you? Rings are
all so dull. Perhaps your hands would look wrong with a ring, unless I
could find a star-sapphire set in silver. I thought you were lovely in
autumn, but I think you are more lovely in spring. How the days are
going by; it will soon be May. Lily, if you had the choice of everything
in the world, what would you choose?"

"I would choose to do nothing."

"If you had the choice of all the people in the world, would you choose
me?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Lily, you make me curiously lazy. I want never again to do anything but
sit in the sun with you. Why can't we stay like this for ever?"

"I shouldn't mind."

"I wish that you could be turned into a primrose, and that I could be
turned into a hazel-bush looking down at you for ever. Or I wish you
could be a cowslip and I could be a plume of grass. Lily, why is it that
the longer I know you, the less you say?"

"You talk enough for both," said Lily.

"I talk less to you than to anyone. I really only want to look at you,
you lovely thing."

But the Easter holidays were almost over, and Michael had to go to
Oxford for his Matriculation. On their last long day together, Lily and
he went to Hampton Court and dreamed the sad time away. When twilight
was falling Michael said he had a sovereign to spend on whatever they
liked best to do. Why should they not have dinner on a balcony over the
river, and after dinner drive all the way home in a hansom cab?

So they sat grandly on the chilly balcony and had dinner, until Lily in
her thin frock was cold.

"But never mind," said Michael. "I'll hold you close to me all the way
to London."

They found their driver and told him where to go. The man was very much
pleased to think he had a fare all the way to London, and asked Michael
if he wanted to drive fast.

"No, rather slow, if anything," said Michael.

The fragrant miles went slowly past, and all the way they drove between
the white orchards, and all the way like a spray of bloom Lily was his.
Past the orchards they went, past the twinkling roadside houses, past
the gates where the shadows of lovers fell across the road, past the
breaking limes and lilac, past the tulips stiff and dark in the
moonlight, through the high narrow street of Brentford, past Kew Bridge
and the slow trams with their dim people nodding, through Chiswick and
into Hammersmith where a piano-organ was playing and the golden streets
were noisy. It was Doris who opened the door.

"E