Michael managed to avoid during the rest of the week any reference, direct or indirect, to his interrupted conversation with Mrs. Ross, though he fancied a reproachfulness in her manner towards him, especially at the moment of saying goodbye. He was not therefore much surprised to receive a letter from her soon after he was back in Carlington Road.

Cobble Place,

September 18th.

My dear Michael,

I have blamed myself entirely for what happened the other day. I should have been honoured by your confidence, and I cannot think why a wretched old-fashioned priggishness should have shown itself just when I least wished it would. I confess I was shocked for a moment, and perhaps I horridly imagined more than you meant to imply. If I had paused to think, I should have known that your desire to confide in me was alone enough to prove that you were fully conscious of the effect of anything you may have done. And after all in any sin⁠—forgive me if I’m using too strong a word under a misapprehension⁠—it is the effect which counts most deeply.

I’m inclined to think that in all you do through life, you will chiefly have to think of the effect of it on other people. I believe that you yourself are one of those characters that never radically deteriorate. This is rather a dangerous statement to make to anyone so young as you are. But I’m sure you are wise enough not to use it in justification of any wrong impulse. Do always remember, my dear boy, that however unscathed you feel yourself to be, you must never assume that to be the case with anyone else. I am really dreadfully distressed to think that by my own want of sympathy on a crucial occasion I have had to try to put into a letter what could only have been hammered out in a long talk. And we did hammer out something the other day. Or am I too optimistic? Write to me some time and reassure me a little, for I’m truly worried about you, and so indignant with my stupid self. Best love from us all,

Michael merely pondered this letter coldly. He was still under the influence of the disappointment, and when he answered Mrs. Ross he answered her without regard to any wound he might inflict.

64 Carlington Road,

Sunday.

Dear Mrs. Ross,

Please don’t bother any more about it. I ought to have known better. I don’t think it was such a very crucial occasion. The weather is frightfully hot, and I don’t feel much like playing footer this term. I’m reading Dante, not in Italian, of course. London is as near the Inferno as anything, I should think. It’s horribly hot. Excuse this short letter, but I’ve nothing to say.

Mrs. Ross made one more brief attempt to recapture him, but Michael put her off with the most superficial gossip of school-life, and she did not try again. He meant to play football, notwithstanding the hot weather, but finding that his boots were worn out, he continually put off buying another pair and let himself drift into October before he began. Then he hurt his leg, and had to stop for a while. This spoiled his faint chance for the First Fifteen, and in the end he gave up football altogether without much regret.

Games were a great impediment after all, when October’s thin blue skies and sheen of pearl-soft airs led him on to dream along the autumnal streets. Sometimes he would wander by himself through the groves of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, or on some secluded green chair he would sit reading Verlaine, while continuously about him the slow leaves of the great planes swooped and fluttered down ambiguously like silent birds.

One Saturday afternoon he was sitting thus, when through the silver fog that on every side wrought the ultimate dissolution of the view Michael saw the slim figure of a girl walking among the trees. His mind was gay with Verlaine’s delicate and fantastic songs, and this slim girl, as she moved wraithlike over the ground marbled with fallen leaves, seemed to express the cadence of the verse which had been sighing across the printed page.

The girl with downcast glance walked on, seeming to follow her path softly as one might follow through embroidery a thread of silk, and as she drew nearer to Michael out of the fog’s enchantment she lost none of her indefinite charm; but she seemed still exquisite and silver-dewed. There was no one else in sight, and now already Michael could hear the lisping of her steps; then a breath of air among the treetops more remote sent floating, swaying, fluttering about her a flight of leaves. She paused, startled by the sudden shower, and at that moment the down-going autumnal sun glanced wanly through the glades and lighted her gossamer-gold hair with kindred gleams. The girl resumed her dreaming progress, and Michael now frankly stared in a rapture. She was dressed in deepest green box-cloth, and the heavy folds that clung to that lissome form made her ankles behind great pompons of black silk seem astonishingly slender. One hand was masked by a small muff of astrakhan; the other curled behind to gather close her skirt. Her hair tied back with a black bow sprayed her tall neck with its beaten gold. She came along downcast until she was within a few feet of Michael; then she looked at him. He smiled, and her mouth when she answered him with answering smile was like a flower whose petals have been faintly stirred. Indeed, it was scarcely a smile, scarcely more than a tremor, but her eyes deepened suddenly, and Michael drawn into their dusky blue exclaimed simply:

“I say, I’ve been watching you for a long time.”

“I don’t think you ought to talk to me like this in Kensington Gardens. Why, there’s not a soul in sight. And I oughtn’t to let you talk.”

Her voice was low with a provocative indolence of tone, and while she spoke her lips scarcely moved, so that their shape was never for an instant lost, and the words seemed to escape like unwilling fugitives.

“What are you reading?” she idly asked, tapping Michael’s book with her muff.

“Verlaine.”

“French?”

He nodded, and she pouted in delicious disapproval of his learned choice.

“Fancy reading French unless you’ve got to.”

“But I enjoy these poems,” Michael declared. “As a matter of fact you’re just like them. At least you were when I saw you first in the distance. Now you’re more real somehow.”

Her gaze had wandered during his comparison and Michael, a little hurt by her inattention, asked if she were expecting somebody.

“Oh, no. I just came out for a walk. I get a headache if I stay in all the afternoon. Now I must go on. Goodbye.”

She scattered with a light kick the little heap of leaves that during their conversation she had been amassing, and with a half-mocking wave of her muff prepared to leave him.

“I say, don’t tear off,” Michael begged. “Where do you live?”

“Oh, a long way from here,” she said.

“But where?”

“West Kensington.”

“So do I,” cried Michael, thinking to himself that all the gods of luck and love were fighting on his side this afternoon. “We’ll walk home together.”

“Shall we?” murmured the girl, poised on bent toes as if she were minded to flee from him in a breath.

“Oh, we must,” vowed Michael.

“But I mustn’t dawdle,” she protested.

“Of course not,” he affirmed with almost an inflection of puritanical rigour.

“You’re leaving your book, stupid,” she laughed, as he rose to take his place by her side.

“I wouldn’t have minded, because all that’s in that book is in you,” he declared. “I think I’ll leave it behind for a lark.”

She ran back lightly and opened it to see whether his name were on the front page.

“Michael Fane,” she murmured. “What does ‘ex libris’ mean?” Yet even as she asked the question her concentration failed, and she seemed not to hear his answer.

“You didn’t really want to know, you funny girl,” said Michael.

“Know what?” she echoed, blinking round at him over her shoulder as they walked on.

“The meaning of ‘ex libris.’ ”

“But I found out your name,” she challenged. “And you don’t know mine.”

“What is it?” Michael dutifully asked.

“I don’t think I’ll tell you.”

“Ah, do.”

“Well, then, it’s Lily⁠—and I’ve got a sister called Doris.”

“How old are you?”

“How old do you think?”

“Seventeen?” Michael hazarded.

She nodded. It was on the tip of his tongue to claim kinship on the score of their similar years, but discretion defeated honesty, and he said aloofly, gazing up at the sky:

“I’m nineteen and a half.”

She told him more as they mingled with the crowds in Kensington High Street, that her mother was Mrs. Haden, who recited in public sometimes, that her sister Doris wanted to go on the stage, and that they lived in Trelawny Road.

“I know Trelawny Road,” Michael interjected, and in the gathering crowds she was perforce closer to him, so that he was fain to guide her gently past the glittering shops, immensely conscious of the texture of her dress. They emerged into wider, emptier pavements, and the wind came chilly down from Camden Hill, so that she held her muff against her cheek, framing its faint rose. Twilight drew them closer, and Michael wishful of an even less frequented pavement suggested they should cross the road by Holland Park. A moment she paused while a scarlet omnibus clattered past, then she ran swiftly to where the trees overhung the railings. It was exhilarating to follow her over the wooden road that answered to his footsteps like castanets, and as he caught up with her to fondle her bent arm. Their walk died away to a saunter, while the streetlamps beamed upon them with longer intervals of dark between each succeeding lampshine. More slowly still they moved towards West Kensington and parting. Her arm was twined round his like ivy, and their two hands came together like leaves. At last the turning she must take appeared on the other side of the road, and again she ran and again he caught her arm. But this time it was still warm with long contact and divinely familiar, since but for a moment had it been relinquished. The dim side-street enfolded them, and no dismaying passersby startled their intercourse.

“But soon it will be Trelawny Road,” she whispered.

“Then kiss me quickly,” said Michael. “Lily, you must.”

It was in the midmost gloom between two lamps that they kissed first.

“Lily, once again.”

“No, no,” she whispered.

“But you’re mine,” he called exultantly. “You are. You know you are.”

“Perhaps,” she whispered, but even as his arms drew her towards him, she slipped from his embrace, laughed very low and sweet, bounded forward, waved her muff, ran swiftly to the next lamppost, paused and blew him kisses, then vanished round the corner of her road.

But a long time ago they had said they would meet tomorrow, and as Michael stood in a maze all the clocks in the world ding-donged in his ears the hour of their tryst.

There was only one thing to do for the expression of his joy, and that was to run as hard as he could. So he ran, and when he saw two coal-holes, he would jump from one to the other, rejoicing in the ring of their metal covers. And all the time out of breath he kept saying, “I’m in love, in love, in love.”

Every passerby into whose eyes he looked seemed to have the most beautiful expression; every poor man seemed to demand that he should stay awhile from his own joy to comfort him. The lampposts bloomed like tropic flowers, swaying and nodding languorously. Every house took on a look of the most unutterable completeness; the horses galloped like Arabian barbs; policemen expanded like beneficent genii; errand boys whistled like nightingales; all familiarity was enchanted, and seven-leagued boots took him forward as easily as if he travelled a world subdued to the effortless transitions of sleep. Carlington Road stretched before him bright, kindly, beckoning to his ingress. Against the lighted entrance-hall of Number 64 Michael saw the red and amber sparrows like hummingbirds, ruby-throated, topaz-winged. The parlourmaid’s cap and apron were of snow, and the banisters of sandalwood.

Michael went to bed early that he might meet her in dreams, but still for a long time he sat by his window peering at the tawny moon, while at intervals trains went quickly past sparkling and swift as lighted fuses. The scent of the leaves lying in the gardens all along Carlington Road was vital with the airs from which she had been evoked that afternoon, and his only regret was that his bedroom looked out on precisely the opposite direction from that where now she was sleeping. Then he himself became envious of sleep, and undressed quickly like one who stands hotfooted by a lake’s edge, eager for the water’s cool.

Michael met Lily next day by the dusky corner of a street whose gradual loss of outline he had watched occur through a patient hour. It was not that Lily was late, but that Michael was so early. Yet in his present mood of elation he could enjoy communion even with bricks and mortar. He used every guileful ruse to cheat time of his determined moment. He would walk along with closed eyes for ten paces and with open eyes for ten paces, the convention with himself, almost the wager, being that Lily should appear while his eyes were closed. It would have been truly disappointing had she swung round the corner while his eyes were open. But as it still lacked half an hour of her appointment, there was not much fear of that. Then, as really her time drew near, a tenser game was played, by which Lily was to appear when his left foot was advanced. This match between odd and even lasted until in all its straightness of perfect division six o’clock was inscribed upon his watch. No other hour could so well have suited her form.

Now began the best game of all, since it was played less with himself than with fortune. Michael went to the next turning, and, hiding himself from the view of Trelawny Road, only allowed himself to peep at each decade. At a hundred and sixty-three he said “She’s in sight,” one hundred and sixty-four, “She’s coming.” The century was eliminated, too cumbersome for his fiery enumeration. Sixty-five, “I know she is.” Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine! One hundred and seventy was said slowly with an exquisite dragging deliberation. Then Michael could look, and there she was with muff signalling through the azure mists of twilight.

“I say, I told mother about you,” murmured Lily. “And she said, ‘Why didn’t you ask him to come in to tea?’ But of course she doesn’t know I’m meeting you this evening. I’m supposed to be going to church.”

Michael’s heart leaped at the thought that soon he would be able to see her in her own home among her own belongings, so that in future no conjured picture of her would be incomplete.

“Rather decent of your mother,” he said.

“Oh, well, she’s got to be very easygoing and all that, though of course she doesn’t like us to get talked about. What shall we do now?”

“Walk about, I suppose,” said Michael. “Unless we get on top of a bus and ride somewhere? Why not ride up to Hammersmith Broadway and then walk along the towing-path?”

They found a seat full in the frore wind’s face, but yet the ride was all too short, and almost by the time Michael had finished securing the waterproof rug in which they sat incapable of movement, so tightly were they braced in, it was time to undo it again and dismount. While the church bells were ringing, they crossed Hammersmith Suspension Bridge ethereal in the creeping river-mist and faintly motionable like a ship at anchor. Then they wandered by the river that lapped the dead reeds and gurgled along the base of the shelving clay bank. The wind drearily stirred the osier-beds, and from time to time the dull tread of indefinite passing forms was heard upon the sodden path. Michael could feel the humid fog lying upon Lily’s sleeve, and when he drew her cheek to his own it was bedewed with the falling night. But when their lips met, the moisture and October chill were all consumed, and like a burning rose she flamed upon his vision. Words to express his adoration tumbled around him like nightmare speech, evasive, mocking, grotesquely inadequate.

“There are no words to say how much I love to hold you, Lily,” he complained. “It’s like holding a flower. And even in the dark I can see your eyes.”

“I can’t see yours,” she murmured, and therefore nestled closer, “I like you to kiss me,” she sighed.

“Oh, why do you?” Michael asked. “Why me?”

“You’re nice,” she less than whispered.

“Lily, I do love you.”

And Michael bit his lip at the close of “love” for the sweet pain of making the foolish word more powerful, more long.

“What a funny husky voice,” she murmured in her own deep indolent tones.

“Do you like me to call you ‘darling’ or ‘dearest’ best?” he asked.

“Both.”

“Ah, but which do you like best?”

To Michael the two words were like melodies which he had lately learned to play. Indeed, they seemed to him his own melodies never played before, and he was eager for Lily to pronounce judgment.

“Why do you ask questions?” she wondered.

“Say ‘dearest’ to me,” Michael begged.

“No, no,” she blushed against his heart.

“But say which you like best,” he urged. “Darling or dearest?”

“Well, darling,” she pouted.

“You’ve said it,” cried Michael rapturously. “Now you can say it of your own accord. Oh, Lily, say it when you kiss me.”

“But supposing I never kiss you ever again?” asked Lily, pulling away from his arms. “And besides we must go back.”

“Well, we needn’t hurry.”

“Not if you come at once,” she agreed.

One more kiss, one more gliding dreaming walk, one more pause to bid the river farewell from the towering bridge, one more wrestle with the waterproof-rug, one more slow lingering and then suddenly swift escaping finger, one more wave of the muff, one last aerial salutation, and she was gone till Wednesday.

Michael was left alone between the tall thin houses of Kensington, but beneath his feet he seemed to feel the world swing round through space; and all the tall thin houses, all the fluted lampposts, all the clustering chimney-pots reeled about him in the ecstasy of his aroused existence.