had seemed to him, to show himself, to let himself out.
And not till now, when he had found this means of access, did he know
how passionately he had desired it, nor how immensely, in the process
of so doing, his desire had grown. He must find out more ways, other
channels of projecting himself. The need for that, as of a diver
throwing himself into the empty air and the laughing waters below him,
suddenly took hold of him.

He took a clean sheet of music paper, into which he placed his pages,
and with a pleasurable sense of pomp wrote in the centre of it:

VARIATIONS ON AN AIR.

By

Michael Comber.

He paused a moment, then took up his pen again.

"Dedicated to Sylvia Falbe," he wrote at the top.

CHAPTER VII

Michael had been so engrossingly employed since his return to London in
the autumn that the existence of other ties and other people apart from
those immediately connected with his work had worn a very shadow-like
aspect. He had, it is true, written with some regularity to his mother,
finding, somewhat to his dismay, how very slight the common ground
between them was for purposes of correspondence. He could outline the
facts that he had been to several concerts, that he had seen much of
his music-master, that he had been diligent at his work, but he realised
that there was nothing in detail about those things that could possibly
interest her, and that nothing except them really interested him. She
on her side had little to say except to record the welfare of Petsy, to
remark on the beauty of October, and tell him how many shooting parties
they had had.

His correspondence with his father had been less frequent, and
absolutely one-sided, since Lord Ashbridge took no notice at all of his
letters. Michael regretted this, as showing that he was still outcast,
but it cannot be said to have come between him and the sunshine, for he
had begun to manufacture the sunshine within, that internal happiness
which his environment and way of life produced, which seemed to be
independent of all that was not directly connected with it. But a letter
which he received next morning from his mother stated, in addition to
the fact that Petsy had another of her tiresome bilious attacks (poor
lamb), that his father and she thought it right that he should come down
to Ashbridge for Christmas. It conveyed the sense that at this joyful
season a truce, probably limited in duration, and, even while it las