any of the smaller halls. Couldn't I appear first at one
of the big orchestral concerts at King's Hall? I would like to play a
Concerto ... Chopin, I think, and nothing else. Then later on I could
have a concert all to myself, and play Schumann, and perhaps some
Brahms."

So in the end it was settled after numberless interviews, letters,
fixtures, cancellations, and all the fuming impediments of art's first
presentation at the court of the world.

The affairs and arrangements connected with Stella's career seemed to
Michael the proper distraction for his mother and sister during his last
two or three weeks of school, before they could leave London. Mrs. Fane
had suggested they should go to Switzerland in August, staying at
Lucerne, so that Stella would not be hindered in her steady practice.

Michael's last week at school was a curiously unreal experience. As fast
as he marshalled the correct sentiments with which to approach the last
hours of a routine that had continued for ten years, so fast did they
break up in futile disorder. He had really passed beyond the domain of
school some time ago when he was always with Lily. It was impossible
after that gradual secession, all the more final because it had been so
gradual, to gather together now a crowd of associations for the sole
purpose of effecting a violent and summary wrench. Indeed, the one
action that gave him the expected pang of sentiment was when he went to
surrender across the counter of the book-room the key of his locker. The
number was seventy-five. In very early days Michael had been proud of
possessing, through a happy accident, a locker on the ground-floor very
close to the entrance-hall. His junior contemporaries were usually
banished to remote corridors in the six-hundreds, waiting eagerly to
inherit from departed seniors the more convenient lockers downstairs.
But Michael from the day he first heard by the cast of the Laocoon the
shuffle of quick feet along the corridor had owned the most convenient
locker in all the school. At the last moment Michael thought he would
forfeit the half-crown long ago deposited and keep the key, but in the
end he, with the rest of his departing contemporaries, callously
accepted the more useful half-crown.

School broke up in a sudden heartless confusion, and Michael for the
last time stood gossiping outside the school-doors at five o'clock. For
a minute he felt an absurd desire to pick up a stone and fling it
throug