But could Aunt Barbara understand the rapture of living which this
one week of liberty had given him? That Michael doubted. She had only
pointed out the disabilities he made for himself. She did not know
what he was capable of in the way of happiness. But he thought, though
without self-consciousness, how delightful it would be to show himself,
the new, unshelled self, to Aunt Barbara again.

A laughing couple went tapping down the street below his window, boy and
girl, with arms and waists interlaced. They were laughing at nothing at
all, except that they were boy and girl together and it was all glorious
fun. But the sight of them gave Michael a sudden spasm of envy. With all
this enlightenment that had come to him during this last week, there had
come no gleam of what that simplest and commonest aspect of human nature
meant. He had never felt towards a girl what that round-faced German
boy felt. He was not sure, but he thought he disliked girls; they meant
nothing to him, anyhow, and the mere thought of his arm round a girl's
waist only suggested a very embarrassing attitude. He had nothing to
say to them, and the knowledge of his inability filled him with
an uncomfortable sense of his want of normality, just as did the
consciousness of his long arms and stumpy legs.

There was a night he remembered when Francis had insisted that he should
go with him to a discreet little supper party after an evening at
the music-hall. There were just four of them--he, Francis, and two
companions--and he played the role of sour gooseberry to his cousin,
who, with the utmost gaiety, had proved himself completely equal to the
inauspicious occasion, and had drank indiscriminately out of both the
girls' glasses, and lit cigarettes for them; and, after seeing them both
home, had looked in on Michael, and gone into fits of laughter at his
general incompatibility.

The steps and conversation passed round the corner, and Michael,
stretching his bare toes on to the cool balcony, resumed his
researches--those joyful, unegoistic researches into himself. His
liberty was bound up with his music; the first gave the key to the
second. Often as he had rested, so to speak, in oases of music in
London, they were but a pause from the desert of his uncongenial life
into the desert again. But now the desert was vanished, and the oasis
stretched illimitable to the horizon in front of him. That was where,
for the future, his life was to be passed, not