as the sea-sound conjured by a shell. Here were
gathered people who worked always in that circumfluent inspiration, that
murmur of liberty, that whisper of humanity. What could Oxford give but
the bells of out-worn beliefs, and the patter of aimless footsteps? How
right Stella had been to say that academic perfection was vain without
the breath of life. How right she was to find in George Ayliffe someone
whose artistic sympathy would urge her on to achievements impossible to
attain under Alan's admiration for mere fingers and wrists.

Michael watched this favorite of his sister all through the evening. He
tried to think that Ayliffe's cigarette-stained fingers were not so very
unpleasant, that Ayliffe's cadaverous exterior was just a noble
melancholy, that Ayliffe's high pointed head did not betray an almost
insufferable self-esteem, and, what was the hardest task of all, he
tried to persuade himself that Ayliffe's last portrait of Stella had not
transformed his splendidly unconcerned sister into a self-conscious
degenerate.

"How do you like George's picture of Stella?"

The direct inquiry close to his ear startled Michael. He had been
leaning back in his chair, listening vaguely to the hum of the guests'
conversation and getting from it nothing more definite than a sense of
the extraordinary ease of social intercourse under these conditions.
Looking round, he saw that Clarissa Vine had come to sit next to him and
he felt half nervous of this concentrated gaze that so evidently
betokened a determination to probe life and art and incidentally himself
to the very roots.

"I think it's a little thin, don't you?" said Clarie.

Michael hated to have his opinion of a painting invited, and he resented
the painter's jargon that always seemed to apply equally to the subject
and the medium. It was impossible to tell from Miss Vine's question
whether she referred to Stella's figure or to Ayliffe's expenditure upon
paint.

"I don't think it's very like Stella," Michael replied, and consoled
himself for the absence of subtlety or cleverness in such an answer by
the fact that at least it was a direct statement of what he thought.

"I know what you mean," said Clarissa, nodding seriously.

Michael hoped that, she did. He could not conceive an affirmation of
personal opinion delivered more plainly.

"You mean he's missed the other Stella," said Clarissa.

Michael bowed remotely. He told himself that contradiction or even
q