d, she flung
herself on him, with fingers eager for the touch of his solidity. . . .

"Oh, my dear," she said. "I have longed for you, just longed for you.
I never wanted you so much. I have been sitting in the dark
desolate--desolate. And oh! my darling, what a beast I am to think of
nothing but myself. I am ashamed. What of your mother, Michael?"

She turned on the light as they walked back across the studio, and
Michael saw that her eyes, which were a little dazzled by the change
from the dark into the light, were dim with unshed tears, and her hands
clung to him as never before had they clung. She needed him now with
that imperative need which in trouble can only turn to love for comfort.
She wanted that only; the fact of him with her, in this land in which
she had suddenly become an alien, an enemy, though all her friends
except Hermann were here. And instantaneously, as a baby at the breast,
she found that all his strength and serenity were hers.

They sat down on the sofa by the piano, side by side, with hands
intertwined before Michael answered. He looked up at her as he spoke,
and in his eyes was the quiet of love and death.

"My mother died an hour ago," he said. "I was with her, and as I had
longed might happen, she came back to me before she died. For two or
three minutes she was herself. And then she said to me, 'My son,' and
soon she ceased breathing."

"Oh, Michael," she said, and for a little while there was silence, and
in turn it was her presence that he clung to. Presently he spoke again.

"Sylvia, I'm so frightfully hungry," he said. "I don't think I've eaten
anything since breakfast. May we go and forage?"

"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried. "Yes, let's go and see what there is."

Instantly she busied herself.

"Hermann left the cellar key on the chimney-piece, Michael," she said.
"Get some wine out, dear. Mother and I don't drink any. And there's some
ham, I know. While you are getting wine, I'll broil some. And there
were some strawberries. I shall have some supper with you. What a good
thought! And you must be famished."

As they ate they talked perfectly simply and naturally of the hundred
associations which this studio meal at the end of the evening called
up concerning the Sunday night parties. There was an occasion on which
Hermann tried to recollect how to mull beer, with results that smelled
like a brickfield; there was another when a poached egg had fallen,
exploding softly as it