d God forbid, I should be
very aggravated to find myself waltzing around as fat and funny as I am
now."

The old pagan, who had mellowed slowly with her house for company,
seemed to sit here hugging the old friend; and as she told her tales it
was difficult not to think she was playing hostess to the spirits of her
youths to ghostly Dundrearies and spectral belles with oval faces.
Michael could have listened all night to her reminiscences of dead
singers and dead dancers, of gay women become dust and of rakes
reformed, of beauties that were now hags, and of handsome young
subalterns grown parched and liverish. Sylvia egged her on from story to
story, and Lily lay languidly back in her chair. It must be after two
o'clock, and Michael rose to go.

"We'll have one song," cried Sylvia, and she pulled Mrs. Gainsborough to
the piano. The top of the instrument was hidden by stacked-up albums,
and the front of it was of fretted walnut-wood across a pleating of
claret-colored silk.

Mrs. Gainsborough, pounding with her fat fingers the keys that seemed in
comparison so frail and old, sang in a wheezy pipe of a voice: _The
Captain with his Whiskers took a Sly Glance at Me._

"But you only get me to do it, so as you can have a good laugh at me
behind my back," she declared, swinging round upon the stool to face
Sylvia when she had finished.

"Nothing of the sort, you fat old darling. We do it because we like it."

"Bless your heart, my dearie." She laid a hand on Sylvia's for an
instant. Michael thanked Mrs. Gainsborough for the entertainment, and
asked Sylvia if she thought he might come round to-morrow and take Lily
and her out to lunch.

"We can lunch to-morrow, can't we?" Sylvia asked, tugging at Lily's arm,
for she was now fast asleep.

"Is Michael going? Yes, we can lunch with him to-morrow," Lily yawned.

He promised to call for them about midday. It seemed ridiculous to shake
hands so formally with Lily, and he hoped she would suggest that the
outside door was difficult to open. Alas, it was Sylvia who came to
speed his departure.

The fog was welcome to Michael for his going home. At this hour of the
night there was not a sound of anything, and he could walk on, dreaming
undisturbed. He supposed he would arrive ultimately at Cheyne Walk. But
he did not care. He would have been content to fill the long winter
night with his fancies. Plunging his hands down into the pockets of his
overcoat, he discovered that he