ice said.

"Except that they'll probably have retired to bed," Michael pointed out.

"I wonder if they build their nests on chimney-tops like storks,"
Maurice laughed.

"Let's ask the housekeeper," Michael said solemnly.

They went back into the drawing-room, and more than ever did it seem
exactly the room one would expect to enter after pondering that dead
water without.

"Who lives in the other flats?" Michael inquired of the housekeeper.

"There's four others," she began. "Up above there's Colonel and Mrs...."

"I see," Michael interrupted. "Just ordinary people. Do they ever go
out? Or do they sit and peer at the water all day from behind strange
curtains?"

The housekeeper stared at him.

"They play tennis and croquet a good deal in the summer, sir. The courts
is on the other side of the house. Mr. Gartside is the gentleman to see
about the flat."

She gave Michael the address, and that afternoon he settled to take
Number One, Ararat House.

"It absolutely was made to set her off," he told Maurice. "You wait till
I've furnished it as it ought to be furnished."

"And we'll have amazing fetes aqueuses in the summer," Maurice declared.
"We'll buy a barge and--why, of course--the canal flows into the Thames
at Grosvenor Road."

"Underground--like the Styx," said Michael, nodding.

"Of course, it's going to be wonderful. We must never visit each other
except by water."

"Like splendid dead Venetians," said Michael.

The fortnight of Lily's stay at Hardingham was spent by him and Maurice
in a fever of decoration. Michael bought oval mirrors of Venetian glass;
oblong mirrors crowned with gilt griffins and scallops; small round
mirrors in frames of porcelain garlanded with flowerbuds; so many
mirrors that the room became even more mysteriously vast. The walls were
hung with brocades of gold and philamot and pomona green. There were
slim settees the color of ivory, with cushions of primrose and lemon
satin, of cinnamon and canary citron and worn russet silks. Over the
parquet was a great gray Aubusson carpet with a design of monstrous
roses as deep as damsons or burgundy; and from the ceiling hung two
chandeliers of cut glass.

"You know," said Maurice seriously, "she'll have to be very beautiful to
carry this off."

"She is very beautiful," said Michael. "And there's room for her to walk
about here. She'll move about this room as wonderfully as those swans
upon the canal."

"Michael, what's happen