ake,
the impulse at the back of his resolve had been his passion for her.
When he looked back at his behavior lately, a good deal of it seemed to
have been dictated by self-gratification. He remembered how deeply hurt
he had felt by Poppy's treatment of what he had supposed his chivalry.
In retrospect his chivalry was seeming uncommonly like self-satisfaction.
His friendship for Daisy; for Barnes; for the underworld; it had been
nothing but self-satisfaction. Very well, then. If self was to be the
touchstone in future, he could face that standard as easily as any
other. By the time he had reached the end of Tinderbox Lane Michael was
convinced of his profound cynicism. He felt truly obliged to Sylvia for
curing him of sentiment. He had so often inveighed against sentiment as
the spring of human action, that he was most sincerely grateful for the
proof of his own sentimental bias. He would go to Sylvia to-morrow and
say frankly that he did not care a bit what Lily had been, was now, or
would be; he wanted her. She was something beautiful which he coveted.
For the possession of her he was ready to struggle. He would declare war
upon Sylvia as upon a rival. She should be rather surprised to-morrow
morning, Michael thought, congratulating himself upon this new and
ruthless policy.

On the next morning, however, all Michael's plans for his future
behavior were knocked askew by being unable to get into Mulberry
Cottage. His brutal frankness; his cynical egotism; his cold resolution,
were ignominiously repulsed by a fast-closed door. Ringing a bell at
intervals of a minute was a very undignified substitute for the position
he had imagined himself taking up in that small square room. This
errand-boy who stood at his elbow, gazing with such rapt interest at
his ringing of the bell, was by no means the audience he had pictured.

"Does it amuse you to watch a bell being rung?" Michael asked.

The errand-boy shook his head.

"Well, why do you do it?"

"I wasn't," said the errand-boy.

"What are you doing, then?"

"Nothing."

Michael could not grapple with the errand-boy, and he retired from
Tinderbox Lane until after lunch. He rang again, but he could get no
answer to his ringing. At intervals until midnight he came back, but
there was never an answer all the time. He went home and wrote to
Sylvia:

173 CHEYNE WALK,

S.W.

Dear Sylvia,

If you aren't afraid of being beaten, why are you afraid to