"On, it was a beautiful ceremony," she sobbed, when she got home. "And really Miss Dashwood, well, she couldn't have been nicer. Oh, my poor dear captain, if only all the clergyman said was true. And yet I should feel more comfortable somehow if it wasn't. Though I suppose if it was true there'd be no objection to our meeting in heaven as friends only. Dear me, it all sounded so real when I heard the clergyman talking about it. Just as if he was going up in a lift, as you might say. So natural it sounded. 'A gallant soldier,' he said, 'a veteran of the Crimea.' So he was gallant, the dear captain. You should have seen him lay out two roughs who tried to s.n.a.t.c.h me watch and chain once at the Epsom Derby. He was a gentleman, too. I'm sure n.o.body ever treated any woman kinder than he treated me. Seventy years old he was. Captain Bob Dashwood of the Seventeenth Hussars. I can see him now as he used to be. He liked to come stamping up the garden. Oh, he was a stamper, and 'Polly,' he hollered out, 'get on your frills. Here's d.i.c.k Avon--the Markiss of Avon that was' (oh, he was a wild thing) 'and Jenny Ward' (you know, she threw herself off Westminster Bridge and caused such a stir in Jubilee year). People talked a lot about it at the time. I remember we drove to the Star and Garter at Richmond that day--a lovely June day it was--and caused quite a sensation, because we all looked so smart. Oh, my Bob, my Bob, it only seems yesterday."

Sylvia consoled Mrs. Gainsborough and rejoiced in her a.s.surance that she did not know what she should have done.

"Fancy him thinking about me being so lonely and wanting you to come and live with me. Depend upon it he knew he was going to die all of a sudden," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Oh, there's no doubt he was clever enough to have been a doctor. Only of course with his family he had to be a soldier."

Sylvia mostly spent these spring days in the garden with Mrs. Gainsborough, listening to her tales about the past and helping her to overlook the labors of the jobbing gardener who came in twice a week. Her landlady or hostess (for the exact relation was not yet determined) was very strict in this regard, because her father had been a nursery gardener and she insisted upon a peculiar knowledge of the various ways in which horticultural obligations could be avoided. When Sylvia raised the question of her status at Mulberry Cottage, Mrs. Gainsborough always begged her not to be in a hurry to settle anything; later on, when Sylvia was able to earn some money, she should pay for her board, but payment for her lodging, so long as Mrs. Gainsborough was alive and the house was not burned to the ground, was never to be mentioned. That was certainly the captain's intention and it must be respected.

Sylvia often went to see Mrs. Gowndry in Finborough Road in case there should be news of Lily. Her old landlady was always good enough to say that she missed her, and in her broken-up existence the affection even of Mrs. Gowndry was very grateful.

"I've told me old man to keep a good lookout for her," said Mrs. Gowndry.

"He's hardly likely to meet her at his work," Sylvia said.

"Certainly not. No. But he often goes up to get a breath of air--well--it isn't to be expected that he wouldn't. I often say to him when he comes home a bit grumblified that his profession is as bad as a miner's, and they only does eight hours, whereas in his lavatory they does twelve. Too long, too long, and it must be fidgety work, with people bobbing in and out all the time and always in a hurry, as you might say. Of course now and again you get a lodger who makes himself unpleasant, but, year in year out, looking after lodgers is a more peaceful sort of a life than looking after a lavatory. Don't you be afraid, Miss Scarlett. If ever a letter comes for you our Tommy shall bring it straight round, and he's a boy as can be trusted not to lose anything he's given. You wouldn't lose the pretty lady's letter, would you, Tommy? You never lose nothing, do you?"

"I lost a acid-drop once."

"There, fancy him remembering. That's a hit for his ma, that is. He'd only half sucked this here acid-drop and laid it aside to finish sucking it when he went up to bed, and I must have swept it up, not thinking what it was. Fancy him remembering. He don't talk much, but he's a artful one."

Tommy had a bagful of acid-drops soon after this, for he brought a letter to Sylvia from Lily: DEAR SYLVIA,--I suppose you're awfully angry with me, but Claude went on tour a month ago, and I hate being alone. I wonder if this will find you. I'm staying in rotten rooms in Camden Town. 14 Winchester Terrace. Send me a card if you're in London.

Loving, LILY.

Sylvia immediately went over to Camden Town and brought Lily away from the rooms, which were indeed "rotten." When she had installed her at Mulberry Cottage she worked herself up to having a clear understanding with Lily, but when it came to the point she felt it was useless to scold her except in fun, as a child scolds her doll. She did, however, treat her henceforth in what Mrs. Gainsborough called a "highly dictatorial way." Sylvia thought she could give Lily the appearance of moral or immoral energy, however impossible it might be to give her the reality. With this end in view she made Lily's will entirely subordinate to her own, which was not difficult. The affection that Sylvia now had for her was not so much tender as careful, the affection one might feel for a bicycle rather than for a horse. She was always brutally frank with herself about their relation to each other, and because she never congratulated herself upon her kindness she was able to sustain her affection.

"There is nothing so fickle as a virtuous impulse," Sylvia declared to herself. "It's a kind of moral usury which is always looking for a return on the investment. The moment the object fails to pay an exorbitant interest in grat.i.tude, the impulse to speculate withers up. The lowest circle in h.e.l.l should be reserved for people who try to help others and cannot understand why their kindness is not appreciated. Really that was Philip's trouble. He never got over being hurt that I didn't perpetually remind him of his splendid behavior toward me. I suppose I'm d.a.m.ned inhuman. Well, well, I couldn't have stood those three months after I left him if I hadn't been."

The affair between Lily and Claude Raglan was not much discussed. He had, it seemed, only left her because his career was at stake; he had received a good offer and she had not wished to detain him.

"But is it over between you?" Sylvia demanded.

"Yes, of course, it's over--at any rate, for a long time to come," Lily answered. "He cried when he left me. He really was a nice boy. If he lives, he thinks he will be a success--a real success. He introduced me to a lot of nice boys."

"That was rash of him," Sylvia laughed. "Were they as nice as the lodgings he introduced you to?"

"No, don't laugh at him. He couldn't afford anything else."

"But why in Heaven's name, if you wanted to play around together, had you got to leave Finborough Road?"

Lily blushed faintly. "You won't be angry if I tell you?"

Sylvia shook her head.

"Claude said he couldn't bear the idea that you were looking at us. He said it spoiled everything."

"What did he think I was going to do?" Sylvia snapped. "Put pepper on the hymeneal pillow?"

"You said you wouldn't be angry."

"I'm not."

"Well, don't use long words, because it makes me think you are."

Soon after Lily came to Tinderbox Lane, Sylvia met Dorothy Lonsdale with a very lovely dark girl called Olive Fanshawe, a fellow-member of the Vanity chorus. Dorothy was glad to see her, princ.i.p.ally, Sylvia thought, because she was able to talk about lunch at Romano's and supper at the Savoy.

"Look here," Sylvia said. "A little less of the Queen of Sheba, if you don't mind. Don't forget I'm one of the blokes as is glad to smell the gratings outside a baker's."

Miss Fanshawe laughed, and Sylvia looked at her quickly, wondering if she were worth while.

Dorothy was concerned to hear she was still with Lily. "That dreadful girl," she simpered.

"Oh, go to h.e.l.l," said Sylvia, sharply, and walked off.

Next day a note came from Dorothy to invite her and Lily to tea at the flat she shared with Olive.

"Wonderful how attractive rudeness is," Sylvia commented.

"Oh, do let's go. Look, she lives in Half Moon Street," Lily said.

"And a d.a.m.ned good address for the demi-monde," Sylvia added.

However, the tea-party was definitely a success, and for the rest of the summer Sylvia and Lily spent a lot of time on the river with what Sylvia called the semicircle of intimate friends they had brought away from Half Moon Street. She grew very fond of Olive Fanshawe and warned her against her romantic adoration of Dorothy.

"But you're just as romantic over Lily," Olive argued.

"Not a single illusion left, my dear," Sylvia a.s.sured her. "Besides, I should never compare Lily with Dorothy. Dorothy is more beautiful, more ambitious, more mercenary. She'll probably marry a lord. She's acquired the art of getting a lot for nothing to a perfection that could only be matched by a politician or a girl with the same brown eyes in the same glory of light-brown hair. And when it suits her she'll go back on her word just as gracefully, and sell her best friend as readily as a politician will sell his country."

"You're very down on politicians. I think there's something so romantic about them," Olive declared. "Young politicians, of course."

"My dear, you'd think a Bradshaw romantic."

"It is sometimes," said Olive.

"Well, I know two young politicians," Sylvia continued. "A Liberal and a Conservative. They both spend their whole time in hoping I sha'n't suggest walking down Bond Street with them, the Liberal because I may see a frock and the Conservative because he may meet a friend. They both make love to me as if they were addressing their future const.i.tuents, with a mixture of flattery, condescension, and best clothes; but they reserve all their affection for the const.i.tuency. As I tell them, if they'd fondle the const.i.tuency and nurse me, I should endure their company more easily. Unhappily, they both think I'm intelligent, and a man who admires a woman's intelligence is like a woman who admires her friend's looking-gla.s.s--each one is granting an audience to himself."

"At any rate," said Olive, "you've managed to make yourself quite a mystery. All the men we know are puzzled by you."

"Tell them, my dear, I'm quite simple. I represent the original conception of the Hetaera, a companion. I don't want to be made love to, and every man who makes love to me I dislike. If I ever do fall in love, I'll be a man's slave. Of that I'm sure. So don't utter dark warnings, for I've warned myself already. I do want a certain number of things--nice dresses, because I owe them to myself, good books, and--well, really, I think that's all. In return for the dresses and the books--I suppose one ought to add an occasional fiver just to show there's no ill feeling about preferring to sleep in my own room--in return for very little. I'm ready to talk, walk, laugh, sing, dance, tell incomparably bawdy stories, and, what is after all the most valuable return of all, I'm ready to sit perfectly still and let myself be bored to death while giving him an idea that I'm listening intelligently. Of course, sometimes I do listen intelligently without being bored. In that case I let him off with books only."

"You really are an extraordinary girl," said Olive.

"You, on the other hand, my dear," Sylvia went on, "always give every man the hope that if he's wise and tender, and of course lavish--ultimately all men believe in the pocket--he will be able to cry Open Sesame to the mysterious treasure of romantic love that he discerns in your dark eyes, in your caressing voice, and in your fervid aspirations. In the end you'll give it all to a curly-headed actor and live happily ever afterward at Ravenscourt Park. Farewell to Coriola.n.u.s in his smart waistcoat; farewell to Julius Caesar and his amber cigarette-holder; farewell to every nincomp.o.o.p with a top-hat as bright as a halo; farewell incidentally to Dolly Lonsdale, who'll discover that Ravenscourt Park is too difficult for the chauffeur to find."

"Oh, Sylvia, shut up!" Olive said. "I believe you drank too much champagne at lunch."

"I'm glad you reminded me," Sylvia cried. "By Jove! I'd forgotten the fizz. That's where we all meet on common ground--or rather, I should say in common liquid. It sounds like mixed bathing. It is a kind of mixed bathing, after all. You're quite right, Olive, whatever our different tastes in men, clothes, and behavior, we all must have champagne. Champagne is a b.l.o.o.d.y sight thicker than water, as the prodigal said when his father uncorked a magnum to wash down the fatted calf."

Gradually Sylvia did succeed in sorting out from the various men a few who were content to accept the terms of friendship she offered. She had to admit that most of them fell soon or late, and with each new man she gave less and took more. As regards Lily, she tried to keep her as unapproachable as herself, but it was not always possible. Sometimes with a shrug of the shoulders she let Lily go her own way, though she was always hard as steel with the fortunate suitor. Once a rich young financier called Hausberg, who had found Lily somewhat expensive, started a theory that Sylvia was living on her friend; she heard of the slander and dealt with it very directly. The young man in question was anxious to set Lily up in a flat of her own. Sylvia let Lily appear to view the plan with favor. The flat was taken and furnished; a date was fixed for Lily's entrance; the young man was given the latch-key and told to come at midnight. When he arrived, there was n.o.body in the flat but a chimpanzee that Sylvia had bought at Jamrack's. She and Lily were at Brighton with Arthur Lonsdale and Tony Clarehaven, whom they had recently met again at a Covent Garden ball.

They were both just down from Oxford, and Lonsdale had taken a great fancy to Lily. He was a jolly youth, whose father, Lord Cleveden, had consented after a struggle to let him go into partnership with a distinguished professional motorist. It was with him that Dorothy Lonsdale claimed distant kinship. Clarehaven's admiration for Dorothy had not diminished; somebody had told him that the best way to get hold of her would be to make her jealous. This was his object in inviting Sylvia to Brighton. Sylvia agreed to go, partly to tease Dorothy, partly to disappoint Clarehaven. Lonsdale had helped her to get the chimpanzee into the flat, and all the way down to Brighton they laughed.

"My word, you know!" Lonsdale chuckled, "the jolly old chimpanzee will probably eat the wall-paper. What do you think Hausberg will say when he opens the door?"

"I expect he'll say, 'Are you there, Lily?'" Sylvia suggested.

"What do you think the jolly old chimpanzee will do? Probably bite his ear off--what? Topping. Good engine this. We're doing fifty-nine or an unripe sixty. Why does a chicken cross the road? No answer, thank you, this time. Must slow down a bit. There's a trap somewhere here. I say, you know, I've got a sister called Sylvia. Hullo! hullo! Mind your hoop, Tommy! Too late. Funeral on Friday. Colonial papers please copy. I wonder how they'll get the chimpanzee out again. I told the hall porter, when he cast a cold and gla.s.sy eye on the crate, it was a marble Venus that Mr. Hausberg was going to use as a hat-stand. My word! I expect the jolly old flat looks like the last days of Pompeii by now. When I undid the door of the crate the brute was making a noise like a discontented cistern. I rapidly scattered Brazil nuts and bananas on the floor to occupy his mind and melted away like a strawberry ice on a grill. Hullo! We're getting into Brighton."

Clarehaven did not enjoy his week-end, for it consisted entirely of a lecture by Sylvia on his behavior. This caused him to drink many more whisky-and-sodas than usual, and he came back to London on Monday with a bad headache, which he attributed to Sylvia's talking.

"My dear man, I haven't got a mouth. You have," she said.

This week-end caused a quarrel between Sylvia and Dorothy, for which she was not sorry. She had recently met a young painter, Ronald Walker, who wanted Lily to sit for him; he had taken them once or twice to the Cafe Royal, which Sylvia had found a pleasant change from the society of Half Moon Street. Soon after this Lonsdale began a liaison with Queenie Molyneux, of the Frivolity Theater. The only member of the Half Moon Street set with whom Sylvia kept up a friendship was Olive Fanshawe.

CHAPTER IX.

During her second year at Mulberry Cottage Sylvia achieved an existence that, save for the absence of any one great motive like art or love, was complete. She had also one real friend in Jack Airdale, who had returned from his tour. Apart from the pleasant security of knowing that he would always be content with good-fellowship only, he encouraged her to suppose that somewhere, could she but find the first step, a career lay before her. Sylvia did not in her heart believe in this career, but in moments of depression Jack's confidence was of the greatest comfort, and she was always ready to play with the notion, particularly as it seemed to provide a background for her present existence and to cover the futility of its perfection. Jack was anxious that she should try to get on the proper stage, but Sylvia feared to destroy by premature failure a part of the illusion of ultimate success she continued to allow herself by finally ruling out the theater as one of the possible channels to that career. In the summer Lily became friendly with one or two men whom Sylvia could not endure, but a la.s.situde had descended upon her and she lacked any energy to stop the a.s.sociation. As a matter of fact she was sickening for diphtheria at the time, and while she was in the hospital Lily took to frequenting the Orient promenade with these new friends. As soon as Sylvia came out they were banished; but each time that she intervened on Lily's behalf it seemed to her a little less worth while. Nevertheless, finding that Lily was bored by her own habit of staying in at night, she used much against her will to accompany her very often to various places of amus.e.m.e.nt without a definite invitation from a man to escort them.

One day at the end of December Mrs. Gainsborough came home from shopping with two tickets for a fancy-dress dance at the Redcliffe Hall in Fulham Road. When the evening arrived Sylvia did not want to go, for the weather was raw and foggy; but Mrs. Gainsborough was so much disappointed at her tickets not being used that to please her Sylvia agreed to go. It seemed unlikely to be an amusing affair, so she and Lily went in the most ordinary of their fancy dresses as masked Pierrettes. The company, as they had antic.i.p.ated, was quite exceptionally dull.

"My dear, it's like a skating-rink on Sat.u.r.day afternoon," Sylvia said. "We'll have one more dance together and then go home."

They were standing at the far end of the hall near the orchestra, and Sylvia was making disdainful comments upon the various couples that were pa.s.sing out to refresh themselves or flirt in the draughty corridors.

Suddenly Sylvia saw a man in evening dress pushing his way in their direction, regardless of what ribbons he tore or toes he outraged in his transit. He was a young man of about twenty-three or twenty-four, with a countenance in which eagerness was curiously mixed with impa.s.sivity. Sylvia saw him as one sees a picture on first entering a gallery, which one postpones visiting with a scarcely conscious and yet perfectly deliberate antic.i.p.ation of pleasure later on. She continued talking to Lily, who had her back to the new-comer; while she talked she was aware that all her own attention was fixed upon this new-comer and that she was asking herself the cause of the contradictions in his face and deciding that it was due to the finely carved immobile mouth beneath such eager eyes. Were they brown or blue? The young man had reached them, and from that immobile mouth came in accents that were almost like despair a salutation to Lily. Sylvia felt for a moment as if she had been wounded; she saw that Lily was looking at her with that expression she always put on when she thought Sylvia was angry with her; then after what seemed an age turned round slowly to the young man and, lifting her mask, engaged in conversation with him. Sylvia felt that she was trespa.s.sing upon the borders of great emotion and withdrew out of hearing, until Lily beckoned her forward to introduce the young man as Mr. Michael Fane. Sylvia did not raise her mask, and after nodding to him again retired from the conversation.

"But this is absurd," she said to herself, after a while; and abruptly raising her mask she broke in upon the duologue. The music had begun. He was asking Lily to dance, and she, waiting for Sylvia's leave in a way that made Sylvia want to slap her, was hesitating.

"What rot, Lily!" she exclaimed, impatiently. "Of course you may dance."

The young man turned toward Sylvia and smiled. A moment later he and Lily had waltzed away.

"Good G.o.d!" said Sylvia to herself. "Am I going mad? A youth smiles at me and I feel inclined to cry. What is this waltz they're playing?"

She looked at one of the sheets of music, but the name was nowhere legible, and she nearly s.n.a.t.c.hed it away from the player in exasperation. Nothing seemed to matter in the world except that she should know the name of this waltz. Without thinking what she was doing she thumped the clarinet-player on the shoulder, who stopped indignantly and asked if she was trying to knock his teeth out.

"What waltz are you playing? What waltz are you playing?"

"'Waltz Amarousse.' Perhaps you'll punch one of the strings next time, miss?"

"Happy New-Year," Sylvia laughed, and the clarinet-player with a disgusted glance turned round to his music again.

By the time the dance was over and the other two had rejoined her, Sylvia was laughing at herself; but they thought she was laughing at them. Fane and Lily danced several more dances together, and gradually Sylvia made up her mind that she disapproved of this new intimacy, this sudden invasion of Lily's life from the past from which she should have cut herself off as completely as Sylvia had done from her own. What right had Lily to complicate their existence in this fashion? How unutterably dull this masquerade was! She whispered to Lily in the next interval that she was tired and wanted to go home.

The fog outside was very dense. Fane took their arms to cross the road, and Sylvia, though he caught her arm close to him, felt drearily how mechanical its gesture was toward her, how vital toward Lily. Neither of her companions spoke to each other, and she asked them questions about their former friendship, which Lily did not answer because she was evidently afraid of her annoyance, and which he did not answer because he did not hear. Sylvia had made up her mind that Fane should not enter Mulberry Cottage, when Lily whispered to her that she should ask him, but at the last moment she remembered his smile and invited him to supper. A strange shyness took possession of her, which she tried to cover by exaggeration, almost, she thought, hysterical fooling with Mrs. Gainsborough that lasted until two o'clock in the morning of New-Year's day, when Michael Fane went home after exacting a promise from the two girls to lunch with him at Kettner's that afternoon. Lily was so sleepy that she did not rise to see him out. Sylvia was glad of the indifference.

Next morning Sylvia found out that Michael was a "nice boy" whom Lily had known in West Kensington when she was seventeen. He had been awfully in love with her, and her mother had been annoyed because he wanted to marry her. He had only been seventeen himself, and like many other school-boy loves of those days this one had just ended somehow, but exactly how Lily could not recall. She wished that Sylvia would not go on asking so many questions; she really could not remember anything more about it. They had gone once for a long drive in a cab, and there had been a row about that at home.

"Are you in love with him now?" Sylvia demanded.

"No, of course not. How could I be?"

Sylvia was determined that she never should be, either: there should be no more Claude Raglans to interfere with their well-devised existence.

During the next fortnight Sylvia took care that Lily and Michael should never be alone together, and she tried very often, after she discovered that Michael was sensitive, to shock him by references to their life, and with an odd perverseness to try particularly to shock him about herself by making brutally coa.r.s.e remarks in front of Lily, taking pleasure in his embarra.s.sment. Yet there was in the end little pleasure in shocking him, for he had no conventional niceness; yet there was a pleasure in hurting him, a fierce pleasure.

"Though why on earth I bother about his feelings, I can't imagine," Sylvia said to herself. "All I know is that he's an awful bore and makes us break all sorts of engagements with other people. You liar! You know he's not a bore, and you know that you don't care a d.a.m.n how many engagements you break. Don't pose to yourself. You're jealous of him because you think that Lily may get really fond of him. You don't want her to get fond of him, because you don't think she's good enough for him. You don't want him to get fond of her."

The boldness of this thought, the way in which it had attacked the secret recesses of her being, startled Sylvia. It was almost a sensation of turning pale at herself, of fearing to understand herself, that made her positively stifle the mood and flee from these thoughts, which might violate her personality.

Down-stairs, there was a telegram from Olive Fanshawe at Brighton, begging Sylvia to come at once; she was terribly unhappy; Sylvia could scarcely tear herself away from Mulberry Cottage at such a moment even for Olive, but, knowing that if she did not go she would be sorry, she went.

Sylvia found Olive in a state of collapse. Dorothy Lonsdale and she had been staying in Brighton for a week's holiday, and yesterday Dorothy had married Clarehaven. Sylvia laughed.

"Oh, Sylvia, don't laugh!" Olive begged. "It was perfectly dreadful. Of course it was a great shock to me, but I did not show it. I told her she could count on me as a pal to help her in every way. And what do you think she said? Sylvia, you'll never guess. It was too cruel. She said to me in a voice of ice, dear--really, a voice of ice--she said the best way I could help her was by not seeing her any more. She did not intend to go near the stage door of a theater again. She did not want to know any of her stage friends any more. She didn't even say she was sorry; she was quite calm. She was like ice, Sylvia dear. Clarehaven came in and she asked if he'd telegraphed to his mother, and when he said he had she got up as if she'd been calling on me quite formally and shook hands, and said: 'Good-by, Olive. We're going down to Clare Court to-morrow, and I don't expect we shall see each other again for a long time.' Clarehaven said what rot and that I must come down to Devonshire and stay with them, and Dolly froze him, my dear; she froze him with a look. I never slept all night, and the book I was reading began to repeat itself, and I thought I was going mad; but this morning I found the printers had made some mistake and put sixteen pages twice over. But I really thought I was going mad, so I wired for you. Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, say something to console me! She was like ice, dear, really like a block of ice."

"If she'd only waited till you had found the curly-headed actor it wouldn't have mattered so much," Sylvia said.

Poor Olive really was on the verge of a nervous collapse, and Sylvia stayed with her three days, though it was agony to leave Lily in London with Michael Fane. Nor could she talk of her own case to Olive. It would seem like a compet.i.tive sorrow, a vulgar bit of egotistic a.s.sumption to suit the occasion.

When Sylvia got back to Mulberry Cottage she found an invitation from Jack Airdale to dine at Richmond and go to a dance with him afterward. Conscious from something in Michael's watchful demeanor of a development in the situation, she was pleased to be able to disquiet him by insisting that Lily should go with her.

On the way, Sylvia extracted from Lily that Michael had asked her to marry him. It took all Jack Airdale's good nature not to be angry with Sylvia that night--as she tore the world to shreds. At the moment when Lily had told her she had felt with a despair that was not communicable, as Olive's despair had been, how urgent it was to stop Michael from marrying Lily. She was not good enough for him. The knowledge rang in her brain like a discordant clangor of bells, and Sylvia knew in that moment that the real reason of her thinking this was jealousy of Lily. The admission tortured her pride, and after a terrible night in which the memory of Olive's grief interminably dwelt upon and absorbed helped her to subst.i.tute the pretense, so pa.s.sionately invoked that it almost ceased to be a pretense, that she was opposing the marriage partly because Michael would never keep Lily faithful, partly because she could not bear the idea of losing her friend.

When, the next day, Sylvia faced Michael for the discussion of the marriage, she was quite sure not merely that he had never attracted her, but even that she hated him and, what was more deadly, despised him. She taunted him with wishing to marry Lily for purely sentimental reasons, for the gratification of a morbid desire to save her. She remembered Philip, and all the hatred she had felt for Philip's superiority was transferred to Michael. She called him a prig and made him wince by speaking of Lily and herself as "tarts," exacting from the word the uttermost tribute of its vulgarity. She dwelt on Lily's character and evolved a theory of woman's ownership by man that drove her into such illogical arguments and exaggerated pretensions that Michael had some excuse for calling her hysterical. The dispute left Lily on one side for a time and became personal to herself and him. He told her she was jealous. In an access of outraged pride she forgot that he was referring to her jealousy about Lily, and to any one less obsessed by an idea than he was she would have revealed her secret. Suddenly he seemed to give way. When he was going he told her that she hated him because he loved Lily and hated him twice as much because his love was returned.

Sylvia felt she would go mad when Michael said that he loved Lily; but he was thinking it was because Lily loved him that she was biting her nails and glaring at him. Then he asked her what college at Oxford her husband had been at. She had spoken of Philip during their quarrel. This abrupt linking of himself with Philip restored her balance, and coolly she began to arrange in her mind for Lily's withdrawal from London for a while. Of pa.s.sion and fury there was nothing left except a calm determination to disappoint Master Michael. She remembered Olive Fanshawe's, "Like ice, dear, she was like a block of ice." She, too, was like a block of ice as she watched him walking away down the long garden.

When Michael had gone Sylvia told Lily that marriage with him was impossible.

"Why do you want to be married?" she demanded. "Was your mother so happy in her marriage? I tell you, child, that marriage is almost inconceivably dull. What have you got in common with him? Nothing, absolutely nothing."

"I'm not a bit anxious to be married," Lily protested. "But when somebody goes on and on asking, it's so difficult to refuse. I liked Claude better than I like Michael. But Claude had to think about his future."

"And what about your future?" Sylvia exclaimed.

"Oh, I expect it'll be all right. Michael has money."

"I say you shall not marry him," Sylvia almost shouted.

"Oh, don't keep on so," Lily fretfully implored. "It gives me a headache. I won't marry him if it's going to upset you so much. But you mustn't leave me alone with him again, because he worries me just as much as you do."