d. Guy Hazlewood was the only friend he
still had who could not possibly have come into contact with Lily or her
former surroundings. Moreover, Guy was deep in love himself, and he had
been very sympathetic when he wrote to Michael about his engagement.

"Do I intrude upon your May idyll?" Michael asked.

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

"Why aren't _you_ married?"

"Oh, I don't know," Guy sighed. "Everybody seems to be conspiring to put
it off."

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

"It's this dreamy country in which you live," said Michael.

"What about you? You've let people put off your marriage."

"Only for another two months," Michael explained.

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

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

"Browning?" asked Guy one afternoon, looking over Michael's shoulder.

"Yes; The Statue and The Bust."

"Oh, don't remind me of that poem. It haunts me," Guy declared.

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

1 ARARAT HOUSE,

ISLAND ROAD, W.

My dear,