able in this glade," he told her. "I believe, if you
were a little way off from me, I should think you were a birch tree."

The wood was rosy brown and purple. Every object had taken on rich deeps
of quality and color reflected from the March twilight. The body of the
missel-thrush flinging his song from the bare oak-bough into the ragged
sky, flickered with a magical sublucency. Michael found some primroses
and brought them to Lily.

"These are for you, you tall tall primrose of a girl. Listen, will you
let me leave you for a very few days so that I can find the house you're
going to live in? Will you not be lonely?"

"I like to have you with me always," she murmured.

He was intoxicated by so close an avowal of love from lips that were
usually mute.

"We shall be married in a month," he cried. "Can you smell violets?"

"Something sweet I smell."

But it was getting too dusky in the coppice to find these violets
themselves twilight-hued, and they turned homeward across the open
fields. Birds were flying to the coverts, linnets mostly, in twittering
companies.

"These eves of early Spring are like swords," Michael exclaimed.

"Like what?" Lily asked, smiling at his exaggeration.

"Like swords. They seem to cut one through and through with their
sharpness and sweetness."

"Oh, you mean it's cold," she said. "Take my arm."

"Well, I meant rather more than that, really," Michael laughed. But
because she had offered him her arm he forgot at once how far she had
been from following his thoughts.

Michael went up to London after dinner. He left Lily curled up before
the fire presumably quite content to stay at Hardingham.

"Not more than a fortnight, mind," were Stella's last words.

He went to see Maurice next morning to get the benefit of his advice
about possible places in which to live. Maurice was in his element.

"Of course there really are very few good places. Cheyne Walk and
Grosvenor Road, the Albany, parts of Hampstead and Campden Hill,
Kensington Square, one or two streets near the Regent's Canal, Adelphi
Terrace, the Inns of Court and Westminster. Otherwise, London is
impossible. But you're living in Cheyne Walk now. Why do you want to
move from there?"

Michael made up his mind to take Maurice into his confidence. He
supposed that of all his friends he would be as likely as any to be
sympathetic. Maurice was delighted by his description of Lily, so much
delighted, that he accepted her as a f