against the lighted entrance-hall. The Salve printed
funereally upon the mat was the utterance of blackest irony. He hastily
turned down the gas, and the stairs caught a chill unreality from the
creeping dawn. The balustrade stuck to his parched hands; the stairs
creaked grotesquely to his breathless ascent. His mother stood like a
ghost in her doorway.

"Michael, how dreadfully late you are."

"Am I?" said Michael. "I suppose it is rather late. I met a fellow I
know."

He spoke petulantly to conceal his agitation, and his one thought was to
avoid kissing her before he went up to his own room.

"It's all right about my packing," he murmured hastily. "In the morning
I shall have time. I'm sorry I woke you. Good night."

He had passed; and he looked back compassionately, as she faded in her
rosy and indefinite loveliness away to her room.

Then, with the patterns of foulard ties crawling like insects before his
strained eyes, with collars coiling and uncoiling like mainsprings, with
all his clothes in one large intolerable muddle, Michael pressed the
cold sheets to his forehead and tried to imagine that to-morrow he would
be in the country.

Chapter XV: Grey Eyes

As Michael sat opposite to his mother in the railway-carriage on the
following morning, he found it hard indeed to realize that an ocean did
not stretch between them. He did not feel ashamed; he had no tremors for
the straightforward regard; he had no uneasy sensation that possibly
even now his mother was perplexing herself on account of his action. He
simply felt that he had suffered a profound change and that his action
of yesterday called for a readjustment of his entire standpoint. Or
rather, he felt that having since yesterday travelled so far and lived
so violently, he could now only meet his mother as a friend from whom
one has been long parted and whose mental progress during many years
must be gradually apprehended.

"Why do you look at me with such a puzzled expression, Michael?" asked
Mrs. Fane. "Is my hat crooked?"

Michael assured her that nothing was the matter with her hat.

"Do you want to ask me something?" persisted Mrs. Fane.

Michael shook his head and smiled, wondering whether he did really wish
to ask her a question, whether he would be relieved to know what
attitude she would adopt towards his adventure. With so stirring a word
did he enhance what otherwise would have seemed base. His mother
evidently was aware of a