uests had gone; and Sylvia collected a bundle
of cushions and lay full length on the floor, with her feet towards the
fire. For both of them the week was too busy on six days for them to
indulge that companionship, sometimes full of talk, sometimes consisting
of those dropped words and long silences, on which intimacy lives;
and they both enjoyed, above all hours in the week, this time that lay
between the friendly riot of Sunday evening and the starting of work
again on Monday. There was between them that bond which can scarcely
exist between husband and wife, since it almost necessarily implies the
close consanguinity of brother and sister, and postulates a certain sort
of essential community of nature, founded not on tastes, nor even on
affection, but on the fact that the same blood beats in the two. Here
an intense affection, too strong to be ever demonstrative, fortified
it, and both brother and sister talked to each other, as if they were
speaking to some physically independent piece of themselves.

Sylvia had nothing apparently to add on the subject of Michael's
maturity. Instead she just raised her head, which was not quite high
enough.

"Stuff another cushion under my head, Hermann," she said. "Thanks; now
I'm completely comfortable, you will be relieved to hear."

Hermann gazed at the fire in silence.

"That's a weight off my mind," he said. "About Michael now. He's been
suppressed all his life, you know, and instead of being dwarfed he has
just gone on growing inside. Good Lord! I wish somebody would suppress
me for a year or two. What a lot there would be when I took the cork out
again. We dissipate too much, Sylvia, both you and I."

She gave a little grunt, which, from his knowledge of her inarticulate
expressions, he took to mean dissent.

"I suppose you mean we don't," he remarked.

"Yes. How much one dissipates is determined for one just as is the shape
of your nose or the colour of your eyes. By the way, I fell madly in
love with that cousin of Michael's who came with him to-night. He's
the most attractive creature I ever saw in my life. Of course, he's too
beautiful: no boy ought to be as beautiful as that."

"You flirted with him," remarked Hermann. "Mike will probably murder him
on the way home."

Sylvia moved her feet a little farther from the blaze.

"Funny?" she asked.

Instantly Falbe knew that her mind was occupied with exactly the same
question as his.

"No, not funny at all," h