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.