sly in through the unsashed window of
the third story gave Michael, as it lay like a boulder over Carlington
Road, a wonderful sense of Stella's establishment at home. Stella's
music-room was next to his bedroom, and when in her nightgown she came
to practise in the six o'clock sunshine Michael thought her music seemed
the very voice of day. So joyously did the rills and ripples and
fountains of her harmony rouse him from sleep that he refrained from
criticizing her apparel, and sat contented in the sunlight to listen.

Suddenly Stella wheeled round and said:

"Do tell me about Lily."

"Well, there's been rather a row," Michael began. "You see, I took her
to Hampton Court and we drove...." Michael stopped, and for the first
time he obtained a cold clear view of his behaviour, when he found he
was hesitating to tell Stella lest he might set her a bad example.

"Go on," she urged. "Don't stop."

"Well, we were rather late. But of course it was the first time, and I
hope you won't think you can drive back at eleven o'clock with somebody
because I did once--only once."

"Why, was there any harm in it?" asked Stella quickly, and, as if to
allay Michael's fear by so direct a question, one hand went trilling in
scale towards the airy unrealities of the treble.

"No, of course there was no harm in it," said Michael.

"Then why shouldn't I drive back at eleven o'clock if I wanted to?"
asked Stella, striking elfin discords as she spoke.

"It's a question of what people think," said Michael, falling back upon
Mrs. Haden's line of defence.

"Bother people!" cried Stella, and immediately she put them in their
place somewhere very far down in the bass.

"Well, anyway," said Michael, "I understood what Mrs. Haden meant, and
I've agreed not to see Lily until after I leave school."

"And then?"

"Well, then I shall see her," said Michael.

"And drive back at eleven o'clock in hansoms?"

"Not unless I can be engaged," Michael surrendered to convention.

"And don't you mind?"

"Of course I mind," he confessed gloomily.

"Why did you agree, then?" Stella asked.

"I had to think about Lily, just as I should have to think about you,"
he challenged.

"Darling Michael, I love you dreadfully, but I really should not pay the
least little tiny bit of attention to you--or anybody else, if that's
any consolation," she added. "As it happens, I've never yet met anybody
with whom I'd care to drive about in a hansom at eleven o