ntly came down in a Spanish
dancing-dress, in which she swayed about and rattled castanets and
banged a tambourine, while the young men sat round and applauded through
the smoke of their cigarettes. These cigarettes began to affect
Michael's nerves. Wherever he looked he could see their flattened
corpses occupying nooks. They were in the flower-pots; they littered the
grate; they were strewn on brass ash-trays; and even here and there on
uninflammable and level spots they stood up like little rakish mummies
slowly and acridly cremating themselves. Michael wondered uneasily what
Lily was going to do to entertain these voracious listeners. He hoped
she would not debase her beauty by dancing on the hearthrug like her
sister. In the end, Lily was persuaded to sing, and her voice very low
and sweet singing some bygone coon song, was tremendously applauded.

Supper-time drew on, and at last the parlour-maid came in and enquired
with a martyred air how many she should lay for.

"You must all stay to supper," cried Mrs. Haden in deafening
hospitality. "Everybody. Mr. Fane, you'll stay, won't you?"

"Oh, thanks very much," said Michael shyly, and wished that these
confounded young men would not all look at him as if they had perceived
him suddenly for the first time. Everybody seemed as a matter of course
to help to get supper ready, and Michael found himself being bumped
about and handed plates and knives and glasses and salad-bowls. Even at
supper he found himself as far as it was possible to be from Lily, and
he thought that never in his life had food tasted so absolutely of
nothing. But the evening came to an end, and Michael was consoled for
his purgatory by Mrs. Haden's invitation to call whenever he liked. In
the hall too Lily came out to see him off, and he besought her anxiously
to assure him truthfully that to all these young men she was
indifferent.

"Of course, I don't care for any of them. Why, you silly, they all think
I'm still a little girl."

Then since a friendly draught had closed the drawing-room door, she
kissed him; and he forgot all that had happened before, and sailed home
on thoughts that carried him high above the iron-bound sadness of the
Sunday night.

Some time early in the week came a letter from Stella in answer to his,
and when Michael read it he wished that Stella would come home, since
only she seemed to appreciate what love meant. Yet Stella was even
younger than Lily.

STUTTGART,