It was almost dark when Michael reached the little station at the foot of the Downs. He was half inclined to put up at the village inn and arrive at the Abbey in the morning; but he was feeling depressed by the alteration of his plans, and longed to withdraw immediately into the monastic peace. He had bought what he needed for the couple of nights before any luggage could reach him, and he thought that with so little to carry he might as well walk the six miles to the Abbey. He asked when the moon would be up.

“Oh, not much before half-past nine, sir,” the porter said.

Michael suddenly remembered that tomorrow was Easter Sunday, and, thinking it would be as well not to arrive too late, in case there should be a number of guests, he managed to get hold of a cart. The wind blew very freshly as they slowly climbed the Downs, and the man who was driving him was very voluble on the subject of the large additions which had been made to the Abbey buildings during the last few years.

“They’ve put up a grand sort of a lodge⁠—Gatehouse, so some do call it. A bit after the style of the Tower of London, I’ve heard some say.”

Michael was glad to think that Dom Cuthbert’s plans seemed to be coming to perfection in their course. How long was it since he and Chator were here? Eight or nine years; now Chator was a priest, and himself had done nothing.

The Abbey Gatehouse was majestic in the darkness, and the driver pealed the great bell with a portentous clangor. Michael recognized the pockmarked brother who opened the door; but he could not remember his name. He felt it would be rather absurd to ask the monk if he recognized him by this wavering lantern-light.

“Is the Reverend⁠—is Dom Cuthbert at the Abbey now?” he asked. “You don’t remember me, I expect? Michael Fane. I stayed here one Autumn eight or nine years ago.”

The monk held up the lantern and stared at him.

“The Reverend Father is in the Guest Room now,” said Brother Ambrose. Michael had suddenly recalled his name.

“Do you think I shall be able to stay here tonight? Or have you a lot of guests for Easter?”

“We can always find room,” said Brother Ambrose. Michael dismissed his driver and followed the monk along the drive.

Dom Cuthbert knew him at once, and seemed very glad that he had come to the Abbey.

“You can have a cell in the Gatehouse. Our new Gatehouse. It’s copied from the one at Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire. Very beautiful. Very beautiful.”

Michael was introduced to the three or four guests, all types of ecclesiastical laymen, who had been talking with the Abbot. The Compline bell rang almost at once, and the Office was still held in the little chapel of mud and laths built by the hands of the monks.

Keep me as the apple of an eye.
Hide me in the shadow of thy wing.

Here was worship unhampered by problems of social behavior: here was peace.

Lying awake that night in his cell; watching the lattices very luminous in the moonlight; hearing the April wind in the hazel coppice, Michael tried to reach a perspective of his life these nine months since Oxford, but sleep came to him and pacified all confusions. He went to Mass next morning, but did not make his Communion, because he had a feeling that he could only have done so under false pretenses. There was no reason why he should have felt thus, he assured himself; but this morning there had fallen upon him at the moment a dismaying chill. He went for a walk on the Downs, over the great green spaces that marked no season save in the change of the small flowers blowing in their turf. He wondered if he would be able to find the stones he had erected that July day when he first came here with Chator. He found what, as far as he could remember, was the place; and he also found a group of stones that might have been the ruins of his little monument. More remarkable than old stones now seemed to him a Pasque anemone colored a sharp cold violet. It curiously reminded him of the evening in March when he had walked with Lily in the wood at Hardingham.

The peace of last night vanished in a dread of the future: Michael’s partial surrender to his mother cut at his destiny with ominous stroke. He was in a turmoil of uncertainty, and afraid to find himself out here on these Downs with so little achieved behind him in the city. He hurried back to the Abbey and wrote a wild letter to Lily, declaring his sorrow for leaving her, urging her to be patient, protesting a feverish adoration. He wrote also to Miss Harper a hundred directions for Lily’s entertainment while he was away. He wrote to Nigel Stewart, begging him to look after Barnes. All the time he had a sense of being pursued and haunted; an intolerable idea that he was the quarry of an evil chase. He could not stay at the Abbey any longer: he was being rejected by the spirit of the place.

Dom Cuthbert was disappointed when he said he must go.

“Stay at least tonight,” he urged, and Michael gave way.

He did not sleep at all that night. The alabaster image of the Blessed Virgin kept turning to a paper thing, kept nodding at him like a zany. He seemed to hear the Gatehouse bell clanging hour after hour. He felt more deeply sunk in darkness than ever in Leppard Street. At daybreak he dressed and fled through the woods, trampling under foot the primroses limp with dew. He hurried faster and faster across the Downs; and when the sun was up, he was standing on the platform of the railway station. Today he ought to have married Lily.

At Paddington, notwithstanding all that he had suffered in the parting, unaccountably to himself he did not want to turn in the direction of Ararat House. It puzzled him that he should drive so calmly to Cheyne Walk.

“I think my temperature must have been a point or two up last night,” was the explanation he gave himself of what already seemed mere sleeplessness.

Michael found his mother very much worried by his disappearance; she had assumed that he had broken his promise. He consoled her, but excused himself from staying with her in town.

“You mustn’t ask too much of me,” he said.

“No, no, dearest boy; I’m glad for you to go away, but where will you go?”

He thought he would pay an overdue visit to Cobble Place.

Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Carthew were delighted to see him, and he felt as he always felt at Cobble Place the persistent tranquillity which not the greatest inquietude of spirit could long withstand. It was now nearly three years since he had been there, and he was surprised to see how very old Mrs. Carthew had grown in that time. This and the active presence of Kenneth, now a jolly boy of nine, were the only changes in the aspect of the household. Michael enjoyed himself in firing Kenneth with a passion for birds’ eggs and butterflies, and they went long walks together and made expeditions in the canoe.

Yet every day when Michael sat down to write to Lily, he almost wrote to say he was coming to London as soon as his letter. Her letters to him, written in a sprawling girlish hand, were always very much alike.

1 Ararat House,
Island Road, W.

My dear,

Come back soon. I’m getting bored. Miss Harper isn’t bad. Can’t write a long letter because this nib is awful. Kisses.

This would stand for any of them.

May month had come in: Michael and Kenneth were finding whitethroats’ nests in the nettle-beds of the paddock, before a word to Mrs. Ross was said about the marriage.

“Stella has written to me about it,” she told him.

They were sitting in the straggling wind-frayed orchard beyond the stream: lamps were leaping: apple-blossom stippled the grass: Kenneth was chasing Orange Tips up the slope toward Grogg’s Folly.

“Stella has been very busy all round,” said Michael. “I suppose according to her I’m going to marry an impossible creature. Creature is as far as she usually gets in particular description of Lily.”

“She certainly wasn’t very complimentary about your choice,” Mrs. Ross admitted.

“I wish somebody could understand that it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m mad because I’m going to marry a beautiful girl who isn’t very clever.”

“But I gathered from Stella,” Mrs. Ross said, “that her past⁠ ⁠… Michael, you must be very tolerant of me if I upset you, because we happen to be sitting just where I was stupid and unsympathetic once before. You see what an impression that made on me. I actually remember the very place.”

“She probably has done things in the past,” said Michael. “But she’s scarcely twenty-three yet, and I love her. Her past becomes a trifle. Besides, I was in love with her six years ago, and I⁠—well, six years ago I was rather thoughtless very often. I don’t want you to think that I’m going to marry her now from any sense of duty. I love her. At the same time when people argue that she’s not the correct young Miss they apparently expect me to marry, I’m left unmoved. Pasts belong to men as well as to women.”

Mrs. Ross nodded slowly. Kenneth came rushing up, shouting that he had caught a frightfully rare butterfly. Michael looked at it.

“A female Orange Tip,” was the verdict.

“But isn’t that frightfully rare?”

Michael shook his head.

“No rarer than the males; but you don’t notice them, that’s all.”

Kenneth retired to find some more.

“And you’re sure you’ll be happy with her?” Mrs. Ross asked.

“As sure as I am that I shall be happy with anybody. I ought to be married to her by now. This delay that I’ve so weakly allowed isn’t going to effect much.”

Michael sighed. He had meant to be in Provence this month of May.

“But the delay can’t do any harm,” Mrs. Ross pointed out. “At any rate, it will enable you to feel more sure of yourself, and more sure of her, too.”

“I don’t know,” said Michael doubtfully. “My theory has always been that if a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing at once.”

“And after you’re married,” she asked, “what are you going to do? Just lead a lazy life?”

“Oh, no; I suppose I shall find some occupation that will keep me out of mischief.”

“That sounds a little cynical. Ah, well, I suppose it is a disappointment to me.”

“What’s a disappointment?”

“I’ve hoped and prayed so much lately that you would have a vocation.⁠ ⁠…”

“A priest,” he interrupted quickly, “It’s no good, Mrs. Ross. I have thought of being one, but I’m always put off by the professional side of it. And there are ways of doing what a priest does without being one.”

“Of course, I can’t agree with you there,” she said.

“Well, apart from the sacraments, I mean. Lately I’ve seen something of the underworld, and I shall think of some way of being useful down there. Already I believe I’ve done a bit.”

They talked of the problems of the underworld and Michael was encouraged by what he fancied was a much greater breadth in her point of view nowadays to speak of things that formerly would have made her gray eyes harden in fastidious disapproval.

“I feel happier about you since this talk,” she said. “As long as you won’t be content to let your great gift of humanity be wasted, as long as you won’t be content to think that in marrying your Lily you have done with all your obligations.”

“Oh, no, I shan’t feel that. In fact, I shall be all the more anxious to justify myself.”

Kenneth came back to importune Michael for a walk as far as Grogg’s Folly.

“It’s such fun for Kenneth to have you here!” Mrs. Ross exclaimed. “I’ve never seen him so boisterously happy.”

“I used to enjoy myself here just as much as he does,” said Michael. “Though perhaps I didn’t show it. I always think of myself as rather a dreary little beast when I was a kid.”

“On the contrary, you were a most attractive boy; such a wide-eyed little boy,” said Mrs. Ross softly, looking back into time. “I’ve seldom seen you so happy as just before I blew out your candle the first night of your first stay here.”

“I say, do come up the hill,” interrupted Kenneth despairingly.

“A thousand apologies, my lord,” said Michael. “We’ll go now.”

They did not stop until they reached the tower on the summit.

“When I was your age,” Michael told him, “I used to think that I could see the whole of England from here.”

“Could you really?” said Kenneth, in admiration. “Could you see any of France, too?”

“I expect so,” Michael answered. “I expect really I thought I could see the whole world. Kenneth, what are you going to be when you grow up? A soldier?”

“Yes, if I can⁠—or what is a philosopher?”

“A philosopher philosophizes.”

“Does he really? Is that a difficult thing to do, to philosopherize?”

“Yes; it’s almost harder to do than to pronounce.”

Soon they were tearing down the hill, frightening the larks to right and left of their progress.

The weather grew warmer every day, and at last Mrs. Carthew came out in a wheelchair to see the long-spurred columbines, claret and gold, watchet, rose and white.

“Really quite a display,” she said to Michael. “And so you’re to get married?”

He nodded.

“What for?” the old lady demanded, looking at him over her spectacles.

“Well, principally because I want to,” Michael answered, after a short pause.

“The best reason,” she agreed. “But in your case insufficient, and I’ll tell you why⁠—you aren’t old enough yet to know what you do want.”

“Twenty-three,” Michael reminded her.

“Twenty-fiddlesticks!” she snapped. “And isn’t there a good deal of opposition?”

“A good deal.”

“And no doubt you feel a fine romantical heroical young fellow?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, I’m not going to argue against your marrying her,” said Mrs. Carthew. “Because I know quite well that the more I proved you to be wrong, the more you’d be determined to prove I was. But I can give you advice about marriage, because I’ve been married and you haven’t. Is she dark? If she’s dark, be very cold for a year, and if she doesn’t leave you in that time, she’ll adore you for the rest of her life.”

“But she’s fair,” said Michael. “Very fair indeed.”

“Then beat her. Not actually, of course; but beat her figuratively for a year. If you don’t, she’ll either be a shrew or a whiner. Both impossible to live with.”

“Which did Captain Carthew do to you?” asked Michael, twinkling.

“Neither; I ruled him with a rod of iron.”

“But do you think I’m wise to wait like this before marrying her?” Michael asked.

“There’s no wisdom in waiting to do an unwise thing.”

“You’re so sure it is unwise?”

“All marriages are unwise,” said Mrs. Carthew sharply. “That’s why everybody gets married. For most people it is the only imprudence they have an opportunity of committing. After that, they’re permanently cured of rashness, and settle down. There are exceptions, of course: they take to drink. I must say I’m greatly pleased with these long-spurred columbines.”

Michael thought she had finished the discussion of his marriage, but suddenly she said:

“I thought I told you to come and see me when you went down from Oxford.”

“I ought to have come,” Michael agreed rather humbly. He always felt inclined to propitiate the old lady.

“Here we have the lamentable result. Marriage at twenty-three.”

“Alan married at twenty-three,” he pointed out.

“Two fools don’t make a wise-man,” said Mrs. Carthew.

“He’s very happy.”

“He would be satisfied with much less than you, and he has married a delightful girl.”

“I’m going to marry a delightful girl.”

The old lady made no reply. Nor did she comment again upon his prospect of happiness.

In mid-May, after a visit of nearly a month, Michael left Cobble Place and went to stay at Plashers Mead. Guy Hazlewood was the only friend he still had who could not possibly have come into contact with Lily or her former surroundings. Moreover, Guy was deep in love himself, and he had been very sympathetic when he wrote to Michael about his engagement.

“Do I intrude upon your May idyll?” Michael asked.

“My dear chap, don’t be so absurd. But why aren’t you married? You’re as bad as me.”

“Why aren’t you married?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Guy sighed. “Everybody seems to be conspiring to put it off.”

They were sitting in Guy’s green library. The windows wide open let in across the sound of the burbling stream the warm air of the lucid May night, where bats and owls and evejars flew across the face of the decrescent moon.

“It’s this dreamy country in which you live,” said Michael.

“What about you? You’ve let people put off your marriage.”

“Only for another two months,” Michael explained.

“You see I’m down to one hundred and fifty pounds a year now,” Guy muttered. “I can’t marry on that, and I can’t leave this place, and her people can’t afford to make her an allowance. They think I ought to go away and work at journalism. However, I’m not going to worry you with my troubles.”

Guy was a good deal with Pauline every day: Michael wrote long letters to Lily and read poetry.

“Browning?” asked Guy one afternoon, looking over Michael’s shoulder.

“Yes; The Statue and The Bust.”

“Oh, don’t remind me of that poem. It haunts me,” Guy declared.

A week passed. There was no moon now, and the nights grew warmer. It was weather to make lovers happy, but Guy seemed worried. He would not come for walks with Michael through the dark and scented water-meadows, and Michael used to think that often at night he was meeting Pauline. It made him jealous to imagine them lost in this amaranthine profundity. They were happy now, if through all their lives they should never be happy again. Yet Guy was obviously fretted: he was getting spoiled by good fortune. “And I have had about a fortnight of incomplete happiness,” Michael said to himself. Supposing that a calamity fell upon him during this delay. He would never cease to regret his weakness in granting his mother’s request: he would hate Stella for having interfered: his life would be miserable forever. Yet what calamity did he fear? In a sudden apprehension, he struck a match and read her last letter:

1 Ararat House,
Island Road, W.

My dear,

It’s getting awfully dull in London. Miss Harper asked me to call her “Mabel.” Rather cheek, I thought, don’t you think so? But she’s really awfully decent. I can’t write a long letter because we’re going to the Palace. I say, do buck up and come back to London, I’m getting bored. Love and kisses.

What indeed was the good of writing “kisses”? Michael thought, as the match fizzed out in the dewy grass at his feet. It was not fair to treat Lily like this. He had captured her from life with Sylvia, because he had meant to marry her at once. Now he had left her alone in that flat with a woman he did not know at all. Whatever people might say against Lily, she was very patient and trustful. “She must love me a good deal,” Michael said. “Or she wouldn’t stand this casual treatment.”

Pauline came to tea next day with her sisters Margaret and Monica. Michael had an idea that she did not like him very much. She talked shyly and breathlessly to him; and he, embarrassed by her shyness, answered in monosyllables.

“Pauline is rather jealous of you,” said Guy that evening, as they sat in the library.

“Jealous of me?” Michael was amazed.

“She has some fantastic idea that you don’t approve of our engagement. Of course, I told her what nonsense she was thinking; but she vowed that this afternoon you showed quite plainly your disapproval of her. She insists that you are very cold and severe.”

“I’m afraid I was very dull,” Michael confessed apologetically. “But I was really envying you and her for being together in May.”

“Together!” Guy repeated. “It’s the object of everyone in Wychford to keep us apart!”

“Do tell her I’m not cold,” Michael begged. “And say how lovely I think her; for really, Guy, she is very lovely and strange. She is a fairy’s child.”

“She is, she is,” Guy said. “Sometimes I’m nearly off my head with the sense of responsibility I have for her happiness. I wonder and wonder until I’m nearly crazed.”

“I’m feeling responsible just now about Lily. I’ve never told you, Guy, but you may hear from other people that I’ve made what is called a mésalliance. Of course, Lily has been.⁠ ⁠…” He stumbled. He could find no words that would not humiliate himself and her. “Guy, come up with me tomorrow and meet her. It’s not fair to leave her like this,” he suddenly proclaimed.

“I don’t think I can come away.”

“Oh, yes, you can. Of course. You must,” Michael urged.

“Pauline will be more jealous of you than ever, if I do.”

“For one night,” Michael pleaded. “I must see her. And you must meet her. Everyone has been so rotten about her, and, Guy, you’ll appreciate her. I won’t bore you by describing her. You must meet her tomorrow. And the rooms in Ararat House. By Jove, you’ll think them wonderful. You should see her in candlelight among the mirrors. Pauline won’t mind your coming away with me for a night. We’ll stay at Cheyne Walk.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m rather hard up just now.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, what rot! This is my expedition. And when you’ve seen her, you must talk to my mother about her. She’s so prejudiced against Lily. You will come, won’t you?”

Guy nodded a promise, and Michael went off to bed on the excitement of tomorrow’s joy.

Guy would not start before the afternoon, and Michael spent the morning under a willow beside the river. It was good to lie staring up at the boughs, and know that every fleecy cloud going by was a cloud nearer to his seeing Lily again.

Michael and Guy arrived at Paddington about five o’clock.

“We’ll go straight round from here and surprise her,” Michael said, laughing with excitement, as they got into a taxi. “She’ll have had a letter from me this morning, in which I was lamenting not seeing her for six weeks. My gad, supposing she isn’t in! Oh, well, we can wait. You’ll love the room, and we’ll all three sit out in the garden tonight, and you’ll tell me as we walk home to Chelsea what you think of her. Guy you’ve absolutely got to like her. And if you don’t⁠ ⁠… oh, but you will. It isn’t everybody who can appreciate beauty like hers. And there’s an extraordinary subtlety about her. Of course, she isn’t at all subtle. She’s simple. In fact, that’s one of the things Stella has got against her. What I call simplicity and absence of training for effect Stella calls stupidity. My own belief is that you’ll be quite content to look at her and not care whether she talks or not. I tell you, she’s like a Piero della Francesca angel. Cheer up, Guy. Why are you looking so depressed?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Guy. “I’m thinking what a lucky chap you are. What’s a little family opposition when you know you’re going to be able to do what you want? Who can stop you? You’re independent, and you’re in love.”

“Of course they can’t stop me!” Michael cried, jumping up and down on the cushions of the taxi in his excitement. “Guy, you’re great! You really are. You’re the only person who’s seen the advantage of going right ahead. But don’t look so sad yourself. You’ll marry your Pauline.”

“Yes, in about four years,” Guy sighed.

“Oh, no, no; in about four months. Will Pauline like Lily? She won’t be jealous of me when I’m married will she?”

“No, but I think I shall be,” Guy laughed.

“Laugh, you old devil, laugh!” Michael shouted. “Here we are. Did you ever see such a house? It hasn’t quite the austerity of Plashers Mead, has it?”

“It looks rather fun,” Guy commented.

“You know,” Michael said solemnly, pausing for a moment at the head of the steps going down to the front door. “You know, Guy, I believe that you’ll be able to persuade my mother to withdraw all her opposition tonight. I believe I’m going to marry Lily this week. And I shall be so glad⁠—Guy, you don’t know how glad I shall be.”

He ran hurriedly down the steps and had pressed the bell of Number One before Guy had entered the main door.

“I say, you know, it will be really terrible if she’s out after all my boasting,” said Michael. “And Miss Harper, too⁠—that’s the housekeeper⁠—my housekeeper, you know. If they’re both out, we’ll have to go round and wait in the garden until they come in. Hark, there’s somebody coming.”

The door opened, and Michael hurried in.

“Hullo, good afternoon, Miss Harper. You didn’t expect to see me, eh? I’ve brought a friend. Is Miss Haden in the big room?”

“Miss Haden is out, Mr. Fane,” said the housekeeper.

“What’s the matter? You’re looking rather upset.”

“Am I, Mr. Fane?” she asked blankly. “Am I? Oh, no, I’m very well. Oh, yes, very well. It’s the funny light, I expect, Mr. Fane.”

She seemed to be choking out all her words, and Michael looked at her sharply.

“Well, we’ll wait in the big room.”

“It’s rather untidy. You see, we⁠—I wasn’t expecting you, Mr. Fane.”

“That’s all right,” said Michael. “Hulloa⁠ ⁠… I say, Guy, go on into that room ahead. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Guy mistook the direction and turned the handle of Lily’s bedroom door.

“No, no,” Michael called. “The double doors opposite.”

“My mistake,” said Guy cheerfully. “But don’t worry: the other door was locked. So if you’ve got a Bluebeard’s Closet, I’ve done no harm.”

He disappeared into the big room, and the moment he was inside Michael turned fiercely to Miss Harper.

“Who’s is this hat?” he demanded, snatching it up.

“Hat? What hat?” she choked out.

“Why is the door of her bedroom locked? Why is it locked⁠—locked?”

The stillness of the crepuscular hall seemed to palpitate with the woman’s breath.

“Miss Haden must have locked it when she went out,” she stammered.

“Is that the truth?” Michael demanded. “It’s not the truth. It’s a lie. You wouldn’t be panting like a fish in a basket, unless there was something wrong. I’ll break the door in.”

“No, Mr. Fane, don’t do that!” the woman groaned out, in a cracked expostulation. “This is the first time since you’ve been away. And it was an old friend.”

“How dare you tell me anything about him? Guy! Guy!”

Michael rushed into the big room and dragged Guy out.

“Come away, come away, come away! I’ve been sold!”

“If you’d only listen a moment. I could⁠—” Miss Harper began.

Michael pushed her out of their path.

“What on earth is it?” Guy asked.

“Come on, don’t hang about in this hell of a house. Come on, Guy.”

Michael had flung the door back to slam into Miss Harper’s face, and, seizing Guy by the wrist, he dragged him up the steps, and had started to run down the road, when Guy shouted:

“Michael, the taxi! The taxi’s waiting with our bags.”

“Oh, very well, in a taxi then, a taxi if you like,” Michael chattered, and he plunged into it.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Cheyne Walk. But drive quickly. Don’t hang about up and down this road.”

The driver looked round with an expression of injured dignity, shook his head in exclamation, and drove off.

“What on earth has happened?” Guy asked. “And why on earth are you holding a top-hat?”

Michael burst into laughter.

“So I am. Look at it. A top-hat. I say, Guy, did you ever hear of anyone being cut out by a top-hat, cuckolded by a top-hat? We’ll present it to the driver. Driver! Do you want a top-hat?”

“Here, who are you having a game with?” demanded the driver, pulling up the car.

“I’m not having a game with anybody,” Michael said. “But two people and this top-hat have just been having a hell of a game with me. You’d much better take it as a present. I shall only throw it away. He refuses,” Michael went on. “He refuses a perfectly good top-hat. Who’s the maker? My god, his dirty greasy head has obliterated the name of the maker. Goodbye, hat! Drive on, drive on!” he shouted to the driver, and hurled the hat spinning under an omnibus. Then he turned to Guy.

“I’ve been sold by the girl I was going to marry,” he said. “I say, Guy, I’ve got some jolly good advice for you. Don’t you marry a whore. Sorry, old chap!⁠—I forgot you were engaged already. Besides, people don’t marry whores, unless they’re fools like me. Didn’t you say just now that I was very lucky? Do you know⁠—I think I am lucky. I think it was a great piece of luck bringing you to see that girl today. Don’t you? Oh, Guy, I could go mad with disappointment. Will nothing in all the world ever be what it seems?”

“Look here, Michael, are you sure you weren’t too hasty? You didn’t wait to see if there was any explanation, did you?”

“She was only going back to her old habits,” said Michael bitterly. “I was a fool to think she wouldn’t. And yet I adored her. Fancy, you’ve never seen her, after all. Lovely, lovely animal!”

“Oh, you knew what she was?” exclaimed Guy.

“Knew? Yes, of course I knew; but I thought she loved me. I didn’t care about anything when I was sure she loved me. She could only have gone such a little way down, I thought. She seemed so easy to bring out. Seeds of pomegranate. Seeds of pomegranate! She’s only eaten seeds of pomegranate, but they were enough to keep her behind. Where are we going? Oh, yes, Cheyne Walk. My mother will be delighted when she hears my news, and so will everybody. That’s what’s amusing me. Everybody will clap their hands, and I’m wretched. But you are sorry for me, Guy? You don’t think I’m just a fool being shown his folly? And at eighteen I was nearly off my head only because I saw someone kiss her! There’s one thing over which I score⁠—the only person who can appreciate all the humor of this situation is myself.”

Nearly all the way to Cheyne Walk Michael was laughing very loudly.