ly, he went
to see Mrs. Byril, and he stopped a few days with her. He was always
strict in his own room, and if Emily sought him in the morning he
reprimanded her.

She was one of those women who, having much heart, must affect more;
a weak intelligent woman, honest and loyal--one who could not live
without a lover. And with her arms about his neck, she listened to
his amours, and learnt his poetry by heart. Mike was her folly, and
she would never have thought of another if, as she said, he had only
behaved decently to her. "I am sorry, darling, I told you anything
about it, but when I got your beastly letter I wrote to him. Tell me
you'll come and stay with me next month, and I'll put him off.... I
hate this new girl; I am jealous because she may influence you, but
for the others--the Brookes and their friends--the half-hours spent
in summer-houses when the gardener is at dinner, I care not one jot."
So she spoke as she lay upon his knees in the black satin arm-chair
in the drawing-room.

But her presence at breakfast--that invasion of the morning
hours--was irritating; he hated the request to be in to lunch, and
the duty of spending the evening in her drawing-room, instead of in
club or bar-room. He desired freedom to spend each minute as the
caprice of the moment prompted. Were he a rich man he would not have
lived with Frank; to live with a man was unpleasant; to live with a
woman was intolerable. In the morning he must be alone to dream of a
book or poem; in the afternoons, about four, he was glad to
aestheticize with Harding or Thompson, or abandon himself to the charm
of John's aspirations.

John and he were often seen walking together, and they delighted in
the Temple. The Temple is escapement from the omniscient domesticity
which is so natural to England; and both were impressionable to its
morning animation--the young men hurrying through the courts and
cloisters, the picturesqueness of a wig and gown passing up a flight
of steps. It seemed that the old hall, the buttresses and towers, the
queer tunnels leading from court to court, turned the edge of the
commonplace of life. Nor did the Temple ever lose for them its quaint
and primitive air, and as they strolled about the cloisters talking
of art or literature, they experienced a delight that cannot be quite
put into words; and were strangely glad as they opened the iron
gates, and looked on all the many brick entanglements with the tall
trees rising, spr