all boats. And there's the
lighthouse," he pointed to the campanile of Westminster Chapel.

"The sun sets just behind your lighthouse, which is a very bad simile
for anything so obscurantist as the Roman Church," said Maurice. "We're
having such wonderful green dusks now. This is really a room made for a
secret love-affair, you know. Such nights. Such sunny summer days. What
is it Browning says? Something about sparrows on a housetop lonely. We
two were sparrows. You know the poem I mean. Well, no doubt soon I shall
meet the girl who's meant to share this with me. Then I really think I
could work."

Michael nodded absently. He was wondering if an attic like this were not
the solution of what might happen to him and Lily when they were
married. Whatever bitterness London had given her would surely be driven
out by life in a room like this with a view like this. They would be
suspended celestially above all that was worst in London, and yet they
would be most essentially and intimately part of it. The windows of the
city would come twinkling into life as incomprehensibly as the stars.
Whatever bitterness she had guarded would vanish, because to see her in
a room like this would be to love her. How well he understood Maurice's
desire for a secret love-affair here. Nobody wanted a girl to perfect
Plashers Mead. Even Guy's fairy child at Plashers Mead had seemed an
intrusion; but here, to protect one's loneliness against the
overpowering contemplation of the life around, love was a necessity. And
perhaps Maurice would begin to justify the ambition his friends had for
his career. It might be so. Perhaps himself might find an inspiration in
an attic high up over roofs. It might be. It might be so.

"What are you thinking about?" Maurice asked.

"I was thinking you were probably right," said Michael.

Maurice looked pleasantly surprised. He was rather accustomed to be
snubbed when he told Michael of his desire for feminine companionship.

"I don't want to get married, you know," he hastily added.

"That would depend," said Michael. "If one married what is called an
impossible person and lived up here, it ought to be romantic enough to
make marriage rather more exciting than any silvery invitation to St.
Thomas' Church at half-past two."

"But why are you so keen about marriage?" Maurice demanded.

"Well, it has certain advantages," Michael pointed out.

"Not among the sparrows," said Maurice.

"Most of all among the