of all this
vexation of soul she was angry with Guy because he seemed unable to
realize that they were both walking on the edge of an abyss, and that
all this abandonment of themselves to the joy of the fugitive season was
a vain attempt to cheat fate. At such an hour she was naturally jealous
that a friend's private affairs should occupy so much of Guy's
attention, when he himself was walking blindly towards the doom of their
love that now sometimes in flashes of horrible clarity she beheld at
hand. Guy, however, persisted in trying to force Michael upon her; the
jealousy such attempts fostered made her more passionate when she was
alone with him, and this, as all the while she dreadfully foresaw,
heaped up the reckoning that her conscience would presently have to pay.

One afternoon she and Margaret and Monica went to tea at Plashers Mead,
when to her sharp annoyance she found herself next to Guy's friend. She
made up her mind at the beginning of the conversation that he was
criticizing her, and, feeling shy and awkward, she could only reply to
him in gasps and monosyllables and blushes. He seemed to her the coldest
person she had ever known; he seemed utterly without emotion or
sympathy; he must surely be the worst friend imaginable for Guy. He took
no interest in anything, apparently; and then suddenly he definitely
revealed himself as the cause of Guy's ambition to conquer London.

"I think Guy ought to go away from here," he was saying. "I told him
when he first took this house that he would be apt to dream away all his
time here. You must make him give it up, Miss Grey. He's such an
extraordinarily brilliant person that it would be terrible if he let
himself do nothing in the end. Of course, he's been lucky to meet you,
and that's kept him alive, but now he ought to go to London. He really
ought."

Pauline hated herself for the way in which she was gasping out her
monosyllabic agreement with all this; but she did not feel able to argue
with Michael Fane. He disconcerted her by his air of severe judgment,
and however hard she tried she could not contradict him. Then suddenly
in a rage with herself and with him, she began to talk nonsense at the
top of her voice, rattling on until her sisters looked up at her in
surprise, while Michael, evidently embarrassed, scarcely answered. At
last the uncomfortable visit came to an end, and as she walked back with
Guy, while the others went in front, she began to inveigh aga