u."

The music-room, with its spare and austere decoration, seemed to Michael
a fit place for the quiet contemplation of the tale of love he had
lately heard.

Whatever of false shame, of self-consciousness, of shock remained was
driven away by Stella's triumphant music. It was as if he were sitting
beneath a mountain waterfall that, graceful and unsubstantial as
wind-blown tresses, was yet most incomparably strong, and wrought an
ice-cold, a stern purification.

Then Stella played with healing gentleness, and Michael in the darkness
kissed his mother and stole away to bed, not to dream of Lily that
night, not to toss enfevered, but quietly to lie awake, devising how to
show his mother that he loved her as much now as he had loved her in the
dim sunlight of most early childhood.

About ten days later Mrs. Fane came to Michael and Stella with a letter.

"I want to read you something," she said. "Your father's last letter has
come."

"_We are in Pretoria now, and I think the war will soon be over.
But of course there's a lot to be done yet. I'm feeling seedy
to-night, and I'm rather sighing for England. I wonder if I'm going
to be ill. I have a presentiment that things are going wrong with
me--at least not wrong, because in a way I would be glad. No, I
wouldn't, that reads as if I were afraid to keep going_.

"_I keep thinking of Michael and Stella. Michael must be told soon.
He must forgive me for leaving him no name. I keep thinking of
those Siamese stamps he asked for when I last saw him. I wish I'd
seen him again before I went. But I dare say you were right. He
would have guessed who I was, and he might have gone away
resentful_."

Michael looked at his mother, and thanked her implicitly for excusing
him. He was glad that his father had not known he had declined to see
him.

"_I don't worry so much over Stella. If she really has the stuff in
her to make the name you think she will, she does not need any name
but her own. But it maddens me to think that Michael is cut out of
everything. I can scarcely bear to realize that I am the last. I'm
glad he's going to Oxford, and I'm very glad that he chose St.
Mary's. I was only up at Christ Church a year, and St. Mary's was a
much smaller college in those days. Now of course it's absolutely
one of the best. Whatever Michael wants to do he will be able to
do, th