hael, and he marched out of the studio.

"I'll die first," retorted Maurice, grinning.

Maurice came on the landing and called, begging him to come up and not
to be so hasty, but Michael paid no attention.

"So much for 422 Grosvenor Road," he said, slamming the big front door
behind him. He heard Maurice calling to him from the window, but he
walked on without turning his head.

It was a miserable coincidence that one of his friends should know about
her. It was a disappointment, but it could not be helped. If Maurice
chattered about a disastrous marriage, why, other friends would have to
be dropped in the same way. After all, he had been aware from the first
moment of his resolve that this sort of thing was bound to happen. It
left him curiously indifferent.

A week passed. There were hundreds of daffodils blooming in the garden
round Ararat House; and April bringing an unexpected halcyon was the
very April of the poets whose verses haunted that great rococo room.
Every day Michael went with Lily to dressmakers and worshiped her taste.
Every day he bought her old pieces of jewelry, old fans, or old silver,
or pots of purple hyacinths. He was just conscious that it was London
and the prime of the Spring; but mostly he lived in the enchantment of
her presence. Often they walked up and down the still deserted garden,
by the edge of the canal. The swans used to glide nearer to them,
waiting for bread to be thrown; and Lily would stand with her hair in a
stream of sunlight and her arms moving languidly like the necks of the
birds she was feeding. Nor was she less graceful in the long luminous
dusks under the young moon and the yellow evening star that were shining
upon them as they walked by the edge of the water.

For a week Michael lived in a city that was become a mere background to
the swoons and fevers of love. He knew that round him houses blinked in
the night and that chimney-smoke curled upward in the morning; that
people paced the streets; that there was a thunder of far-off traffic;
that London was possessed by April. But the heart of life was in this
room, when the candles were lit in the chandeliers and he could see a
hundred Lilies in the mirrors. It seemed wrong to leave her at midnight,
to leave that room so perilously golden with the golden stuffs and
candle-flames. It seemed unfair to surprise Miss Harper by going away at
midnight, when so easily he could have stayed. Yet every night he went
away, ho