outside your imagination; though I could make of
her behavior such a splendid lesson for you, when you think you have
behaved dreadfully in escaping from your room for an hour or two of
moonlight. Poor Michael! he's as scrupulous as you are, and it's rather
ironical that you and he shouldn't get on. Puritans, both of you! Now
there's another friend of mine, Maurice Avery, whom you'd probably like
very much, and yet he isn't worth Michael's little finger."

"Did you see him yesterday?"

"Yes, we went round to his studio in Grosvenor Road. Oh, my dear, such a
glorious room, looking out over the river right into the face of the
young moon coming up over Lambeth. A jolly old Georgian house. And at
the back another long, low window looking out over a sea of roofs to the
sunset behind the new Roman cathedral. There were lots of people there,
and a man was playing that Brahms sonata your mother likes so much.
Pauline, you and I simply must go and live in Chelsea or Westminster,
and we can come back to Plashers Mead after the most amazing adventures.
You would be such a rose on a London window-sill, or would you then be a
tuft of London Pride, all blushes and bravery?"

"Bravery! Why I'm frightened to death by the idea of going to live in
London! Oh, Guy, I'm frightened of anything that will break into our
life here."

"But, dearest, we can't stay at Wychford for ever doing nothing. Read
'The Statue and the Bust' if you want to understand the dread that lies
cold on my heart sometimes. Think how already nearly twenty months have
gone by since we met, and still we are in the same position. We know
each other better, and we are more in love than ever, but you have all
sorts of worries at the back of your mind, and I have all sorts of
ambitions not yet fulfilled. Michael has at last managed to make a
complete ass of himself, but what have I done?"

"Your poems ... your poems," she murmured, despairingly. "Are your
poems really no use? Oh, Guy, that seems such a cruel thing to believe."

Guy talked airily of what much more wonderful things he was going to
write, and when he asked Pauline to meet him this very midnight on the
river she had to consent, because in the thought that he appeared to be
drifting out of reach of her love she felt half distraught and would
have sacrificed anything to keep him by her.

The June evening seemed of a sad, uniform green, for the blossom of the
trees was departed and the borders were not y