a foolish schoolboy. He, the dauntless lover,
must be chained to a desk for five hours every day. A boy and girl
affair! Michael ground his teeth with exasperation. He must simply prove
by renouncing for a term his part in Lily's life that he was a schoolboy
by an accident of time. A man is as old as he feels! He would see Lily
once more, and tell her that for the sake of their ultimate happiness,
he would give her up for the term of his bondage. Other great and
romantic lovers had done the same; they may not have gone to school, but
they had accepted menial tasks for the sake of their love.

Yet in the very middle of the night when the thickest darkness seemed to
stifle self-deception, Michael knew that he had bowed to authority so
easily because his conscience had already told him what Mrs. Haden so
crudely hinted. When he was independent of school it would be different.
Michael made up his mind that the utmost magnanimity would be possible,
if he could see Lily once to tell her of his resolution. But on the next
day Lily was out, and Mrs. Haden talked to him instead.

"I've forbidden Lily to go out with you alone," she said. "And I would
prefer that you only came here when I am in the house."

"I was going to suggest that I shouldn't come at all until July--until
after I had left school, in fact," answered Michael.

"Perhaps that would be best. Then you and Lily will be more sensible."

"Good-bye," said Michael hurriedly, for he felt that he must get out of
this stifling room, away from this overwhelming woman with her loud
voice and dyed hair and worldly-wise morality. Then he had a sudden
conception of himself as part of a scene, perceiving himself in the role
of the banished lover nobly renouncing all. "I won't write to her. I
won't make any attempt to see her," he offered.

"You'll understand," said Mrs. Haden, "that I'm afraid of--that I
think," she corrected, "it is quite likely that Lily is just as bad for
you as you are for Lily. But of course the real reason I feel I ought to
interfere is on account of what people say. If Mr. Haden were not in
Burmah ... it would be different."

Michael pitied himself profoundly for the rest of that day; but after a
long luxury of noble grief the image of Lily came to agitate and
disconcert his acquiescence, and the insurgent fevers of love goaded his
solitude.

Mrs. Fane and Stella returned during the first week of school. The great
Steinway Grand that came laboriou