'clock, but if
I did, three o'clock in the morning would be the same as three o'clock
in the afternoon."

"Stella, you ought not to talk like that," Michael said earnestly. "You
don't realize what people would suppose. And really I don't think you
ought to practise in your nightgown."

"Oh, Michael, if I practised in my chemise, I shouldn't expect you to
mind."

"Stella! Really, you know!"

"Listen," she said, swinging away from him back to the keyboard. "This
is the Lily Sonata."

Michael listened, and as he listened he could not help owning to himself
that in her white nightgown, straight-backed against the shimmering
ebony instrument, little indeed would matter very much among those
dancing black and white notes.

"Or in nothing at all," said Stella, stopping suddenly.

Then she ran across to Michael and, after kissing him on the top of his
head, waltzed very slowly out of the room.

But not even Stella could for long take away from Michael the torment of
Lily's withheld presence. As a month went by, the image of her gained in
elusive beauty, and the desire to see became a madness. He tried to
evade his promise by haunting the places she would be likely to
frequent, but he never saw her. He wondered if she could be in London,
and he nearly wrote to ask. There was no consolation to be gained from
books; there was no sentiment to be culled from the spots they had known
together. He wanted herself, her fragility, her swooning kisses,
herself, herself. She was the consummation of idyllic life, the life he
longed for, the passionate life of beauty expressed in her. Stella had
her music; Alan had his cricket; Mrs. Ross had her son; and he must have
Lily. How damnable were these silver nights of June, how their fragrance
musk-like even here in London fretted him with the imagination of wasted
beauty. These summer nights demanded love; they enraged him with their
uselessness.

"Isn't Chopin wonderful?" cried Stella. "Just when the window-boxes are
dripping and the earth's warm and damp and the air is all turning into
velvet."

"Oh, very wonderful," said Michael bitterly.

And he would go out on the dreaming balcony and, looking down on the
motionless lamps, he would hear the murmur and rustle of people. But he
was starving amid this rich plenitude of colour and scent; he was idle
upon these maddening, these music-haunted, these royal nights that
mocked his surrender.

And in the silent heart of the night whe