had fine blowy days with Nancy up on Beachy Head above the sparkling
blue water. They caught many blue butterflies, but never the famous
Mazarin blue which legend in the butterfly-book said had once been taken
near Eastbourne.

Michael and Alan, even in the dark privacy of their room, did not speak
again of Dora and Winnie. Michael had an idea that Alan had always been
ashamed of the business, and felt mean when he thought how he had openly
told Nancy that they were his friends. Once or twice, when Michael was
lying on his back, staring up at the sky over Beachy Head, the wind
lisping round him sadly made him feel sentimental, but sentimental in a
dominion where Dora and Winnie were unknown, where they would have been
regarded as unpleasant intruders. Up here in the daisy's eye, the two
little girls in blue seemed tawdry and took their place in the
atmosphere of Michael's earlier childhood with Mrs. Frith's tales and
Annie's love-letters. For Michael the whole affair now seemed like the
half-remembered dreams which, however pleasant at the time, repelled him
in the recollection of them. Moreover, he had experienced a sense of
inequality in his passion for Dora. He gave all: she returned nothing.
Looking back at her now under the sailing clouds, he thought her nose
was ugly, her mouth flabby, her voice odious and her hair beastly. He
blushed at the memory of the ridiculous names he had called her, at the
contemplation of his enthusiastic praise of her beauty to Alan. He was
glad that Alan had been involved, however unwillingly. Otherwise he was
almost afraid he would have avoided Alan in future, unable to bear the
injury to his pride. This sad sensation promoted by the wind in the
grasses, by the movement of the clouds and the companionship of Alan and
Nancy, was more thrilling than the Pierrette's tremolo in the lantern
light. Michael's soul was flooded with a vast affection for Alan and for
Nancy. He wished that they all could stay here in the wind for ever. It
was depressing to think of the autumn rain and the dreary gaslit hours
of afternoon school. And yet it was not depressing at all, for he and
Alan might be able to achieve the same class. It would be difficult, for
Michael knew that he himself must inevitably be moved up two forms,
while Alan was only in the Upper Third now and could scarcely from being
ninth in his class get beyond the Lower Fourth, even if he escaped the
Shell. How Michael wished that Alan could