ing his very soul.
There was a voice in the glimmering hall, but not her voice. Nor was it
her form that hurried down the steps. It was only the infinitely
fortunate maidservant whose progress to the letter-box he watched with a
sickening disappointment. There went one who every day could see Lily.
Every morning she was privileged to wake her from her rose-fired sleep.
Every night she could gossip with her outside the magical door of her
room. Lily must sometimes descend into the kitchen, and there they must
talk. And yet the idiotic creature was staring curiously at some
unutterably dull policeman, and wasting moments she did not appreciate.
Then a leaping thought came to Michael, that if she wasted enough time
Lily might look round the front-door in search of her. But too soon for
such an event the maidservant pattered back; the door slammed; and only
the window-panes of dull gold brooded immutably. How long before Lily
went up to bed? And did she sleep in a room that fronted the road?
Michael could bear it no longer and turned away from the exasperation of
her withheld presence; and he made up his mind that he must know every
detail of her daily life before he again came sighing ineffectively like
this in the night-time.

Michael was vexed to find that he could not even conjure Lily to his
side in sleep, but that even there he must be surrounded by the tiresome
people of ordinary life. However, there was always a delicious moment,
just before he lost complete consciousness, when the image of her
dissolved and materialized elusively above the nebulous confines of
semi-reality; while always at the very instant of awakening he was
aware of her moth-winged kisses trembling upon the first liquid flash of
daylight.

In the 'quarter' Michael suggested to Alan that he should come back to
Richmond with him, and when Alan looked a little astonished at this
Monday night proposal, he explained that he had a lot to talk over.

"I nearly came over at nine o'clock last night," Michael announced.

Alan seemed to realize that it must indeed be something of importance
and could scarcely wait for the time when they should be fast alone and
primed for confidences.

After dinner Michael proposed a walk up Richmond Hill, and without any
appearance of strategy managed to persuade Alan to rest awhile on one of
the seats along the Terrace. In this late autumnal time there was no
view of the Thames gleaming beneath the sorcery of a summe