go on singing
as a professional singer, and not become an amateur--the Viscountess
Comber, who sings so charmingly. I refuse to sing charmingly; I will
either sing properly or not at all. And I couldn't not sing. I shall
have to continue being Miss Falbe, so to speak."

"You say you insist on it," said Hermann; "but whether you did or not,
there is nothing more certain than that Michael would."

"I am sure he would. But by so doing he would certainly quarrel
irrevocably with his people. Even Aunt Barbara, who, after all, is very
liberally minded, sees that. They can none of them, not even she, who
are born to a certain tradition imagine that there are other traditions
quite as stiff-necked. Michael, it is true, was born to one tradition,
but he has got the other, as he has shown very clearly by refusing to
disobey it. He will certainly, as you say, insist on my endorsing the
resolution he has made for himself. What it comes to is this, that I
can't marry him without his father's complete consent to all that I have
told you. I can't have my career disregarded, covered up with awkward
silences, alluded to as a painful subject; and, as I say, even Aunt
Barbara seemed to take it for granted that if I became Lady Comber I
should cease to be Miss Falbe. Well, there she's wrong, my dear; I shall
continue to be Miss Falbe whether I'm Lady Comber, or Lady Ashbridge,
or the Duchess of anything you please. And--here the difficulty really
comes in--they must all see how right I am. Difficulty, did I say? It's
more like an impossibility."

Hermann threw the end of his cigarette into the ashes of the dying fire.

"It's clear, then," he said, "you have made up your mind not to marry
him."

She shook her head.

"Oh, Hermann, you fail me," she said. "If I had made up my mind not to I
shouldn't have kept you up an hour talking about it."

He stretched his hands out towards the embers already coated with grey
ash.

"Then it's like that with you," he said, pointing. "If there is the fire
in you, it is covered up with ashes."

She did not reply for a moment.

"I think you've hit it there," she said. "I believe there is the fire;
when, as I said, he plays for me I know there is. But the ashes? What
are they? And who shall disperse them for me?"

She stood up swiftly, drawing herself to her full height and stretching
her arms out.

"There's something bigger than we know coming," she said. "Whether it's
storm or sunshine I hav