ichael in accepting that appeal.
He knew with the inmost fibre of his being that, Sylvia being Sylvia,
nothing that she could say or do or feel could possibly part him from
her. When he looked at it directly and simply like that, there was
nothing that could blur the verity of it. But the truth of what she
said, the reality of that call of the blood, seemed to cast a shadow
over it. He knew beyond all other knowledge that it was there: only it
looked out at him with a shadow, faint, but unmistakable, fallen
across it. But the sense of that made him the more eagerly accept her
suggestion.

"Yes, darling, we'll never speak of it again," he said. "That would be
much wisest."

Lady Ashbridge's funeral took place three days afterwards, down in
Suffolk, and those hours detached themselves in Michael's mind from all
that had gone before, and all that might follow, like a little piece
of blue sky in the midst of storm clouds. The limitations of man's
consciousness, which forbid him to think poignantly about two things at
once, hedged that day in with an impenetrable barrier, so that while it
lasted, and afterwards for ever in memory, it was unflecked by trouble
or anxiety, and hung between heaven and earth in a serenity of its own.

The coffin lay that night in his mother's bedroom, which was next to
Michael's, and when he went up to bed he found himself listening for
any sound that came from there. It seemed but yesterday when he had gone
rather early upstairs, and after sitting a minute or two in front of
his fire, had heard that timid knock on the door, which had meant the
opening of a mother's heart to him. He felt it would scarcely be strange
if that knock came again, and if she entered once more to be with him.
From the moment he came upstairs, the rest of the world was shut down
to him; he entered his bedroom as if he entered a sanctuary that was
scented with the incense of her love. He knew exactly how her knock had
sounded when she came in here that night when first it burned for him:
his ears were alert for it to come again. Once his blind tapped against
the frame of his open window, and, though knowing it was that, he heard
himself whisper--for she could hear his whisper--"Come in, mother," and
sat up in his deep chair, looking towards the door. But only the blind
tapped again, and outside in the moonlit dusk an owl hooted.

He remembered she liked owls. Once, when they lived alone in Curzon
Street, some noise