on," she cried petulantly. "Can't
you realize that after a year with long-haired students I want a
change?"

After dinner Michael asked her to come and play in the studio.

"Play?" she echoed. "I'm never going to play again."

"What perfect rot you are talking," said Michael, in a damnatory
generalization which was intended to cover not merely all she had been
saying, but even all she had been doing almost since she first announced
her intention of going to Vienna.

Stella burst into tears.

"Come on, let's go to the studio," said Michael. He felt that Stella's
tears were inappropriate to the dining-room. Indeed, only the fact that
she was wearing this evening frock of oyster-gray satin, and was
therefore not altogether the invulnerable and familiar and slightly
boyish Stella imprinted on his mind, prevented him from being shocked to
the point of complete emotional incapacity. It seemed less of an outrage
to fondle however clumsily this forlorn creature in gray satin, even
though he did find himself automatically and grotesquely saying to
himself "Enter Tilburina stark mad in white satin and the Confidante
stark mad in white muslin."

"Come along, come along," he begged her. "You must come to the studio."

Michael went on presenting the studio with such earnestness that he
himself began to endow it with a positively curative influence; but when
at last Stella had reached the studio, not even caring apparently
whether on the way the parlormaid saw her tears, and when she had
plunged disconsolately down upon the divan, still weeping, Michael
looked round at their haven with resentment. After all, it was merely an
ungainly bleak whitewashed room, and Stella was crying more bitterly
than before.

"Look here, I say, why don't you tell me what you're crying about? You
can't go on crying forever, you know," Michael pointed out. "And when
you've stopped crying, you'll feel such an ass if you haven't explained
what it was all about."

"I couldn't possibly tell anybody," said Stella, looking very fierce.
Then suddenly she got up, and so surprising had been her breakdown that
Michael scarcely stopped to think that her attitude was rather unusually
dramatic.

"But I'm damned if I _will_ give up playing," she proclaimed; and,
sitting down at the piano, forthwith she began to play into oblivion her
weakness.

It was a very exciting piece she played, and Michael longed to ask her
what it was called, but he was afraid to