what he had set
his mind on. To-morrow was a day, and the next was another, and the
next again; and life, considered thus in days and opportunities, was
infinitely long.

He now felt not only an aversion to dwelling on his thoughts of an hour
back, but also the need of forgetting them altogether. And, in nearing
the LESSINGSTRASSE, he followed an impulse to go to Ephie and to let
her merry laugh wipe out the last traces of his ill-humour.

Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were both reading in the sitting room, and
though Johanna agreeably laid aside her book, conversation languished.
Ephie was sent for, but did not come, and Maurice was beginning to wish
he had thought twice before calling, when her voice was heard in the
passage, and, a moment later, she burst into the room, with her arms
full of lilac, branches of lilac, which she explained had been bought
early that morning at the flower-market, by one of their
fellow-boarders. She hardly greeted Maurice, but going over to him held
up her scented burden, and was not content till he had buried his face
in it.

"Isn't it just sweet?" she cried holding it high for all to see. "And
the very first that is to be had. Again, Maurice again, put your face
right down into the middle of it--like that."

Mrs. Cayhill laughed, as Maurice obediently bowed his head, but Johanna
reproved her sister.

"Don't be silly, Ephie. You behave as if you had never seen lilac
before."

"Well, neither I have--not such lilac as this, and Maurice hasn't
either," answered Ephie. "You shall smell it too, old Joan!"--and in
spite of Johanna's protests, she forced her sister also to sink her
face in the fragrant white and purple blossoms. But then she left them
lying on the table, and it was Johanna who put them in water.

Mrs. Cayhill withdrew to her bedroom to be undisturbed, and Johanna
went out on an errand. Maurice and Ephie sat side by side on the sofa,
and he helped her to distinguish chords of the seventh, and watched her
make, in her music-book, the big, tailless notes, at which she herself
was always hugely tickled, they`reminded her so of eggs. But on this
particular evening, she was not in a studious mood, and bock, pencil
and india-rubber slid to the floor. Both windows were wide open; the
air that entered was full of pleasant scents, while that of the room
was heavy with lilac. Ephie had taken a spray from one of the vases,
and was playing with it; and when Maurice chid her for though