nly because of Lily that I say this. I've got a good many books you'd
enjoy, and I think I'll send them to you. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," she said, looking at him curiously.

Michael turned away from her down the gravel-path, and a moment later
slammed the door. He had only gone a few steps away, when he heard
Sylvia calling after him.

"You stupid!" she said. "You never told me Lily's address."

"I'll give you a card."

"Mr. Michael Fane," she read, "1 Ararat House, Island Road." She looked
at him and raised her eyebrows.

"You see, I expected to live there myself," Michael explained. "I told a
friend of mine, Maurice Avery, to clear up everything. The furniture can
all be sold. If you want anything for here, take it of course; but I
think most of the things will be too large for Mulberry Cottage."

"And what shall I say to Lily?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't think I should say anything about me."

"Who was the man?"

"I never saw him," said Michael. "I only saw his hat."

She pulled him to her and kissed him.

"How many women have done that suddenly like that?" she demanded.

"One--well, perhaps two." He was wondering if Mrs. Smith's kiss ought to
count in the comparison.

"I never have to any man," she said, and vanished through the door in
the wall.

Michael hoped that Sylvia intended to imply by that kiss that his offer
of help was accepted. Fancy her having read Petronius! He could send her
his Adlington's Apuleius. She would enjoy reading that, and he would
write in it: _I've eaten rose-leaves and I am no longer a golden ass._
Perhaps he would also send her his Shelton's Don Quixote.

When Michael turned out of Tinderbox Lane into the Fulham Road, each
person of humanity he passed upon the pavement seemed to him strange
with unrevealed secrets. The people of London were somehow transfigured,
and he longed to see their souls, if it were only in the lucid flashes
of a nightmare. Yet for nearly a year he had been peering into the
souls of people. Had he, indeed. Had he not rather been peering to see
in their souls the reflection of his own? He was moved by the thought of
Sylvia in London, and suddenly he was swept from his feet by the surging
against him of the thoughts of all the passers-by and, struggling in the
trough of these thoughts, he was more and more conscious that unless he
fought for himself he would be lost. The illusion fled on the instant of
its creation; and the people were themselves ag