"Well, I had to," said Michael.

"You're bearing up very well under the sad necessity," she sneered.

"I don't know that I am bearing up very well. I don't think that coming
to you to talk about it is a special sign of fortitude."

"What do you want me to do?" Sylvia demanded. "Get her back into your
life again? Isn't that the phrase you like?"

"Oh, no, that's unimaginable," said Michael. "You see, it was really the
second time. Once six years ago, and again now, very much more--more
utterly. You said that your temperament enables you to throw off things
and people. Mine makes me bow to what I fancy are irremediable strokes
of fate."

"Unimaginable! Irremediable! We're turning this interview into a
Rossetti sonnet," Sylvia scoffed.

"I was thinking about that poem Jenny to-day. It's funny you should
mention Rossetti."

"Impervious youth!" she exclaimed.

"It's hopeless for you to try to wound me with words," Michael assured
her, with grave earnestness. "I was wounded the day before yesterday
into complete immunity from small pains."

"I suppose you found her ..."

Michael flushed and gripped her by the wrist.

"No, no, don't say something brutal and beastly!" he stammered. "You
know what happened. You prophesied it. Well, I thought you were wrong,
and you were right. That's a victory for you. You couldn't wish for me
to be more humbled than I am by having to admit that I wasn't strong
enough to keep her faithful for six weeks. But we did agree, I think,
about one thing." He smiled sadly. "We did agree that she was beautiful.
You were as proud of that as I was, and of course you had a great deal
more reason to be proud. You did own her. I never owned her, and isn't
that your great objection to the relation between man and woman?"

"What are you trying to make me do?" Sylvia asked.

"I want you to have Lily to live with you again."

"To relieve yourself of all responsibility, I suppose," she said
bitterly.

"No, no; why will you persist in ascribing the worst motive to
everything I say? Isn't your jealousy fed full enough even yet?"

Sylvia made the garden-seat quiver with an irritable movement.

"You will persist in thinking that jealousy solved all problems," she
cried.

"Oh, don't let us turn aside into what isn't very important. You can't
care whether I think you're jealous or not."

"I don't care in so far as it is your opinion," Sylvia admitted. "But I
object to inaccurate thinking. If yo