yield herself up for once to what she felt, showing him too how
clearly she saw through his own masculine refusal to be made to feel,
and how she half-admired it--all this was in that look, and more. Then
she went out.

Stephen glanced quickly at the door, and, pursing up his lips, frowned.
He threw the window open, and inhaled the night air.

'If I don't look out,' he thought, 'I shall be having her mixed up with
this. I was an ass ever to have spoken to old Hilary. I ought to have
ignored the matter altogether. It's a lesson not to meddle with people
in those places. I hope to God she'll be herself tomorrow!'

Outside, under the soft black foliage of the Square, beneath the slim
sickle of the moon, two cats were hunting after happiness; their savage
cries of passion rang in the blossom-scented air like a cry of dark
humanity in the jungle of dim streets. Stephen, with a shiver of
disgust, for his nerves were on edge, shut the window with a slam.

CHAPTER XXVIII

HILARY HEARS THE CUCKOO SING

It was not left to Cecilia alone to remark how very white Mr. Stone
looked in these days.

The wild force which every year visits the world, driving with its
soft violence snowy clouds and their dark shadows, breaking through all
crusts and sheaths, covering the earth in a fierce embrace; the wild
force which turns form to form, and with its million leapings, swift
as the flight of swallows and the arrow-darts of the rain, hurries
everything on to sweet mingling--this great, wild force of universal
life, so-called the Spring, had come to Mr. Stone, like new wine to some
old bottle. And Hilary, to whom it had come, too, watching him every
morning setting forth with a rough towel across his arm, wondered
whether the old man would not this time leave his spirit swimming in the
chill waters of the Serpentine--so near that spirit seemed to breaking
through its fragile shell.

Four days had gone by since the interview at which he had sent away the
little model, and life in his household--that quiet backwater choked
with lilies--seemed to have resumed the tranquillity enjoyed before this
intrusion of rude life. The paper whiteness of Mr. Stone was the only
patent evidence that anything disturbing had occurred--that and certain
feelings about which the strictest silence was preserved.

On the morning of the fifth day, seeing the old man stumble on the
level flagstones of the garden, Hilary finished dressing hastily, and