come any time:
it may be only the great change--I mean her death; but it is possible
before that that her mind will clear again. Sir James told me that
occasionally happened, like--like a ray of sunlight after a stormy day.
It would be good if that happened. I would give almost anything to feel
that she and I were together again, as we were."

Barbara, childless, felt something of motherhood. Michael's simplicity
and his sincerity were already known to her, but she had never yet
known the strength of him. You could lean on Michael. In his quiet,
undemonstrative way he supported you completely, as a son should; there
was no possibility of insecurity. . . .

"God bless you, my dear," she said.

CHAPTER XIII

One close thundery morning about a week later, Michael was sitting at
his piano in his shirtsleeves, busy practising. He was aware that at the
other end of the room the telephone was calling for him, but it seemed
to be of far greater importance at the minute to finish the last page of
one of the Bach fugues, than to attend to what anybody else might have
to say to him. Then it suddenly flashed across him that it might be
Sylvia who wanted to speak to him, or that there might be news about his
mother, and his fingers leaped from the piano in the middle of a bar,
and he ran and slid across the parquet floor.

But it was neither of these, and compared to them it was a case of
"only" Hermann who wanted to see him. But Hermann, it appeared, wanted
to see him urgently, and, if he was in (which he was) would be with him
in ten minutes.

But the Bach thread was broken, and Michael, since it was not worth
while trying to mend it for the sake of these few minutes, sat down by
the open window, and idly took up the morning paper, which as yet he had
not opened, since he had hurried over breakfast in order to get to his
piano. The music announcements on the outside page first detained him,
and seeing that the concert by the Falbes, which was to take place in
five or six days, was advertised, he wondered vaguely whether it was
about that that Hermann wanted to see him, and, if so, why he could not
have said whatever he had to say on the telephone, instead of cutting
things short with the curt statement that he wished to see him urgently,
and would come round at once. Then remembering that Francis had been
playing cricket for the Guards yesterday, he turned briskly over to the
last page of sporting news, and found that h