you she's gone away for the night. Now get on indoors
with you. You've nearly been my death."

"I say, you don't know how grateful I am to you!" Michael exclaimed,
turning round and grasping her fat hands.

Mrs. Gainsborough shouted upstairs to Lily as loudly as her
breathlessness would permit:

"I've brought you back that surprise packet I promised."

Then she vanished, and Michael waited for Lily at the foot of the
stairs. She came down very soon, looking very straight and slim in her
philamot frock of Chinese crepe that so well became her. Soon she was in
his arms and glad enough to be petted after Sylvia's rages.

"Lily, how can you bear to let Sylvia manage you like this? It's
absolutely intolerable."

"She's been horrid to me to-day," said Lily resentfully.

"Well, why do you put up with it?"

"Oh, I don't know. I hate always squabbling. It's much easier to give
way to her, and usually I don't much mind."

"You don't much mind whether we're married!" Michael exclaimed. "How can
you let Sylvia persuade you against marriage? Darling girl, if you marry
me you shall do just as you like. I simply want you to look beautiful.
You'd be happy married to me--you really would."

"Sylvia says marriage is appallingly dull, and my mother and father
didn't get on, and Doris doesn't get on with the man she's married to.
In fact, everybody seems to hate it."

"Do you hate me?" Michael demanded.

"No, I think you're awfully sweet."

"Well, why don't you marry me? You'll have plenty of money and nothing
to bother about. I think you'd thoroughly enjoy being married."

For an instant, as he argued with her, Michael wavered in his resolve.
For an instant it seemed, after all, impossible to marry this girl. A
chill came over him, but he shook it off, and he saw only her
loveliness, the eyes sullen with thoughts of Sylvia, the lips pouting at
the remembrance of a tyranny. And again as he watched her beauty, the
bitter thought crossed his mind that it would be easier to possess her
without marriage. Then he thought of her at seventeen. "_Michael, why do
you make me love you so?_" Was that the last protest she ever made
against the thralldom of passion? If it was, the blame must primarily
be his, since he had not heeded her reproach.

"Lily," he cried, catching her to him. "You're coming away with me now."

He kissed her a hundred times.

"Now! Now! Do you hear me?"

She surrendered to his will, and as he held her Mic