+dissolved almost as soon as it was formed, and he came back again
+and again to his mother's face.
+
+It was perfectly peaceful and strangely young-looking, as if the
+cool, soothing hand of death, which presently would quiet all
+trouble for her, had been already at work there erasing the marks
+that the years had graven upon it.  And yet it was not so much
+young as ageless; it seemed to have passed beyond the register and
+limitations of time.  Sometimes for a moment it was like the face
+of a stranger, and then suddenly it would become beloved and
+familiar again.  It was just so she had looked when she came so
+timidly into his room one night at Ashbridge, asking him if it
+would be troublesome to him if she sat and talked with him for a
+little.  The mouth was a little parted for her slow, even
+breathing; the corners of it smiled; and yet he was not sure if
+they smiled.  It was hard to tell, for she lay there quite flat,
+without pillows, and he looked at her from an unusual angle.
+Sometimes he felt as if he had been sitting there watching for
+uncounted years; and then again the hours that he had been here
+appeared to have lasted but for a moment, as if he had but looked
+once at her.
+
+As the day declined the breeze of evening awoke, rattling the
+blind.  By now the sun had swung farther west, and the nurse pulled
+the blind up.  Outside in the bushes in the garden the call of
+birds to each other had begun, and a thrush came close to the
+window and sang a liquid phrase, and then repeated it.  Michael
+glanced there and saw the bird, speckle-breasted, with throat that
+throbbed with the notes; and then, looking back to the bed, he saw
+that his mother's eyes were open.
+
+She looked vaguely about the room for a moment, as if she had awoke
+from some deep sleep and found herself in an unfamiliar place.
+Then, turning her head slightly, she saw him, and there was no
+longer any question as to whether her mouth smiled, for all her
+face was flooded with deep, serene joy.
+
+He bent towards her and her lips parted.
+
+"Michael, my dear," she said gently.
+
+Michael heard the rustle of the nurse's dress as she got up and
+came to the bedside.  He slipped from his chair on to his knees, so
+that his face was near his mother's.  He felt in his heart that the
+moment he had so longed for was to be granted him, that she had
+come back to him, not only as he had known her during the weeks
+that they had lived alone together, when his presence made her so
+content, but in a manner infinitely more real and more embracing.
+
+"Have you been sitting here all the time while I slept, dear?" she
+asked.  "Have you been waiting for me to come back to you?"
+
+"Yes, and you have come," he said.
+
+She looked at him, and the mother-love, which before had been
+veiled and clouded, came out with all the tender radiance of
+evening sun, with the clear shining after rain.
+
+"I knew you wouldn't fail me, my darling," she said.  "You were so
+patient with me in the trouble I have been through.  It was a
+nightmare, but it has gone."
+
+Michael bent forward and kissed her.
+
+"Yes, mother," he said, "it has all gone."
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+"Is your father here?" she said.
+
+"No; but he will come at once, if you would like to see him."
+
+"Yes, send for him, dear, if it would not vex him to come," she
+said; "or get somebody else to send; I don't want you to leave me."
+
+"I'm not going to," said he.
+
+The nurse went to the door, gave some message, and presently
+returned to the other side of the bed.  Then Lady Ashbridge spoke
+again.
+
+"Is this death?" she asked.
+
+Michael raised his eyes to the figure standing by the bed.  She
+nodded to him.
+
+He bent forward again.
+
+"Yes, dear mother," he said.
+
+For a moment her eyes dilated, then grew quiet again, and the smile
+returned to her mouth.
+
+"I'm not frightened, Michael," she said, "with you there.  It isn't
+lonely or terrible."
+
+She raised her head.
+
+"My son!" she said in a voice loud and triumphant.  Then her head
+fell back again, and she lay with face close to his, and her
+eyelids quivered and shut.  Her breath came slow and regular, as if
+she slept.  Then he heard that she missed a breath, and soon after
+another.  Then, without struggle at all, her breathing ceased. . . .
+And outside on the lawn close by the open window the thrush
+still sang.
+
+
+It was an hour later when Michael left, having waited for his
+father's arrival, and drove to town through the clear, falling
+dusk.  He was conscious of no feeling of grief at all, only of a
+complete pervading happiness.  He could not have imagined so
+perfect a close, nor could he have desired anything different from
+that imperishable moment when his mother, all trouble past, had
+come back to him in the serene calm of love. . . .
+
+As he entered London he saw the newsboards all placarded with one
+fact: England had declared war on Germany.
+
+
+He went, not to his own flat, but straight to Maidstone Crescent.
+With those few minutes in which his mother had known him, the
+stupor that had beset his emotions all day passed off, and he felt
+himself longing, as he had never longed before, for Sylvia's
+presence.  Long ago he had given her all that he knew of as
+himself; now there was a fresh gift.  He had to give her all that
+those moments had taught him.  Even as already they were knitted
+into him, made part of him, so must they be to her. . . .  And when
+they had shared that, when, like water gushing from a spring she
+flooded him, there was that other news which he had seen on the
+newsboards that they had to share together.
+
+Sylvia had been alone all day with her mother; but, before Michael
+arrived, Mrs. Falbe (after a few more encouraging remarks about war
+in general, to the effect that Germany would soon beat France, and
+what a blessing it was that England was an island) had taken her
+book up to her room, and Sylvia was sitting alone in the deep dusk
+of the evening.  She did not even trouble to turn on the light, for
+she felt unable to apply herself to any practical task, and she
+could think and take hold of herself better in the dark.  All day
+she had longed for Michael to come to her, though she had not cared
+to see anybody else, and several times she had rung him up, only to
+find that he was still out, supposedly with his mother, for he had
+been summoned to her early that morning, and since then no news had
+come of him.  Just before dinner had arrived the announcement of
+the declaration of war, and Sylvia sat now trying to find some
+escape from the encompassing nightmare.  She felt confused and
+distracted with it; she could not think consecutively, but only
+contemplate shudderingly the series of pictures that presented
+themselves to her mind.  Somewhere now, in the hosts of the
+Fatherland, which was hers also, was Hermann, the brother who was
+part of herself.  When she thought of him, she seemed to be with
+him, to see the glint of his rifle, to feel her heart on his heart,
+big with passionate patriotism.  She had no doubt that patriotism
+formed the essence of his consciousness, and yet by now probably he
+knew that the land beloved by him, where he had made his home, was
+at war with his own.  She could not but know how often his thoughts
+dwelled here in the dark quiet studio where she sat, and where so
+many days of happiness had been passed.  She knew what she was to
+him, she and her mother and Michael, and the hosts of friends in
+this land which had become his foe.  Would he have gone, she asked
+herself, if he had guessed that there would be war between the two?
+She thought he would, though she knew that for herself she would
+have made it as hard as possible for him to do so.  She would have
+used every argument she could think of to dissuade him, and yet she
+felt that her entreaties would have beaten in vain against the
+granite of his and her nationality.  Dimly she had foreseen this
+contingency when, a few days ago, she had asked Michael what he
+would do if England went to war, and now that contingency was
+realised, and Hermann was even now perhaps on his way to violate
+the neutrality of the country for the sake of which England had
+gone to war.  On the other side was Michael, into whose keeping she
+had given herself and her love, and on which side was she?  It was
+then that the nightmare came close to her; she could not tell, she
+was utterly unable to decide.  Her heart was Michael's; her heart
+was her brother's also.  The one personified Germany for her, the
+other England.  It was as if she saw Hermann and Michael with
+bayonet and rifle stalking each other across some land of sand-
+dunes and hollows, creeping closer to each other, always closer.
+She felt as if she would have gladly given herself over to an
+eternity of torment, if only they could have had one hour more, all
+three of them, together here, as on that night of stars and peace
+when first there came the news which for the moment had disquieted
+Hermann.
+
+She longed as with thirst for Michael to come, and as her solitude
+became more and more intolerable, a hundred hideous fancies
+obsessed her.  What if some accident had happened to Michael, or
+what, if in this tremendous breaking of ties that the war entailed,
+he felt that he could not see her?  She knew that was an
+impossibility; but the whole world had become impossible.  And
+there was no escape.  Somehow she had to adjust herself to the
+unthinkable; somehow her relations both with Hermann and Michael
+had to remain absolutely unshaken.  Even that was not enough: they
+had to be strengthened, made impregnable.
+
+Then came a knock on the side door of the studio that led into the
+street: Michael often came that way without passing through the
+house, and with a sense of relief she ran to it and unlocked it.
+And even as he stepped in, before any word of greeting had been
+exchanged, she flung herself on him, with fingers eager for the
+touch of his solidity. . . .
+
+"Oh, my dear," she said.  "I have longed for you, just longed for
+you.  I never wanted you so much.  I have been sitting in the dark
+desolate--desolate.  And oh! my darling, what a beast I am to think
+of nothing but myself.  I am ashamed.  What of your mother,
+Michael?"
+
+She turned on the light as they walked back across the studio, and
+Michael saw that her eyes, which were a little dazzled by the
+change from the dark into the light, were dim with unshed tears,
+and her hands clung to him as never before had they clung.  She
+needed him now with that imperative need which in trouble can only
+turn to love for comfort.  She wanted that only; the fact of him
+with her, in this land in which she had suddenly become an alien,
+an enemy, though all her friends except Hermann were here.  And
+instantaneously, as a baby at the breast, she found that all his
+strength and serenity were hers.
+
+They sat down on the sofa by the piano, side by side, with hands
+intertwined before Michael answered.  He looked up at her as he
+spoke, and in his eyes was the quiet of love and death.
+
+"My mother died an hour ago," he said.  "I was with her, and as I
+had longed might happen, she came back to me before she died.  For
+two or three minutes she was herself.  And then she said to me, 'My
+son,' and soon she ceased breathing."
+
+"Oh, Michael," she said, and for a little while there was silence,
+and in turn it was her presence that he clung to.  Presently he
+spoke again.
+
+"Sylvia, I'm so frightfully hungry," he said.  "I don't think I've
+eaten anything since breakfast.  May we go and forage?"
+
+"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried.  "Yes, let's go and see what there
+is."
+
+Instantly she busied herself.
+
+"Hermann left the cellar key on the chimney-piece, Michael," she
+said.  "Get some wine out, dear.  Mother and I don't drink any.
+And there's some ham, I know.  While you are getting wine, I'll
+broil some.  And there were some strawberries.  I shall have some
+supper with you.  What a good thought!  And you must be famished."
+
+As they ate they talked perfectly simply and naturally of the
+hundred associations which this studio meal at the end of the
+evening called up concerning the Sunday night parties.  There was
+an occasion on which Hermann tried to recollect how to mull beer,
+with results that smelled like a brickfield; there was another when
+a poached egg had fallen, exploding softly as it fell into the
+piano.  There was the occasion, the first on which Michael had been
+present, when two eminent actors imitated each other; another when
+Francis came and made himself so immensely agreeable.  It was after
+that one that Sylvia and Hermann had sat and talked in front of the
+stove, discussing, as Sylvia laughed to remember, what she would
+say when Michael proposed to her.  Then had come the break in
+Michael's attendances and, as Sylvia allowed, a certain falling-off
+in gaiety.
+
+"But it was really Hermann and I who made you gay originally," she
+said.  "We take a wonderful deal of credit for that."
+
+All this was as completely natural for them as was the impromptu
+meal, and soon without effort Michael spoke of his mother again,
+and presently afterwards of the news of war.  But with him by her
+side Sylvia found her courage come back to her; the news itself,
+all that it certainly implied, and all the horror that it held, no
+longer filled her with the sense that it was impossibly terrible.
+Michael did not diminish the awfulness of it, but he gave her the
+power of looking out bravely at it.  Nor did he shrink from
+speaking of all that had been to her so grim a nightmare.
+
+"You haven't heard from Hermann?" he asked.
+
+"No.  And I suppose we can't hear now.  He is with his regiment,
+that's all; nor shall we hear of him till there is peace again."
+
+She came a little closer to him.
+
+"Michael, I have to face it, that I may never see Hermann again,"
+she said.  "Mother doesn't fear it, you know.  She--the darling--
+she lives in a sort of dream.  I don't want her to wake from it.
+But how can I get accustomed to the thought that perhaps I shan't
+see Hermann again?  I must get accustomed to it: I've got to live
+with it, and not quarrel with it."
+
+He took up her hand, enclosing it in his.
+
+"But, one doesn't quarrel with the big things of life," he said.
+"Isn't it so?  We haven't any quarrel with things like death and
+duty.  Dear me, I'm afraid I'm preaching."
+
+"Preach, then," she said.
+
+"Well, it's just that.  We don't quarrel with them: they manage
+themselves.  Hermann's going managed itself.  It had to be."
+
+Her voice quivered as she spoke now.
+
+"Are you going?" she asked.  "Will that have to be?"
+
+Michael looked at her a moment with infinite tenderness.
+
+"Oh, my dear, of course it will," he said.  "Of course, one doesn't
+know yet what the War Office will do about the Army.  I suppose
+it's possible that they will send troops to France.  All that
+concerns me is that I shall rejoin again if they call up the
+Reserves."
+
+"And they will?"
+
+"Yes, I should think that is inevitable.  And you know there's
+something big about it.  I'm not warlike, you know, but I could not
+fail to be a soldier under these new conditions, any more than I
+could continue being a soldier when all it meant was to be
+ornamental.  Hermann in bursts of pride and patriotism used to call
+us toy-soldiers.  But he's wrong now; we're not going to be toy-
+soldiers any more."
+
+She did not answer him, but he felt her hand press close in the
+palm of his.
+
+"I can't tell you how I dreaded we shouldn't go to war," he said.
+"That has been a nightmare, if you like.  It would have been the
+end of us if we had stood aside and seen Germany violate a solemn
+treaty."
+
+Even with Michael close to her, the call of her blood made itself
+audible to Sylvia.  Instinctively she withdrew her hand from his.
+
+"Ah, you don't understand Germany at all," she said.  "Hermann
+always felt that too.  He told me he felt he was talking gibberish
+to you when he spoke of it.  It is clearly life and death to
+Germany to move against France as quickly as possible."
+
+"But there's a direct frontier between the two," said he.
+
+"No doubt, but an impossible one."
+
+Michael frowned, drawing his big eyebrows together.
+
+"But nothing can justify the violation of a national oath," he
+said.  "That's the basis of civilisation, a thing like that."
+
+"But if it's a necessity?  If a nation's existence depends on it?"
+she asked.  "Oh, Michael, I don't know!  I don't know!  For a
+little I am entirely English, and then something calls to me from
+beyond the Rhine!  There's the hopelessness of it for me and such
+as me.  You are English; there's no question about it for you.  But
+for us!  I love England: I needn't tell you that.  But can one ever
+forget the land of one's birth?  Can I help feeling the necessity
+Germany is under?  I can't believe that she has wantonly provoked
+war with you."
+
+"But consider--" said he.
+
+She got up suddenly.
+
+"I can't argue about it," she said.  "I am English and I am German.
+You must make the best of me as I am.  But do be sorry for me, and
+never, never forget that I love you entirely.  That's the root fact
+between us.  I can't go deeper than that, because that reaches to
+the very bottom of my soul.  Shall we leave it so, Michael, and not
+ever talk of it again?  Wouldn't that be best?"
+
+There was no question of choice for Michael in accepting that
+appeal.  He knew with the inmost fibre of his being that, Sylvia
+being Sylvia, nothing that she could say or do or feel could
+possibly part him from her.  When he looked at it directly and
+simply like that, there was nothing that could blur the verity of
+it.  But the truth of what she said, the reality of that call of
+the blood, seemed to cast a shadow over it.  He knew beyond all
+other knowledge that it was there: only it looked out at him with a
+shadow, faint, but unmistakable, fallen across it.  But the sense
+of that made him the more eagerly accept her suggestion.
+
+"Yes, darling, we'll never speak of it again," he said.  "That
+would be much wisest."
+
+
+Lady Ashbridge's funeral took place three days afterwards, down in
+Suffolk, and those hours detached themselves in Michael's mind from
+all that had gone before, and all that might follow, like a little
+piece of blue sky in the midst of storm clouds.  The limitations of
+man's consciousness, which forbid him to think poignantly about two
+things at once, hedged that day in with an impenetrable barrier, so
+that while it lasted, and afterwards for ever in memory, it was
+unflecked by trouble or anxiety, and hung between heaven and earth
+in a serenity of its own.
+
+The coffin lay that night in his mother's bedroom, which was next
+to Michael's, and when he went up to bed he found himself listening
+for any sound that came from there.  It seemed but yesterday when
+he had gone rather early upstairs, and after sitting a minute or
+two in front of his fire, had heard that timid knock on the door,
+which had meant the opening of a mother's heart to him.  He felt it
+would scarcely be strange if that knock came again, and if she
+entered once more to be with him.  From the moment he came
+upstairs, the rest of the world was shut down to him; he entered
+his bedroom as if he entered a sanctuary that was scented with the
+incense of her love.  He knew exactly how her knock had sounded
+when she came in here that night when first it burned for him: his
+ears were alert for it to come again.  Once his blind tapped
+against the frame of his open window, and, though knowing it was
+that, he heard himself whisper--for she could hear his whisper--
+"Come in, mother," and sat up in his deep chair, looking towards
+the door.  But only the blind tapped again, and outside in the
+moonlit dusk an owl hooted.
+
+He remembered she liked owls.  Once, when they lived alone in
+Curzon Street, some noise outside reminded her of the owls that
+hooted at Ashbridge--she had imitated their note, saying it sounded
+like sleep. . . .  She had sat in a chintz-covered chair close to
+him when at Christmas she paid him that visit, and now he again
+drew it close to his own, and laid his hand on its arm.  Petsy II.
+had come in with her, and she had hoped that he would not annoy
+Michael.
+
+There were steps in the passage outside his room, and he heard a
+little shrill bark.  He opened his door and found his mother's maid
+there, trying to entice Petsy away from the room next to his.  The
+little dog was curled up against it, and now and then he turned
+round scratching at it, asking to enter.  "He won't come away, my
+lord," said the maid; "he's gone back a dozen times to the door."
+
+Michael bent down.
+
+"Come, Petsy," he said, "come to bed in my room."
+
+The dog looked at him for a moment as if weighing his trustworthiness.
+Then he got up and, with grotesque Chinese high-stepping walk,
+came to him.
+
+"He'll be all right with me," he said to the maid.
+
+He took Petsy into his room next door, and laid him on the chair in
+which his mother had sat.  The dog moved round in a circle once or
+twice, and then settled himself down to sleep.  Michael went to bed
+also, and lay awake about a couple of minutes, not thinking, but
+only being, while the owls hooted outside.
+
+He awoke into complete consciousness, knowing that something had
+aroused him, even as three days ago when the telephone rang to
+summon him to his mother's deathbed.  Then he did not know what had
+awakened him, but now he was sure that there had been a tapping on
+his door.  And after he had sat up in bed completely awake, he
+heard Petsy give a little welcoming bark.  Then came the noise of
+his small, soft tail beating against the cushion in the chair.
+
+Michael had no feeling of fright at all, only of longing for
+something that physically could not be.  And longing, only longing,
+once more he said:
+
+"Come in, mother."
+
+He believed he heard the door whisper on the carpet, but he saw
+nothing.  Only, the room was full of his mother's presence.  It
+seemed to him that, in obedience to her, he lay down completely
+satisfied. . . .  He felt no curiosity to see or hear more.  She
+was there, and that was enough.
+
+He woke again a little after dawn.  Petsy between the window and
+the door had jumped on to his bed to get out of the draught of the
+morning wind.  For the door was opened.
+
+
+That morning the coffin was carried down the long winding path
+above the deep-water reach, where Michael and Francis at Christmas
+had heard the sound of stealthy rowing, and on to the boat that
+awaited it to ferry it across to the church.  There was high tide,
+and, as they passed over the estuary, the stillness of supreme noon
+bore to them the tolling of the bell.  The mourners from the house
+followed, just three of them, Lord Ashbridge, Michael, and Aunt
+Barbara, for the rest were to assemble at the church.  But of all
+that, one moment stood out for Michael above all others, when, as
+they entered the graveyard, someone whom he could not see said: "I
+am the Resurrection and the Life," and he heard that his father, by
+whom he walked, suddenly caught his breath in a sob.
+
+All that day there persisted that sense of complete detachment from
+all but her whose body they had laid to rest on the windy hill
+overlooking the broad water.  His father, Aunt Barbara, the cousins
+and relations who thronged the church were no more than inanimate
+shadows compared with her whose presence had come last night into
+his room, and had not left him since.  The affairs of the world,
+drums and the torch of war, had passed for those hours from his
+knowledge, as at the centre of a cyclone there was a windless calm.
+To-morrow he knew he would pass out into the tumult again, and the
+minutes slipped like pearls from a string, dropping into the dim
+gulf where the tempest raged. . . .
+
+He went back to town next morning, after a short interview with his
+father, who was coming up later in the day, when he told him that
+he intended to go back to his regiment as soon as possible.  But,
+knowing that he meant to go by the slow midday train, his father
+proposed to stop the express for him that went through a few
+minutes before.  Michael could hardly believe his ears. . . .
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+It was but a day or two after the outbreak of the war that it was
+believed that an expeditionary force was to be sent to France, to
+help in arresting the Teutonic tide that was now breaking over
+Belgium; but no public and authoritative news came till after the
+first draft of the force had actually set foot on French soil.
+From the regiment of the Guards which Michael had rejoined, Francis
+was among the first batch of officers to go, and that evening
+Michael took down the news to Sylvia.  Already stories of German
+barbarity were rife, of women violated, of defenceless civilians
+being shot down for no object except to terrorise, and to bring
+home to the Belgians the unwisdom of presuming to cross the will of
+the sovereign people.  To-night, in the evening papers, there had
+been a fresh batch of these revolting stories, and when Michael
+entered the studio where Sylvia and her mother were sitting, he saw
+the girl let drop behind the sofa the paper she had been reading.
+He guessed what she must have found there, for he had already seen
+the paper himself, and her silence, her distraction, and the misery
+of her face confirmed his conjecture.
+
+"I've brought you a little news to-night," he said.  "The first
+draft from the regiment went off to-day."
+
+Mrs. Falbe put down her book, marking the place.
+
+"Well, that does look like business, then," she said, "though I
+must say I should feel safer if they didn't send our soldiers away.
+Where have they gone to?"
+
+"Destination unknown," said Michael.  "But it's France.  My cousin
+has gone."
+
+"Francis?" asked Sylvia.  "Oh, how wicked to send boys like that."
+
+Michael saw that her nerves were sharply on edge.  She had given
+him no greeting, and now as he sat down she moved a little away
+from him.  She seemed utterly unlike herself.
+
+"Mother has been told that every Englishman is as brave as two
+Germans," she said.  "She likes that."
+
+"Yes, dear," observed Mrs. Falbe placidly.  "It makes one feel
+safer.  I saw it in the paper, though; I read it."
+
+Sylvia turned on Michael.
+
+"Have you seen the evening paper?" she asked.
+
+Michael knew what was in her mind.
+
+"I just looked at it," he said.  "There didn't seem to be much
+news."
+
+"No, only reports, rumours, lies," said Sylvia.
+
+Mrs. Falbe got up.  It was her habit to leave the two alone
+together, since she was sure they preferred that; incidentally,
+also, she got on better with her book, for she found conversation
+rather distracting.  But to-night Sylvia stopped her.
+
+"Oh, don't go yet, mother," she said.  "It is very early."
+
+It was clear that for some reason she did not want to be left alone
+with Michael, for never had she done this before.  Nor did it avail
+anything now, for Mrs. Falbe, who was quite determined to pursue
+her reading without delay, moved towards the door.
+
+"But I am sure Michael wants to talk to you, dear," she said, "and
+you have not seen him all day.  I think I shall go up to bed."
+
+Sylvia made no further effort to detain her, but when she had gone,
+the silence in which they had so often sat together had taken on a
+perfectly different quality.
+
+"And what have you been doing?" she said.  "Tell me about your day.
+No, don't.  I know it has all been concerned with war, and I don't
+want to hear about it."
+
+"I dined with Aunt Barbara," said Michael.  "She sent you her love.
+She also wondered why you hadn't been to see her for so long."
+
+Sylvia gave a short laugh, which had no touch of merriment in it.
+
+"Did she really?" she asked.  "I should have thought she could have
+guessed.  She set every nerve in my body jangling last time I saw
+her by the way she talked about Germans.  And then suddenly she
+pulled herself up and apologised, saying she had forgotten.  That
+made it worse!  Michael, when you are unhappy, kindness is even
+more intolerable than unkindness.  I would sooner have Lady Barbara
+abusing my people than saying how sorry she is for me.  Don't let's
+talk about it!  Let's do something.  Will you play, or shall I
+sing?  Let's employ ourselves."
+
+Michael followed her lead.
+
+"Ah, do sing," he said.  "It's weeks since I have heard you sing."
+
+She went quickly over to the bookcase of music by the piano.
+
+"Come, then, let's sing and forget," she said.  "Hermann always
+said the artist was of no nationality.  Let's begin quick.  These
+are all German songs: don't let's have those.  Ah, and these, too!
+What's to be done?  All our songs seem to be German."
+
+Michael laughed.
+
+"But we've just settled that artists have no nationality, so I
+suppose art hasn't either," he said.
+
+Sylvia pulled herself together, conscious of a want of control, and
+laid her hand on Michael's shoulder.
+
+"Oh, Michael, what should I do without you?" she said.  "And yet--
+well, let me sing."
+
+She had placed a volume of Schubert on the music-stand, and opening
+it at random he found "Du Bist die Ruhe."  She sang the first
+verse, but in the middle of the second she stopped.
+
+"I can't," she said.  "It's no use."
+
+He turned round to her.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," he said.  "But you know that."
+
+She moved away from him, and walked down to the empty fireplace.
+
+"I can't keep silence," she said, "though I know we settled not to
+talk of those things when necessarily we cannot feel absolutely at
+one.  But, just before you came in, I was reading the evening
+paper.  Michael, how can the English be so wicked as to print, and
+I suppose to believe, those awful things I find there?  You told me
+you had glanced at it.  Well, did you glance at the lies they tell
+about German atrocities?"
+
+"Yes, I saw them," said Michael.  "But it's no use talking about
+them."
+
+"But aren't you indignant?" she said.  "Doesn't your blood boil to
+read of such infamous falsehoods?  You don't know Germans, but I
+do, and it is impossible that such things can have happened."
+
+Michael felt profoundly uncomfortable.  Some of these stories which
+Sylvia called lies were vouched for, apparently, by respectable
+testimony.
+
+"Why talk about them?" he said.  "I'm sure we were wise when we
+settled not to."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, I can't live up to that wisdom," she said.  "When I think of
+this war day and night and night and day, how can I prevent talking
+to you about it?  And those lies!  Germans couldn't do such things.
+It's a campaign of hate against us, set up by the English Press."
+
+"I daresay the German Press is no better," said Michael.
+
+"If that is so, I should be just as indignant about the German
+Press," said she.  "But it is only your guess that it is so."
+
+Suddenly she stopped, and came a couple of steps nearer him.
+
+"Michael, it isn't possible that you believe those things of us?"
+she said.
+
+He got up.
+
+"Ah, do leave it alone, Sylvia," he said.  "I know no more of the
+truth or falsity of it than you.  I have seen just what you have
+seen in the papers."
+
+"You don't feel the impossibility of it, then?" she asked.
+
+"No, I don't.  There seems to have been sworn testimony.  War is a
+cruel thing; I hate it as much as you.  When men are maddened with
+war, you can't tell what they would do.  They are not the Germans
+you know, nor the Germans I know, who did such things--not the
+people I saw when I was with Hermann in Baireuth and Munich a year
+ago.  They are no more the same than a drunken man is the same as
+that man when he is sober.  They are two different people; drink
+has made them different.  And war has done the same for Germany."
+
+He held out his hand to her.  She moved a step back from him.
+
+"Then you think, I suppose, that Hermann may be concerned in those
+atrocities," she said.
+
+Michael looked at her in amazement.
+
+"You are talking sheer nonsense, Sylvia," he said.
+
+"Not at all.  It is a logical inference, just an application of the
+principle you have stated."
+
+Michael's instinct was just to take her in his arms and make the
+final appeal, saying, "We love each other, that's all," but his
+reason prevented him.  Sylvia had said a monstrous thing in cold
+blood, when she suggested that he thought Hermann might be
+concerned in these deeds, and in cold blood, not by appealing to
+her emotions, must she withdraw that.
+
+"I'm not going to argue about it," he said.  "I want you to tell me
+at once that I am right, that it was sheer nonsense, to put no
+other name to it, when you suggested that I thought that of
+Hermann."
+
+"Oh, pray put another name to it," she said.
+
+"Very well.  It was a wanton falsehood," said Michael, "and you
+know it."
+
+Truly this hellish nightmare of war and hate which had arisen
+brought with it a brood not less terrible.  A day ago, an hour ago
+he would have merely laughed at the possibility of such a situation
+between Sylvia and himself.  Yet here it was: they were in the
+middle of it now.
+
+She looked up at him flashing with indignation, and a retort as
+stinging as his rose to her lips.  And then quite suddenly, all her
+anger went from her, as her, heart told her, in a voice that would
+not be silenced, the complete justice of what he had said, and the
+appeal that Michael refrained from making was made by her to
+herself.  Remorse held her on its spikes for her abominable
+suggestion, and with it came a sense of utter desolation and
+misery, of hatred for herself in having thus quietly and
+deliberately said what she had said.  She could not account for it,
+nor excuse herself on the plea that she had spoken in passion, for
+she had spoken, as he felt, in cold blood.  Hence came the misery
+in the knowledge that she must have wounded Michael intolerably.
+
+Her lips so quivered that when she first tried to speak no words
+would come.  That she was truly ashamed brought no relief, no ease
+to her surrender, for she knew that it was her real self who had
+spoken thus incredibly.  But she could at least disown that part of
+her.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Michael," she said.  "I was atrocious.  Will
+you forgive me?  Because I am so miserable."
+
+He had nothing but love for her, love and its kinsman pity.
+
+"Oh, my dear, fancy you asking that!" he said.
+
+Just for the moment of their reconciliation, it seemed to both that
+they came closer to each other than they had ever been before, and
+the chance of the need of any such another reconciliation was
+impossible to the verge of laughableness, so that before five
+minutes were past he could make the smile break through her tears
+at the absurdity of the moment that now seemed quite unreal.  Yet
+that which was at the root of their temporary antagonism was not
+removed by the reconciliation; at most they had succeeded in
+cutting off the poisonous shoot that had suddenly sprouted from it.
+The truth of this in the days that followed was horribly
+demonstrated.
+
+It was not that they ever again came to the spoken bitterness of
+words, for the sharpness of them, once experienced, was shunned by
+each of them, but times without number they had to sheer off, and
+not approach the ground where these poisoned tendrils trailed.  And
+in that sense of having to take care, to be watchful lest a chance
+word should bring the peril close to them, the atmosphere of
+complete ease and confidence, in which alone love can flourish, was
+tainted.  Love was there, but its flowers could not expand, it
+could not grow in the midst of this bitter air.  And what made the
+situation more and increasingly difficult was the fact that, next
+to their love for each other, the emotion that most filled the mind
+of each was this sense of race-antagonism.  It was impossible that
+the news of the war should not be mentioned, for that would have
+created an intolerable unreality, and all that was in their power
+was to avoid all discussion, to suppress from speech all the
+feelings with which the news filled them.  Every day, too, there
+came fresh stories of German abominations committed on the
+Belgians, and each knew that the other had seen them, and yet
+neither could mention them.  For while Sylvia could not believe
+them, Michael could not help doing so, and thus there was no common
+ground on which they could speak of them.  Often Mrs. Falbe, in
+whose blood, it would seem, no sense of race beat at all, would add
+to the embarrassment by childlike comments, saying at one time in
+reference to such things that she made a point of not believing all
+she saw in the newspapers, or at another ejaculating, "Well, the
+Germans do seem to have behaved very cruelly again!"  But no
+emotion appeared to colour these speeches, while all the emotion of
+the world surged and bubbled behind the silence of the other two.
+
+Then followed the darkest days that England perhaps had ever known,
+when the German armies, having overcome the resistance of Belgium,
+suddenly swept forward again across France, pushing before them
+like the jetsam and flotsam on the rim of the advancing tide the
+allied armies.  Often in these appalling weeks, Michael would
+hesitate as to whether he should go to see Sylvia or not, so
+unbearable seemed the fact that she did not and could not feel or
+understand what England was going through.  So far from blaming her
+for it, he knew that it could not be otherwise, for her blood
+called to her, even as his to him, while somewhere in the onrush of
+those advancing and devouring waves was her brother, with whom, so
+it had often seemed to him, she was one soul.  Thus, while in that
+his whole sympathy and whole comprehension of her love was with
+him, there was as well all that deep, silent English patriotism of
+which till now he had scarcely been conscious, praying with mute
+entreaty that disaster and destruction and defeat might overwhelm
+those advancing hordes.  Once, when the anxiety and peril were at
+their height, he made up his mind not to see her that day, and
+spent the evening by himself.  But later, when he was actually on
+his way to bed, he knew he could not keep away from her, and though
+it was already midnight, he drove down to Chelsea, and found her
+sitting up, waiting for the chance of his coming.
+
+For a moment, as she greeted him and he kissed her silently, they
+escaped from the encompassing horror.
+
+"Ah, you have come," she said.  "I thought perhaps you might.  I
+have wanted you dreadfully."
+
+The roar of artillery, the internecine strife were still.  Just for
+a few seconds there was nothing in the world for him but her, nor
+for her anything but him.
+
+"I couldn't go to bed without just seeing you," he said.  "I won't
+keep you up."
+
+They stood with hands clasped.
+
+"But if you hadn't come, Michael," she said, "I should have
+understood."
+
+And then the roar and the horror began again.  Her words were the
+simplest, the most directly spoken to him, yet could not but evoke
+the spectres that for the moment had vanished.  She had meant to
+let her love for him speak; it had spoken, and instantly through
+the momentary sunlight of it, there loomed the fierce and enormous
+shadow.  It could not be banished from their most secret hearts;
+even when the doors were shut and they were alone together thus, it
+made its entrance, ghost-like, terrible, and all love's bolts and
+bars could not keep it out.  Here was the tragedy of it, that they
+could not stand embraced with clasped hands and look at it together
+and so rob it of its terrors, for, at the sight of it, their hands
+were loosened from each other's, and in its presence they were
+forced to stand apart.  In his heart, as surely as he knew her
+love, Michael knew that this great shadow under which England lay
+was shot with sunlight for Sylvia, that the anxiety, the awful
+suspense that made his fingers cold as he opened the daily papers,
+brought into it to her an echo of victorious music that beat to the
+tramp of advancing feet that marched ever forward leaving the
+glittering Rhine leagues upon leagues in their rear.  The Bavarian
+corps in which Hermann served was known to be somewhere on the
+Western front, for the Emperor had addressed them ten days before
+on their departure from Munich, and Sylvia and Michael were both
+aware of that.  But they who loved Hermann best could not speak of
+it to each other, and the knowledge of it had to be hidden in
+silence, as if it had been some guilty secret in which they were
+the terrified accomplices, instead of its being a bond of love
+which bound them both to Hermann.
+
+In addition to the national anxiety, there was the suspense of
+those whose sons and husbands and fathers were in the fighting
+line.  Columns of casualty lists were published, and each name
+appearing there was a sword that pierced a home.  One such list,
+published early in September, was seen by Michael as he drove down
+on Sunday morning to spend the rest of the day with Sylvia, and the
+first name that he read there was that of Francis.  For a moment,
+as he remembered afterwards, the print had danced before his eyes,
+as if seen through the quiver of hot air.  Then it settled down and
+he saw it clearly.
+
+He turned and drove back to his rooms in Half Moon Street, feeling
+that strange craving for loneliness that shuns any companionship.
+He must, for a little, sit alone with the fact, face it, adjust
+himself to it.  Till that moment when the dancing print grew still
+again he had not, in all the anxiety and suspense of those days,
+thought of Francis's death as a possibility even.  He had heard
+from him only two mornings before, in a letter thoroughly
+characteristic that saw, as Francis always saw, the pleasant and
+agreeable side of things.  Washing, he had announced, was a
+delusion; after a week without it you began to wonder why you had
+ever made a habit of it. . . .  They had had a lot of marching,
+always in the wrong direction, but everyone knew that would soon be
+over. . . .  Wasn't London very beastly in August? . . .  Would
+Michael see if he could get some proper cigarettes out to him?
+Here there was nothing but little black French affairs (and not
+many of them) which tied a knot in the throat of the smoker. . . .
+And now Francis, with all his gaiety and his affection, and his
+light pleasant dealings with life, lay dead somewhere on the sunny
+plains of France, killed in action by shell or bullet in the midst
+of his youth and strength and joy in life, to gratify the damned
+dreams of the man who had been the honoured guest at Ashbridge, and
+those who had advised and flattered and at the end perhaps just
+used him as their dupe.  To their insensate greed and swollen-
+headed lust for world-power was this hecatomb of sweet and pleasant
+lives offered, and in their onward course through the vines and
+corn of France they waded through the blood of the slain whose only
+crime was that they had dared to oppose the will of Germany, as
+voiced by the War Lord.  And as milestones along the way they had
+come were set the records of their infamy, in rapine and ruthless
+slaughter of the innocent.  Just at first, as he sat alone in his
+room, Michael but contemplated images that seemed to form in his
+mind without his volition, and, emotion-numb from the shock, they
+seemed external to him.  Sometimes he had a vision of Francis lying
+without mark or wound or violence on him in some vineyard on the
+hill-side, with face as quiet as in sleep turned towards a moonlit
+sky.  Then came another picture, and Francis was walking across the
+terrace at Ashbridge with his gun over his shoulder, towards Lord
+Ashbridge and the Emperor, who stood together, just as Michael had
+seen the three of them when they came in from the shooting-party.
+As Francis came near, the Emperor put a cartridge into his gun and
+shot him. . . .  Yes, that was it: that was what had happened.  The
+marvellous peacemaker of Europe, the fire-engine who, as Hermann
+had said, was ready to put out all conflagrations, the fatuous
+mountebank who pretended to be a friend to England, who conducted
+his own balderdash which he called music, had changed his role and
+shown his black heart and was out to kill.
+
+Wild panoramas like these streamed through Michael's head, as if
+projected there by some magic lantern, and while they lasted he was
+conscious of no grief at all, but only of a devouring hate for the
+mad, lawless butchers who had caused Francis's death, and willingly
+at that moment if he could have gone out into the night and killed
+a German, and met his death himself in the doing of it, he would
+have gone to his doom as to a bridal-bed.  But by degrees, as the
+stress of these unsought imaginings abated, his thoughts turned to
+Francis himself again, who, through all his boyhood and early
+manhood, had been to him a sort of ideal and inspiration.  How he
+had loved and admired him, yet never with a touch of jealousy!  And
+Francis, whose letter lay open by him on the table, lay dead on the
+battlefields of France.  There was the envelope, with the red
+square mark of the censor upon it, and the sheet with its gay
+scrawl in pencil, asking for proper cigarettes.  And, with a pang
+of remorse, all the more vivid because it concerned so trivial a
+thing, Michael recollected that he had not sent them.  He had meant
+to do so yesterday afternoon but something had put it out of his
+head.  Never again would Francis ask him to send out cigarettes.
+Michael laid his head on his arms, so that his face was close to
+that pencilled note, and the relief of tears came to him.
+
+Soon he raised himself again, not ashamed of his sorrow, but
+somehow ashamed of the black hate that before had filled him.  That
+was gone for the present, anyhow, and Michael was glad to find it
+vanished.  Instead there was an aching pity, not for Francis alone
+nor for himself, but for all those concerned in this hideous
+business.  A hundred and a thousand homes, thrown suddenly to-day
+into mourning, were there: no doubt there were houses in that
+Bavarian village in the pine woods above which he and Hermann had
+spent the day when there was no opera at Baireuth where a son or a
+brother or a father were mourned, and in the kinship of sorrow he
+found himself at peace with all who had suffered loss, with all who
+were living through days of deadly suspense.  There was nothing
+effeminate or sentimental about it; he had never been manlier than
+in this moment when he claimed his right to be one with them.  It
+was right to pause like this, with his hand clasped in the hands of
+friends and foes alike.  But without disowning that, he knew that
+Francis's death, which had brought that home to him, had made him
+eager also for his own turn to come, when he would go out to help
+in the grim work that lay in front of him.  He was perfectly ready
+to die if necessary, and if not, to kill as many Germans as
+possible.  And somehow the two aspects of it all, the pity and the
+desire to kill, existed side by side, neither overlapping nor
+contradicting one another.
+
+
+His servant came into the room with a pencilled note, which he
+opened.  It was from Sylvia.
+
+"Oh, Michael, I have just called and am waiting to know if you will
+see me.  I have seen the news, and I want to tell you how sorry I
+am.  But if you don't care to see me I know you will say so, won't
+you?"
+
+Though an hour before he had turned back on his way to go to
+Sylvia, he did not hesitate now.
+
+"Yes, ask Miss Falbe to come up," he said.
+
+She came up immediately, and once again as they met, the world and
+the war stood apart from them.
+
+"I did not expect you to come, Michael," she said, "when I saw the
+news.  I did not mean to come here myself.  But--but I had to.  I
+had just to find out whether you wouldn't see me, and let me tell
+you how sorry I am."
+
+He smiled at her as they stood facing each other.
+
+"Thank you for coming," he said; "I'm so glad you came.  But I had
+to be alone just a little."
+
+"I didn't do wrong?" she asked.
+
+"Indeed you didn't.  I did wrong not to come to you.  I loved
+Francis, you see."
+
+Already the shadow threatened again.  It was just the fact that he
+loved Francis that had made it impossible for him to go to her, and
+he could not explain that.  And as the shadow began to fall she
+gave a little shudder.
+
+"Oh, Michael, I know you did," she said.  "It's just that which
+concerns us, that and my sympathy for you.  He was such a dear.  I
+only saw him, I know, once or twice, but from that I can guess what
+he was to you.  He was a brother to you--a--a--Hermann."
+
+Michael felt, with Sylvia's hand in his, they were both running
+desperately away from the shadow that pursued them.  Desperately he
+tried with her to evade it.  But every word spoken between them
+seemed but to bring it nearer to them.
+
+"I only came to say that," she said.  "I had to tell you myself, to
+see you as I told you, so that you could know how sincere, how
+heartfelt--"
+
+She stopped suddenly.
+
+"That's all, my dearest," she added.  "I will go away again now."
+
+Across that shadow that had again fallen between them they looked
+and yearned for each other.
+
+"No, don't go--don't go," he said.  "I want you more than ever.  We
+are here, here and now, you and I, and what else matters in
+comparison of that?  I loved Francis, as you know, and I love
+Hermann, but there is our love, the greatest thing of all.  We've
+got it--it's here.  Oh, Sylvia, we must be wise and simple, we must
+separate things, sort them out, not let them get mixed with one
+another.  We can do it; I know we can.  There's nothing outside us;
+nothing matters--nothing matters."
+
+There was just that ray of sun peering over the black cloud that
+illumined their faces to each other, while already the sharp peaked
+shadow of it had come between them.  For that second, while he
+spoke, it seemed possible that, in the middle of welter and chaos
+and death and enmity, these two souls could stand apart, in the
+passionate serene of love, and the moment lasted for just as long
+as she flung herself into his arms.  And then, even while her face
+was pressed to his, and while the riotous blood of their pressed
+lips sang to them, the shadow fell across them.  Even as he
+asserted the inviolability of the sanctuary in which they stood, he
+knew it to be an impossible Utopia--that he should find with her
+the peace that should secure them from the raging storm, the cold
+shadow--and the loosening of her arms about his neck but endorsed
+the message of his own heart.  For such heavenly security cannot
+come except to those who have been through the ultimate bitterness
+that the world can bring; it is not arrived at but through complete
+surrender to the trial of fire, and as yet, in spite of their
+opposed patriotism, in spite of her sincerest sympathy with
+Michael's loss, the assault on the most intimate lines of the
+fortress had not yet been delivered.  Before they could reach the
+peace that passed understanding, a fiercer attack had to be
+repulsed, they had to stand and look at each other unembittered
+across waves and billows of a salter Marah than this.
+
+But still they clung, while in their eyes there passed backwards
+and forwards the message that said, "It is not yet; it is not
+thus!"  They had been like two children springing together at the
+report of some thunder-clap, not knowing in the presence of what
+elemental outpouring of force they hid their faces together.  As
+yet it but boomed on the horizon, though messages of its havoc
+reached them, and the test would come when it roared and lightened
+overhead.  Already the tension of the approaching tempest had so
+wrought on them that for a month past they had been unreal to each
+other, wanting ease, wanting confidence; and now, when the first
+real shock had come, though for a moment it threw them into each
+other's arms, this was not, as they knew, the real, the final
+reconciliation, the touchstone that proved the gold.  Francis's
+death, the cousin whom Michael loved, at the hands of one of the
+nation to whom Sylvia belonged, had momentarily made them feel that
+all else but their love was but external circumstance; and, even in
+the moment of their feeling this, the shadow fell again, and left
+them chilly and shivering.
+
+For a moment they still held each other round the neck and
+shoulder, then the hold slipped to the elbow, and soon their hands
+parted.  As yet no word had been said since Michael asserted that
+nothing else mattered, and in the silence of their gradual
+estrangement the sanguine falsity of that grew and grew and grew.
+
+"I know what you feel," she said at length, "and I feel it also."
+
+Her voice broke, and her hands felt for his again.
+
+"Michael, where are you?" she cried.  "No, don't touch me; I didn't
+mean that.  Let's face it.  For all we know, Hermann might have
+killed Francis. . . .  Whether he did or not, doesn't matter.  it
+might have been.  It's like that."
+
+A minute before Michael, in soul and blood and mind and bones, had
+said that nothing but Sylvia and himself had any real existence.
+He had clung to her, even as she to him, hoping that this
+individual love would prove itself capable of overriding all else
+that existed.  But it had not needed that she should speak to show
+him how pathetically he had erred.  Before she had made a concrete
+instance he knew how hopeless his wish had been: the silence, the
+loosening of hands had told him that.  And when she spoke there was
+a brutality in what she said, and worse than the brutality there
+was a plain, unvarnished truth.
+
+There was no question now of her going away at once, as she had
+proposed, any more than a boat in the rapids, roared round by
+breakers, can propose to start again.  They were in the middle of
+it, and so short a way ahead was the cataract that ran with blood.
+On each side at present were fine, green landing-places; he at the
+oar, she at the tiller, could, if they were of one mind, still put
+ashore, could run their boat in, declining the passage of the
+cataract with all its risks, its river of blood.  There was but a
+stroke of the oar to be made, a pull on a rope of the rudder, and a
+step ashore.  Here was a way out of the storm and the rapids.
+
+A moment before, when, by their physical parting they had realised
+the strength of the bonds that held them apart this solution had
+not occurred to Sylvia.  Now, critically and forlornly hopeful, it
+flashed on her.  She felt, she almost felt--for the ultimate
+decision rested with him--that with him she would throw everything
+else aside, and escape, just escape, if so he willed it, into some
+haven of neutrality, where he and she would be together, leaving
+the rest of the world, her country and his, to fight over these
+irreconcilable quarrels.  It did not seem to matter what happened
+to anybody else, provided only she and Michael were together, out
+of risk, out of harm.  Other lives might be precious, other ideals
+and patriotisms might be at stake, but she wanted to be with him
+and nothing else at all.  No tie counted compared to that; there
+was but one life given to man and woman, and now that her
+individual happiness, the individual joy of her love, was at stake,
+she felt, even as Michael had said, that nothing else mattered,
+that they would be right to realise themselves at any cost.
+
+She took his hands again.
+
+"Listen to me, Michael," she said.  "I can't bear any longer that
+these horrors should keep rising up between us, and, while we are
+here in the middle of it all, it can't be otherwise.  I ask you,
+then, to come away with me, to leave it all behind.  It is not our
+quarrel.  Already Hermann has gone; I can't lose you too."
+
+She looked up at him for a moment, and then quickly away again, for
+she felt her case, which seemed to her just now so imperative,
+slipping away from her in that glance she got of his eyes, that,
+for all the love that burned there, were blank with astonishment.
+She must convince him; but her own convictions were weak when she
+looked at him.
+
+"Don't answer me yet," she said.  "Hear what I have to say.  Don't
+you see that while we are like this we are lost to each other?  And
+as you yourself said just now, nothing matters in comparison to our
+love.  I want you to take me away, out of it all, so that we can
+find each other again.  These horrors thwart and warp us; they
+spoil the best thing that the world holds for us.  My patriotism is
+just as sound as yours, but I throw it away to get you.  Do the
+same, then.  You can get out of your service somehow. . . ."
+
+And then her voice began to falter.
+
+"If you loved me, you would do it," she said.  "If--"
+
+And then suddenly she found she could say no more at all.  She had
+hoped that when she stated these things she would convince him,
+and, behold, all she had done was to shake her own convictions so
+that they fell clattering round her like an unstable card-house.
+Desperately she looked again at him, wondering if she had convinced
+him at all, and then again she looked, wondering if she should see
+contempt in his eyes.  After that she stood still and silent, and
+her face flamed.
+
+"Do you despise me, Michael?" she said.
+
+He gave a little sigh of utter content.
+
+"Oh, my dear, how I love you for suggesting such a sweet
+impossibility," he said.  "But how you would despise me if I
+consented."
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"Wouldn't you?" he repeated.
+
+She gave a sorrowful semblance of a laugh.
+
+"I suppose I should," she said.
+
+"And I know you would.  You would contrast me in your mind, whether
+you wished to or not, with Hermann, with poor Francis, sorely to my
+disadvantage."
+
+They sat silent a little, but there was another question Sylvia had
+to ask for which she had to collect her courage.  At last it came.
+
+"Have they told you yet when you are going?" she said.
+
+"Not for certain.  But--it will be before many days are passed.
+And the question arises--will you marry me before I go?"
+
+She hid her face on his shoulder.
+
+"I will do what you wish," she said.
+
+"But I want to know your wish."
+
+She clung closer to him.
+
+"Michael, I don't think I could bear to part with you if we were
+married," she said.  "It would be worse, I think, than it's going
+to be.  But I intend to do exactly what you wish.  You must tell
+me.  I'm going to obey you before I am your wife as well as after."
+
+Michael had long debated this in his mind.  It seemed to him that
+if he came back, as might easily happen, hopelessly crippled,
+incurably invalid, it would be placing Sylvia in an unfairly
+difficult position, if she was already his wife.  He might be
+hideously disfigured; she would be bound to but a wreck of a man;
+he might be utterly unfit to be her husband, and yet she would be
+tied to him.  He had already talked the question over with his
+father, who, with that curious posthumous anxiety to have a further
+direct heir, had urged that the marriage should take place at once;
+but with his own feeling on the subject, as well as Sylvia's, he at
+once made up his mind.
+
+"I agree with you," he said.  "We will settle it so, then."
+
+She smiled at him.
+
+"How dreadfully business-like," she said, with an attempt at
+lightness.
+
+"I know.  It's rather a good thing one has got to be business-like,
+when--"
+
+That failed also, and he drew her to him and kissed her.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Michael was sitting in the kitchen of a French farm-house just
+outside the village of Laires, some three miles behind the English
+front.  The kitchen door was open, and on the flagged floor was
+cast an oblong of primrose-coloured November sunshine, warm and
+pleasant, so that the bluebottle flies buzzed hopefully about it,
+settling occasionally on the cracked green door, where they cleaned
+their wings, and generally furbished themselves up, as if the
+warmth was that of a spring day that promised summer to follow.
+They were there in considerable numbers, for just outside in the
+cobbled yard was a heap of manure, where they hungrily congregated.
+Against the white-washed wall of the house there lay a fat sow,
+basking contentedly, and snorting in her dreams.  The yard, bounded
+on two sides by the house walls, was shut in on the third by a row
+of farm-sheds, and the fourth was open.  Just outside it stood a
+small copse half flooded with the brimming water of a sluggish
+stream that meandered by the side of the farm-road leading out of
+the yard, which turned to the left, and soon joined the highway.
+This farm-road was partly under water, though not deeply, so that
+by skirting along its raised banks it was possible to go dry-shod
+to the highway underneath which the stream passed in a brick
+culvert.
+
+Through the kitchen window, set opposite the door, could be seen a
+broad stretch of country of the fenland type, flat and bare, and
+intersected with dykes, where sedges stirred slightly in the
+southerly breeze.  Here and there were pools of overflowed
+rivulets, and here and there were plantations of stunted hornbeam,
+the russet leaves of which still clung thickly to them.  But in the
+main it was a bare and empty land, featureless and stolid.
+
+Just below the kitchen window there was a plot of cultivated
+ground, thriftily and economically used for the growing of
+vegetables.  Concession, however, was made to the sense of
+brightness and beauty, for on each side of the path leading up to
+the door ran a row of Michaelmas daisies, rather battered by the
+fortnight of rain which had preceded this day of still warm sun,
+but struggling bravely to shake off the effect of the adverse
+conditions under which they had laboured.
+
+The kitchen itself was extremely clean and orderly.  Its flagged
+floor was still damp and brown in patches from the washing it had
+received two hours before; but the draught between open window and
+open door was fast drying it.  Down the centre of the room was a
+deal table without a cloth, on which were laid some half-dozen
+places, each marked with a knife and fork and spoon and a thick
+glass, ready for the serving of the midday meal.  On the white-
+washed walls hung two photographs of family groups, in one of which
+appeared the father and mother and three little children, in the
+other the same personages some ten years later, and a lithograph of
+the Blessed Virgin.  On each side of the table was a deal bench, at
+the head and foot two wooden armchairs.  A dresser stood against
+the wall, on the floor by the oven was a frayed rug, and most
+important of all, to Michael's mind, was a big stewpot that stood
+on the top of the oven.  From time to time a fat, comfortable
+Frenchwoman bustled in, and took off the lid of this to stir it, or
+placed on the dresser a plate of cheese, or a loaf of freshly
+cooked brown bread.  Two or three of Michael's brother-officers
+were there, one sitting in the patch of sunlight with his back
+against the green door, another on the step outside.  The post had
+come in not long before, and all of them, Michael included, were
+occupied with letters and papers.
+
+To-day there happened to be no letters for Michael, and the paper
+which he glanced at seemed a very feeble effort in the way of
+entertainment.  There was no news in it, except news about the war,
+which here, out at the front, did not interest him in the least.
+Perhaps in England people liked to know that a hundred yards of
+trenches had been taken at one place, and that three German attacks
+had failed at another; but when you were actually engaged (or had
+been or would soon again be) in taking part in those things, it
+seemed a waste of paper and compositor's time to record them.
+There was a column of letters also from indignant Britons, using
+violent language about the crimes and treachery of Germany.  That
+also was uninteresting and far-fetched.  Nothing that Germany had
+done mattered the least.  There was no use in arguing and slinging
+wild expressions about; it was a stale subject altogether when you
+were within earshot of that incessant booming of guns.  All the
+morning that had gone on without break, and no doubt they would get
+news of what had happened before they set out again that evening
+for another spell in the trenches.  But in all probability nothing
+particular had happened.  Probably the London papers would record
+it next day, a further tediousness on their part.  It would be much
+more interesting to hear what was going on there, whether there
+were any new plays, whether there had been any fresh concerts, what
+the weather was like, or even who had been lunching at Prince's, or
+dining at the Carlton.
+
+He put down his uninteresting paper, and strolled out into the
+farmyard, stepping over the legs of the junior officer who blocked
+the doorway, and did not attempt to move.  On the doorstep was
+sitting a major of his regiment, who, more politely, shifted his
+place a little so that Michael should pass.  Outside the smell of
+manure was acrid but not unpleasant, the old sow grunted in her
+sleep, and one of the green shutters outside the upper windows
+slowly blew to.  There was someone inside the room apparently, for
+the moment after a hand and arm bare to the elbow were protruded,
+and fastened the latch of the shutter, so that it should not move
+again.
+
+A little further on was a rail that separated the copse from the
+roadway, and here out of the wind Michael sat down, and lit a
+cigarette to stop his yearning for the bubbling stewpot, which
+would not be broached for half an hour yet.  The day, he believed,
+was Wednesday, but the whole quiet of the place, apart from that
+drowsy booming on the eastern horizon, made it feel like Sunday.
+Nobody but the fat Frenchwoman who bustled about had anything to
+do; there was a Sabbath leisure about everything, about the dozing
+sow, the buzzing flies, the lounging figures that read letters and
+papers.  When last they were here, it is true, there were rather
+more of them.  Eight officers had been billeted here last week,
+before they had been in the trenches and now there were but six.
+This evening they would set out again for another forty-eight hours
+in that hellish inferno, but to-morrow a fresh draft was arriving,
+so that when next they foregathered here, whatever had happened in
+the interval, there would probably be at least six of them.
+
+It did not seem to matter much what six there would be, or whether
+there would be more than six or less.  All that mattered at this
+moment, as he inhaled the first incense of his cigarette, was that
+the rain was over for the present, that the sun shone from a blue
+sky, that he felt extraordinarily well and tranquil, and that
+dinner would soon be ready.  But of all these agreeable things what
+pleased him most was the tranquillity; to be alive here with the
+manure heap steaming in the sun, and the sow asleep by the house
+wall, and swallows settling on the eaves, was "Paradise enow."
+Somewhere deep down in him were streams of yearning and of horror,
+flowing like an underground river in the dark.  He yearned for
+Sylvia, he thought with horror of the two days in the trenches that
+had preceded this rest in the white-washed farm-house, and with
+horror he thought of the days and nights that would succeed it.
+But both horror and yearnings were stupefied by the content that
+flooded the present moment.  No doubt it was reaction from what had
+gone before, but the reaction was complete.  Just now he asked for
+nothing but to sit in the sun and smoke his cigarette, and wait for
+dinner.  As far as he knew he did not think of anything particular;
+he just existed in the sun.
+
+The wind must have shifted a little, for before long it came round
+the corner of the house, and slightly spoiled the mellow warmth of
+the sunshine.  This would never do.  The Epicurean in him revolted
+at the idea of losing a moment of this complete well-being, and
+arguing that if the wind blew here, it must be dead calm below the
+kitchen window on the other side of the house, he got off his rail
+and walked along the slippery bank at the edge of the flooded road
+in order to go there.  It was hard to keep his footing here, and
+his progress was slow, but he felt he would take any amount of
+trouble to avoid getting his feet wet in the flooded road.  Then
+there was a patch of kitchen-garden to cross, where the mud clung
+rather annoyingly to his instep, and, having gained the garden
+path, he very carefully wiped his boots and with a fallen twig dug
+away the clots of soil that stuck to the instep.
+
+He found that he had been quite right in supposing that the air
+would be windless here, and full of great content he sat down with
+his back to the house wall.  A tortoise-shell butterfly, encouraged
+by the warmth, was flitting about among the Michaelmas daisies that
+bordered the path and settling on them, opening its wings to the
+genial sun.  Two or three bees buzzed there also; the summer-like
+tranquillity inserted into the middle of November squalls and rain,
+deluded them as well as Michael into living completely in the
+present hour.  Gnats hovered about.  One settled on Michael's hand,
+where he instantly killed it, and was sorry he had done so.  For
+the time the booming of guns which had sounded incessantly all the
+morning to the east, stopped altogether, and absolute quiet
+reigned.  Had he not been so hungry, and so unable to get the idea
+of the stewpot out of his head, Michael would have been content to
+sit with his back to the sun-warmed wall for ever.
+
+The high-road, raised and embanked above the low-lying fields, ran
+eastwards in an undeviating straight line.  Just opposite the farm
+were the last outlying huts of the village, and from there onwards
+it lay untenanted.  But before many minutes were passed, the quiet
+of the autumn noon began to be overscored by distant humming, faint
+at first, and then quickly growing louder, and he saw far away a
+little brown speck coming swiftly towards him.  It turned out to be
+a dispatch-rider, mounted on a motor-bicycle, who with a hoot of
+his horn roared westward through the village.  Immediately
+afterwards another humming, steadier and more sonorous, grew
+louder, and Michael, recognising it, looked up instinctively into
+the blue sky overhead, as an English aeroplane, flying low, came
+from somewhere behind, and passed directly over him, going
+eastwards.  Before long it stopped its direct course, and began to
+mount in spirals, and when at a sufficient height, it resumed its
+onward journey towards the German lines.  Then three or four
+privates, billeted in the village, and now resting after duty in
+the trenches, strolled along the road, laughing and talking.  They
+sat down not a hundred yards from Michael and one began to whistle
+"Tipperary."  Another and another took it up until all four were
+engaged on it.  It was not precisely in tune nor were the
+performers in unison, but it produced a vaguely pleasant effect,
+and if not in tune with the notes as the composer wrote them, the
+sight and sound of those four whistling and idle soldiers was in
+tune with the air of security of Sunday morning.
+
+Something far down the road caught Michael's eye, some moving line
+of brown wagons.  As they came nearer he saw that they were the
+motor-ambulances of the Red Cross, moving slowly along the ruts and
+holes which the traffic had worn, so that the occupants should
+suffer as little jolting as was possible.  They carried no doubt
+the wounded who had been taken from the trenches last night, and
+now, after calling for them at the first dressing station in the
+rear of the lines, were removing them to hospital.  As they passed
+the four men sitting by the roadside, one of them shouted, "Cheer,
+oh, mates!" and then they fell to whistling "Tipperary" again.
+Then, oh, blessed moment! the fat Frenchwoman looked out of the
+kitchen window just above his head.
+
+"Diner, m'sieu," she said, and Michael, without another thought of
+ambulance or aeroplane, scrambled to his feet.  Somewhere in the
+middle distance of his mind he was sorry that this tranquil morning
+was over, just as below in the darkness of it there ran those
+streams of yearning and of horror, but all his ordinary work-a-day
+self was occupied with the immediate prospect of the stewpot.  It
+was some sort of a ragout, he knew, and he lusted for it.  Red wine
+of the country would be there, and cheese and new brown bread. . . .
+It surprised him to find how completely his bodily needs and the
+pleasure of their gratification had possession of him.
+
+They were under orders to go back to the trenches shortly after
+sunset, and when their meal was over there remained but an hour or
+two before they had to start.  The warmth and glory of the day was
+already gone, and streamers of cloud were beginning to form over
+the open sky.  All afternoon these thickened till a dull layer of
+grey had thickly overspread the heavens and below that arch of
+vapour that cut off the sun the wind was blowing chilly.  With that
+change in the weather, Michael's mood changed also, and the horror
+of the return to the trenches began to come to the surface.  He was
+not as yet aware of any physical fear of death or of wound, rather,
+the feeling was one of some mental and spiritual shrinking from the
+whole of this vast business of murder, where hundreds and thousands
+of men along the battle front that stretched half-way across
+Europe, were employed, day and night, without having any quarrel
+with each other, in the unsleeping vigilant work of killing.  Most
+of them in all probability, were quite decent fellows, like those
+four who had whistled "Tipperary" together, and yet they were
+spending months of young, sweet life up to the knees in water, in
+foul and ill-smelling trenches in order to kill others whom they
+had never seen except as specks on the sights of their rifles.
+Somewhere behind that gruesome business, as he knew, there stood
+the Cause, calm and serene, like some great statue, which made this
+insensate murdering necessary; but just for an hour to-day, as he
+waited till they had to be on the move again, he found himself
+unable to make real to his own mind the existence of that cause,
+and could not see beyond the bloody and hideous things that
+resulted from it.
+
+Then, in this inaction of waiting, an attack of mere physical
+cowardice seized him, and he found himself imagining the mutilation
+and torture that perhaps awaited him personally in those deathly
+ditches.  He tried to busy himself with the preparation of the few
+things that he would take with him, he tried to encourage himself
+by remembering that in his previous experiences there he had not
+been conscious of any fear, by telling himself that these were only
+the unreal anticipations that were always ready to pounce on one
+even before such mildly alarming affairs as a visit to the dentist;
+but in spite of his efforts, he found his hands growing clammy and
+cold at the thoughts which beset his brain.  What if there happened
+to him what had happened to another junior officer who was close to
+him at the moment, when a fragment of shell turned him from a big
+gay boy into a writhing bundle at the bottom of the trench!  He had
+lived for a couple of hours like that, moaning and crying out, "For
+God's sake kill me!"  What if, more mercifully, he was killed
+outright, so that he would lie there in peace till next night they
+removed his body, or perhaps had to bury him in the trench itself,
+with a dozen handfuls of soil cast over him!  At that he suddenly
+realised how passionately he wanted to live, to escape from this
+infernal butchery, to be safe again, gloriously or ingloriously, it
+mattered not which, to be with Sylvia once more.  He told himself
+that he had been an utter fool ever to re-enter the army again like
+this.  He could certainly have got some appointment as dispatch-
+carrier or had himself attached to the headquarters staff, or even
+have shuffled out of it altogether. . . .  But, above all, he
+wanted Sylvia; he wanted to be allowed to lead the ordinary human
+life, safely and securely, with the girl he loved, and with the
+musical pursuits that were his passion.  He had hated soldiering in
+times of peace; he found now that he was terrified of it in times
+of war.  He felt physically sick, as with cold hands and trembling
+knees he stood and waited, lighting cigarettes and throwing them
+away, in front of the kitchen fire, where the stewpot was already
+bubbling again for those lucky devils who would return here to-
+night.
+
+The Major of his company was sitting in the window watching him,
+though Michael was unaware of it.  Suddenly he got up, and came
+across to the fire, and put his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Don't mind it, Comber," he said quietly.  "We all get a touch of
+it sometimes.  But you'll find it will pass all right.  It's the
+waiting doing nothing that does it."
+
+That touched Michael absolutely in the right place.
+
+"Thanks awfully, sir," he said.
+
+"Not a bit.  But it's damned beastly while it lasts.  You'll be all
+right when we move.  Don't forget to take your fur coat up if
+you've got one.  We shall have a cold night."
+
+Just after sunset they set out, marching in the gathering dusk down
+the road eastwards, where in a mile or two they would strike the
+huge rabbit warren of trenches that joined the French line to the
+north and south.  Once or twice they had to open out and go by the
+margin of the road to let ambulances or commissariat wagon go by,
+but there was but little traffic here, as the main lines of
+communication lay on other roads.  High above them, scarcely
+visible in the dusk, an English aeroplane droned back from its
+reconnaissance, and once there was the order given to scatter over
+the fields as a German Taube passed across them.  This caused much
+laughter and chaff among the men, and Michael heard one say, "Dove
+they call it, do they?  I'd like to make a pigeon-pie of them
+doves."  Soon they scrambled back on to the road again, and the
+interminable "Tipperary" was resumed, in whistle and song.  Michael
+remembered how Aunt Barbara had heard it at a music-hall, and had
+spoken of it as a new and catchy tune which you could carry away
+with you.  Nowadays, it carried you away.  It had become the
+audible soul of the British army.
+
+The trench which Michael's company were to occupy for the next
+forty-eight hours was in the first firing-line, and to reach it
+they had to pass in single file up a mile of communication
+trenches, from which on all sides, like a vast rabbit warren, there
+opened out other galleries and passages that led to different parts
+of this net-work of the lines.  It ran not in a straight line but
+in short sections with angles intervening, so under no
+circumstances could any considerable length of it be enfiladed, and
+was lit here and there by little oil lamps placed in embrasures in
+one or other wall of it, or for some distance at a time it was dark
+except for the vague twilight of the cloudy sky overhead.  Then
+again, as they approached the firing-line, it would suddenly become
+intensely bright, when from the English lines, or from those of the
+Germans which lay not more than two hundred yards in front of them,
+a fireball or star-shell was sent up, that caused everything it
+shone upon to leap into vivid illumination.  Usually, when this
+happened, there came from one side or the other a volley of rifle
+shots, that sounded like the crack of stock-whips, and once or
+twice a bullet passed over their heads with the buzz as of some
+vicious stinging insect.  Here and there, where the bottom lay in
+soft and clayey soil, they walked through mud that came half-way up
+to the knee, and each foot had to be lifted with an effort, and was
+set free with a smacking suck.  Elsewhere, if the ground was
+gravelly, the rain which for two days previously had been
+incessant, had drained off, and the going was easy.  But whether
+the path lay over dry or soft places the air was sick with some
+stale odour which the breeze that swept across the lines from the
+south-east could not carry away.  There was a perpetual pervading
+reek that flowed along from the entrance of trenches to right and
+left, that reminded Michael of the smell of a football scrimmage on
+a wet day, laden with the odours of sweat and dripping clothes, and
+something deadlier and more acrid.  Sometimes they passed under a
+section covered in with boards, over which the earth and clods of
+turf had been replaced, so that reconnoitring aeroplanes should not
+so easily spy it out, and here from dark excavations the smell hung
+overpoweringly.  Now and then the ground over which they passed
+yielded uneasily to the foot, where lay, only lightly covered over,
+some corpse which it had been impossible to remove, and from time
+to time they passed a huddled bundle of khaki not yet taken away.
+But except for the artillery duel that day they had heard going on
+that morning, the last day or two had been quiet, and the wounded
+had all been got out, and for the most part the dead also.
+
+After a long tramp in this communication trench they made a sharp
+turn to the right, and entered that which they were going to hold
+for the next forty-eight hours.  Here they relieved the regiment
+that had occupied it till now, who filed out as they came in.
+Along it at intervals were excavations dug out in the side, some
+propped up with boards and posts, others, where the ground was of
+sufficiently holding character, just scooped out.  In front,
+towards the German lines ran a parapet of excavated earth, with
+occasional peep-holes bored in it, so that the sentry going his
+rounds could look out and see if there was any sign of movement
+from opposite without showing his head above the entrenchment.  But
+even this was a matter of some risk, since the enemy had located
+these peep-holes, and from time to time fired a shot from a fixed
+rifle that came straight through them and buried its bullet in the
+hinder wall of the trench.  Other spy-holes were therefore being
+made, but these were not yet finished, and for the present till
+they were dug, it was necessary to use the old ones.  The trench,
+like all the others, was excavated in short, zigzag lengths, so
+that no point, either to right or left, commanded more than a score
+of yards of it.
+
+In front, from just outside the parapet to a depth of some twenty
+yards, stretched the spider-web of wire entanglements, and a little
+farther down on the right there had been a copse of horn-beam
+saplings.  An attempt had been made by the enemy during the morning
+to capture and entrench this, thus advancing their lines, but the
+movement had been seen, and the artillery fire, which had been so
+incessant all the morning, denoted the searching of this and the
+rendering of it untenable.  How thorough that searching had been
+was clear, for that which had been an acre of wood was now but a
+heap of timber fit only for faggots.  Scarcely a tree was left
+standing, and Michael, looking out of one of the peep-holes by the
+light of a star-shell saw that the wire entanglements were thick
+with leaves that the wind and the firing had detached from the
+broken branches.  In turn, the wire entanglements had come in for
+some shelling by the enemy, and a squad of men were out now under
+cover of the darkness repairing these.  There was a slight dip in
+the ground here, and by crouching and lying they were out of sight
+of the trenches opposite; but there were some snipers in that which
+had been a wood, from whom there came occasional shots.  Then, from
+lower down to the right, there came a fusillade from the English
+lines suddenly breaking out, and after a few minutes as suddenly
+stopping again.  But the sniping from the wood had ceased.
+
+Michael did not come on duty till six in the morning, and for the
+present he had nothing to do except eat his rations and sleep as
+well as he could in his dug-out.  He had plenty of room to stretch
+his legs if he sat half upright, and having taken his Major's
+advice in the matter of bringing his fur coat with him, he found
+himself warm enough, in spite of the rather bitter wind that,
+striking an angle in the trench wall, eddied sharply into his
+retreat, to sleep.  But not less justified than the advice to bring
+his fur coat was his Major's assurance that the attack of the
+horrors which had seized him after dinner that day, would pass off
+when the waiting was over.  Throughout the evening his nerves had
+been perfectly steady, and, when in their progress up the
+communication trench they had passed a man half disembowelled by a
+fragment of a shell, and screaming, or when, as he trod on one of
+the uneasy places an arm had stirred and jerked up suddenly through
+the handful of earth that covered it, he had no first-hand sense of
+horror: he felt rather as if those things were happening not to him
+but to someone else, and that, at the most, they were strange and
+odd, but no longer horrible.  But now, when reinforced by food
+again and comfortable beneath his fur cloak he let his mind do what
+it would, not checking it, but allowing it its natural internal
+activity, he found that a mood transcending any he had known yet
+was his.  So far from these experiences being terrifying, so far
+from their being strange and unreal, they suddenly became intensely
+real and shone with a splendour that he had never suspected.
+Originally he had been pitchforked by his father into the army, and
+had left it to seek music.  Sense of duty had made it easy for him
+to return to it at a time of national peril; but during all the
+bitter anxiety of that he had never, as in the light of the
+perception that came to him now, as the wind whistled round him in
+the dim lit darkness, had a glimpse of the glory of service to his
+country.  Here, out in this small, evil-smelling cavern, with the
+whole grim business of war going on round him, he for the first
+time fully realised the reality of it all.  He had been in the
+trenches before, but until now that had seemed some vague, evil
+dream, of which he was incredulous.  Now in the darkness the
+darkness cleared, and the knowledge that this was the very thing
+itself, that a couple of hundred yards away were the lines of the
+enemy, whose power, for the honour of England and for the freedom
+of Europe, had to be broken utterly, filled him with a sense of
+firm, indescribable joy.  The minor problems which had worried him,
+the fact of millions of treasure that might have fed the poor and
+needy over all Britain for a score of years, being outpoured in
+fire and steel, the fact of thousands of useful and happy lives
+being sacrificed, of widows and orphans and childless mothers
+growing ever a greater company--all these things, terrible to look
+at, if you looked at them alone, sank quietly into their sad
+appointed places when you looked at the thing entire.  His own case
+sank there, too; music and life and love for which he would so
+rapturously have lived, were covered up now, and at this moment he
+would as rapturously have died, if, by his death, he could have
+served in his own infinitesimal degree, the cause he fought for.
+
+The hours went on, whether swiftly or slowly he did not consider.
+The wind fell, and for some minutes a heavy shower of rain plumped
+vertically into the trench.  Once during it a sudden illumination
+blazed in the sky, and he saw the pebbles in the wall opposite
+shining with the fresh-falling drops.  There were a dozen rifle-
+shots and he saw the sentry who had just passed brushing the edge
+of his coat against Michael's hand, pause, and look out through the
+spy-hole close by, and say something to himself.  Occasionally he
+dozed for a little, and woke again from dreaming of Sylvia, into
+complete consciousness of where he was, and of that superb joy that
+pervaded him.  By and by these dozings grew longer, and the
+intervals of wakefulness less, and for a couple of hours before he
+was roused he slept solidly and dreamlessly.
+
+His spell of duty began before dawn, and he got up to go his
+rounds, rather stiff and numb, and his sleep seemed to have wearied
+rather than refreshed him.  In that hour of early morning, when
+vitality burns lowest, and the dying part their hold on life, the
+thrill that had possessed him during the earlier hours of the
+night, had died down.  He knew, having once felt it, that it was
+there, and believed that it would come when called upon; but it had
+drowsed as he slept, and was overlaid by the sense of the grim,
+inexorable side of the whole business.  A disconcerting bullet was
+plugged through a spy-hole the second after he had passed it; it
+sounded not angry, but merely business-like, and Michael found
+himself thinking that shots "fired in anger," as the phrase went,
+were much more likely to go wide than shots fired calmly. . . .
+That, in his sleepy brain, did not sound nonsense: it seemed to
+contain some great truth, if he could bother to think it out.
+
+But for that, all was quiet again, and he had returned to his dug-
+out, just noticing that the dawn was beginning to break, for the
+clouds overhead were becoming visible in outline with the light
+that filtered through them, and on their thinner margin turning
+rose-grey, when the alarm of an attack came down the line.
+Instantly the huddled, sleeping bodies that lay at the side of the
+trench started into being, and in the moment's pause that followed,
+Michael found himself fumbling at the butt of his revolver, which
+he had drawn out of its case.  For that one moment he heard his
+heart thumping in his throat, and felt his mouth grow dry with some
+sudden panic fear that came from he knew not where, and invaded
+him.  A qualm of sickness took him, something gurgled in his
+throat, and he spat on the floor of the trench.  All this passed in
+one second, for at once he was master of himself again, though not
+master of a savage joy that thrilled him--the joy of this chance of
+killing those who fought against the peace and prosperity of the
+world.  There was an attack coming out of the dark, and thank God,
+he was among those who had to meet it.
+
+He gave the order that had been passed to him, and on the word,
+this section of the trench was lined with men ready to pour a
+volley over the low parapet.  He was there, too, wildly excited,
+close to the spy-hole that now showed as a luminous disc against
+the blackness of the trench.  He looked out of this, and in the
+breaking dawn he saw nothing but the dark ground of the dip in
+front, and the level lines of the German trenches opposite.  Then
+suddenly the grey emptiness was peopled; there sprang from the
+earth the advance line of the surprise, who began hewing a way
+through the entanglements, while behind the silhouette of the
+trenches was broken into a huddled, heaving line of men.  Then came
+the order to fire, and he saw men dropping and falling out of
+sight, and others coming on, and yet again others.  These, again,
+fell, but others (and now he could see the gleam of bayonets) came
+nearer, bursting and cutting their way through the wires.  Then,
+from opposite to right and left sounded the crack of rifles, and
+the man next to Michael gave one grunt, and fell back into the
+trench, moving no more.
+
+Just immediately opposite were the few dozen men whose part it was
+to cut through the entanglements.  They kept falling and passing
+out of sight, while others took their places.  And then, for some
+reason, Michael found himself singling out just one of these, much
+in advance of the others, who was now close to the parapet.  He was
+coming straight on him, and with a leap he cleared the last line of
+wire and towered above him.  Michael shot him with his revolver as
+he stood but three yards from him, and he fell right across the
+parapet with head and shoulders inside the trench.  And, as he
+dropped, Michael shouted, "Got him!" and then he looked.  It was
+Hermann.
+
+Next moment he had scaled the side of the trench and, exerting all
+his strength, was dragging him over into safety.  The advance of
+this section, who were to rush the trench, had been stopped, and
+again from right and left the rifle-fire poured out on the heads
+that appeared above the parapet.  That did not seem to concern him;
+all he had to do that moment was to get Hermann out of fire, and
+just as he dragged his legs over the parapet, so that his weight
+fell firm and solid on to him, he felt what seemed a sharp tap on
+his right arm, and could not understand why it had become suddenly
+powerless.  It dangled loosely from somewhere above the elbow, and
+when he tried to move his hand he found he could not.
+
+Then came a stab of hideous pain, which was over almost as soon as
+he had felt it, and he heard a man close to him say, "Are you hit,
+sir?"
+
+It was evident that this surprise attack had failed, for five
+minutes afterwards all was quiet again.  Out of the grey of dawn it
+had come, and before dawn was rosy it was over, and Michael with
+his right arm numb but for an occasional twinge of violent agony
+that seemed to him more like a scream or a colour than pain, was
+leaning over Hermann, who lay on his back quite still, while on his
+tunic a splash of blood slowly grew larger.  Dawn was already rosy
+when he moved slightly and opened his eyes.
+
+"Lieber Gott, Michael!" he whispered, his breath whistling in his
+throat.  "Good morning, old boy!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Three weeks later, Michael was sitting in his rooms in Half Moon
+Street, where he had arrived last night, expecting Sylvia.  Since
+that attack at dawn in the trenches, he had been in hospital in
+France while his arm was mending.  The bone had not been broken,
+but the muscles had been so badly torn that it was doubtful whether
+he would ever recover more than a very feeble power in it again.
+In any case, it would take many months before he recovered even the
+most elementary use of it.
+
+Those weeks had been a long-drawn continuous nightmare, not from
+the effect of the injury he had undergone, nor from any nervous
+breakdown, but from the sense of that which inevitably hung over
+him.  For he knew, by an inward compulsion of his mind that
+admitted of no argument, that he had to tell Sylvia all that had
+happened in those ten minutes while the grey morning grew rosy.
+This sense of compulsion was deaf to all reasoning, however
+plausible.  He knew perfectly well that unless he told Sylvia who
+it was whom he had shot at point-blank range, as he leaped the last
+wire entanglement, no one else ever could.  Hermann was buried now
+in the same grave as others who had fallen that morning: his name
+would be given out as missing from the Bavarian corps to which he
+belonged, and in time, after the war was over, she would grow to
+believe that she would never see him again.
+
+But the sheer impossibility of letting this happen, though it
+entailed nothing on him except the mere abstention from speech,
+took away the slightest temptation that silence offered.  He knew
+that again and again Sylvia would refer to Hermann, wondering where
+he was, praying for his safety, hoping perhaps even that, like
+Michael, he would be wounded and thus escape from the inferno at
+the front, and it was so absolutely out of the question that he
+should listen to this, try to offer little encouragements, wonder
+with her whether he was not safe, that even in his most depressed
+and shrinking hours he never for a moment contemplated silence.
+Certainly he had to tell her that Hermann was dead, and to account
+for the fact that he knew him to be dead.  And in the long watches
+of the wakeful night, when his mind moved in the twilight of
+drowsiness and fever and pain, it was here that a certain
+temptation entered.  For it was easy to say (and no one could ever
+contradict him) that some man near him, that one perhaps who had
+fallen back with a grunt, had killed Hermann on the edge of the
+trench.  Humanly speaking, there was no chance at all of that
+innocent falsehood being disproved.  In the scurry and wild
+confusion of the attack none but he would remember exactly what had
+happened, and as he thought of that tossing and turning, it seemed
+to one part of his mind that the innocence of that falsehood would
+even be laudable, be heroic.  It would save Sylvia the horrible
+shock of knowing that her lover had killed her brother; it would
+save her all that piercing of the iron into her soul that must
+inevitably be suffered by her if she knew the truth.  And who could
+tell what effect the knowledge of the truth would have on her?
+Michael felt that it was at the least possible that she could never
+bear to see him again, still less sleep in the arms of the one who
+had killed her brother.  That knowledge, even if she could put it
+out of mind in pity and sorrow for Michael, would surely return and
+return again, and tear her from him sobbing and trembling.  There
+was all to risk in telling her the truth; sorrow and bitterness for
+her and for him separation and a lifelong regret were piled up in
+the balance against the unknown weight of her love.  Indeed, there
+was love on both sides of that balance.  Who could tell how the
+gold weighed against the gold?
+
+Yet, after those drowsy, pain-streaked nights, when the sober light
+of dawn crept in at the windows, then, morning after morning,
+Michael knew that the inward compulsion was in no way weakened by
+all the reasons that he had urged.  It remained ruthless and
+tender, a still small voice that was heard after the whirlwind and
+the fire.  For the very reason why he longed to spare Sylvia this
+knowledge, namely, that they loved each other, was precisely the
+reason why he could not spare her.  Yet it seemed so wanton, so
+useless, so unreasonable to tell her, so laden with a risk both for
+him and her that no standard could measure.  But he no more
+contemplated--except in vain imagination--making up some ingenious
+story of this kind which would account for his knowledge of
+Hermann's death than he contemplated keeping silence altogether.
+It was not possible for him not to tell her everything, though,
+when he pictured himself doing so, he found himself faced by what
+seemed an inevitable impossibility.  Though he did not see how his
+lips could frame the words, he knew they had to.  Yet he could not
+but remember how mere reports in the paper, stories of German
+cruelty and what not, had overclouded the serenity of their love.
+What would happen when this news, no report or hearsay, came to
+her?
+
+He had not heard her foot on the stairs, nor did she wait for his
+servant to announce her; but, a little before her appointed time,
+she burst in upon him midway between smiles and tears, all
+tenderness.
+
+"Michael, my dear, my dear," she cried, "what a morning for me!
+For the first time to-day when I woke, I forgot about the war.  And
+your poor arm?  How goes it?  Oh, I will take care, but I must and
+will have you in my arms."
+
+He had risen to greet her, and softly and gently she put her arms
+round his neck, drawing his head to her.
+
+"Oh, my Michael!" she whispered.  "You've come back to me.  Lieber
+Gott, how I have longed for you!"
+
+"Lieber Gott!"  When last had he heard those words?  He had to tell
+her.  He would tell her in a minute or two.  Perhaps she would
+never hold him like that again.  He could not part with her at the
+very moment he had got her.
+
+"You look ever so well, Michael," she said, "in spite of your
+wound.  You're so brown and lean and strong.  And oh, how I have
+wanted you!  I never knew how much till you went away."
+
+Looking at her, feeling her arms round him, Michael felt that what
+he had to say was beyond the power of his lips to utter.  And yet,
+here in her presence, the absolute necessity of telling her climbed
+like some peak into the ample sunrise far above the darkness and
+the mists that hung low about it.
+
+"And what lots you must have to tell me," she said.  "I want to
+hear all--all."
+
+Suddenly Michael put up his left hand and took away from his neck
+the arm that encircled it.  But he did not let go of it.  He held
+it in his hand.
+
+"I have to tell you one thing at once," he said.  She looked at
+him, and the smile that burned in her eyes was extinguished.  From
+his gesture, from his tone, she knew that he spoke of something as
+serious as their love.
+
+"What is it?" she said.  "Tell me, then."
+
+He did not falter, but looked her full in the face.  There was no
+breaking it to her, or letting her go through the gathering
+suspense of guessing.
+
+"It concerns Hermann," he said.  "It concerns Hermann and me.  The
+last morning that I was in the trenches, there was an attack at
+dawn from the German lines.  They tried to rush our trench in the
+dark.  Hermann led them.  He got right up to the trench.  And I
+shot him.  I did not know, thank God!"
+
+Suddenly Michael could not bear to look at her any more.  He put
+his arm on the table by him and, leaning his head on it, covering
+his eyes he went on.  But his voice, up till now quite steady,
+faltered and failed, as the sobs gathered in his throat.
+
+"He fell across the parapet close to me, "he said. . . .  "I lifted
+him somehow into our trench. . . .  I was wounded, then. . . .  He
+lay at the bottom of the trench, Sylvia. . . .  And I would to God
+it had been I who lay there. . . .  Because I loved him. . . .
+Just at the end he opened his eyes, and saw me, and knew me.  And
+he said--oh, Sylvia, Sylvia!--he said 'Lieber Gott, Michael.  Good
+morning, old boy.'  And then he died. . . .  I have told you."
+
+And at that Michael broke down utterly and completely for the first
+time since the morning of which he spoke, and sobbed his heart out,
+while, unseen to him, Sylvia sat with hands clasped together and
+stretched towards him.  Just for a little she let him weep his
+fill, but her yearning for him would not be withstood.  She knew
+why he had told her, her whole heart spoke of the hugeness of it.
+
+Then once more she laid her arm on his neck.
+
+"Michael, my heart!" she said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Michael by E. F. Benson
+
diff --git a/old/mikel10.zip b/old/mikel10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3623616
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/mikel10.zip