ion, too incommunicable a delight. And
suddenly it struck him that perhaps Smithers might be standing outside
the gate of this dream city, that he, too, might wish to salute the
sunrise. He blushed with shame at the thought that he had been of those
who rushed to drive him away from his contemplation.

Straightway when Michael reached his own door, he sat down and wrote to
invite Smithers to his third terminal dinner, never pausing to reflect
that so overwhelming an hospitality after such discourtesy might
embarrass Smithers more than ever. Yet, after he had worried himself
with this reflection when the invitation had been accepted, he fancied
that Smithers sitting on his right hand next to Guy Hazlewood more
charming than Michael had ever known him, seemed to enjoy the
experience, and triumphantly he told himself that contrary to the
doctrine of cynics quixotry was a very effective device.

CHAPTER VI

GRAY AND BLUE

When Michael, equipped with the prospect of reading at least fifty
historical works in preparation for the more serious scholastic
enterprise of his second year, came down for the Long Vacation, he found
that somehow his mother had changed. In old days she had never lost for
an instant that air of romantic mystery with which Michael as a very
little boy for his own satisfaction had endowed her, and with which, as
he grew older, he fancied she armed herself against the world of
ordinary life. Now after a month or two of Chelsea's easy stability Mrs.
Fane had put behind her the least hint of the unusual and seemed
exceptionally well suited by her surroundings. Michael at first thought
that perhaps in Carlington Road, to which she always came from the great
world, however much apart from the great world her existence had been
when she was in it, his mother had only evoked a thought of romance
because the average inhabitant was lower down the ladder of the more
subtly differentiated social grades than herself, and that now in Cheyne
Walk against an appropriate background her personality was less
conspicuous. Yet when he had been at home for a week or two he realized
that indeed his mother had changed profoundly.

Michael put together the few bits of outside opinion he could muster and
concluded that an almost lifelong withdrawal from the society of other
women had now been replaced by an exaggerated pleasure in their
company. What puzzled him most was how to account for the speed with
which she h