ng that
triumphant career of mine. I don't know that I've much reason to laugh
at them. Really in one way poor Clarie is in a better position than me.
At least she can afford to keep the man she's living with. As for George
Ayliffe, since he gave up trying to paint the girls he was in love with,
he has become 'one of our most promising realists.'"

"He looks it," said Michael sourly.

What had happened to Stella during this last year? She had lost nearly
all her old air of detachment. Formerly a radiance of gloriously
unpassionate energy had shielded her from any close contact with the
vulgar or hectic or merely ordinary life round her. Michael had doubted
once or twice the wisdom of smoking cigars and had feared that artistic
license of speech and action might be carried too far, but, looking
back on his earlier opinion of Stella, he realized he had only been
doubtful on his own account. He had never really thought she ran the
least danger of doing anything more serious in its consequence than
would have been enough to involve him or his mother in a brief
embarrassment. Now, though he was at a loss to explain how he was aware
of the change, she had become vulnerable. With this new aspect of her
suddenly presented, he began to watch Stella with a trace of anxiety. He
was worried that she seemed so restless, so steadily bored in London. He
mistrusted the brightening of her eyes, when she spoke of soon going
back to Vienna. Then came a week when Stella was much occupied with
speculations about the Austrian post, and another week when she was
perturbed by what she seemed anxious to suppose its vagaries. A hint
from Michael that there was something more attractive in Vienna than a
new technique of the piano made her very angry; and since she had always
taken him into her confidence before, he tried to persuade himself that
his suspicion was absurd and to feel tremendously at ease when Stella
packed up in a hurry and went back with scarcely two days' warning of
her departure to Vienna.

It was a sign of the new intimacy of relation between himself and his
mother that Michael was able to approach naturally the subject of
Stella's inquietude.

"My dear boy, I'm just as much worried as you are," Mrs. Fane assured
him. "I suppose I ought to have been much more unpleasant than I can
ever bear to make myself. No doubt I ought to have forbidden her quite
definitely to go back--or perhaps I should have insisted on going back
wi