balls?" he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It depends who we go with. Often I don't care for them much. And the
girls you see there are frightfully common."

He could not bring himself to ask her straight out what he feared. If it
were so, let it rest unrevealed. The knowledge would make no difference
to his resolution. People began to come into the cafe, shaking the wet
from their shoulders; and the noise of the rain was audible above the
conversation.

"I wish we could have had one fine day together," said Michael
regretfully. "Do you remember when we used to go for long walks in the
winter?"

"I must have been very fond of you," Lily laughed. "I don't think you
could make me walk like that now."

"Aren't you so fond of me now?" he asked reproachfully.

"You ought to know," she whispered.

All the way home the raindrops were flashing in the road like bayonets,
and her cheeks were dabbled with the wet.

"Shall I come in?" Michael asked, as he waited by the door in the wall.

"Yes, come in and have something to drink, of course."

He was stabbed by the ease of her invitation.

"Do you ask all these friends of yours to come in and have a drink after
midnight?"

"I told you that Sylvia doesn't like me to," she said.

"But you would, if she didn't mind?" Michael went on, torturing himself.

"How fond you are of 'ifs,'" she answered. "I can't bother to think
about 'ifs' myself."

If only he had the pluck to avoid allusions and come at once to grips
with truth. Sharply he advised himself to let the truth alone. Already
he was feeling the influence of Lily's attitude. He wondered if, when he
married her, all his activity would swoon upon Calypso like this. It was
as easy to dream life away in the contemplation of a beautiful woman as
in the meditation of the Oxford landscape.

"Happiness makes me inactive," said Michael to himself. "So of course I
shall never really be happy. What a paradox."

He would not take off his overcoat. He was feeling afraid of a surrender
to-night.

"I'm glad I didn't suggest staying late," he thought, as he walked away
down the dripping garden path. "I should have been mad with unreasonable
suspicions, if she had said 'yes.'"

Sylvia came back next day, and though Michael still liked her very much,
he was certain now of her hostility to him. He was conscious of malice
in the air, when she said to Lily that Jack wanted them to have dinner
with him to-night and go aft