“No, father, I am afraid not,” said Michael.

“I want you to understand, then, that, though I shall not speak to you again about it, my wishes are no less strong than they were.  It is something to me to know that a man whom I respect so much as the Emperor doesn’t feel as I do about it, but that doesn’t alter my view.”

“I understand,” said Michael.

“The next is about your mother,” he said.  “Do you notice any change in her?”

“Yes,” said Michael.

“Can you describe it at all?”

Michael hesitated.

“She shows quite a new affection for myself,” he said.  “She came and talked to me last night in a way she had never done before.”

The irritation which Michael’s mere presence produced on his father was beginning to make itself felt.  The fact that Michael was squat and long-armed and ugly had always a side-blow to deal at Lord Ashbridge in the reminder that he was his father.  He tried to disregard this—­he tried to bring his mind into an impartial attitude, without seeing for a moment the bitter irony of considering impartiality the ideal quality when dealing with his son.  He tried to be fair, and Michael was perfectly conscious of the effort it cost him.

“I had noticed something of the sort,” he said.  “Your mother was always asking after you.  You have not been writing very regularly, Michael.  We know little about your life.”

“I have written to my mother every week,” said Michael.

The magical effects of the Emperor’s interest were dying out.  Lord Ashbridge became more keenly aware of the disappointment that Michael was to him.

“I have not been so fortunate, then,” he said.

Michael remembered his mother’s anxious face, but he could not let this pass.

“No, sir,” he said, “but you never answered any of my letters.  I thought it quite probable that it displeased you to hear from me.”

“I should have expressed my displeasure if I had felt it,” said his father with all the pomposity that was natural to him.

“That had not occurred to me,” said Michael.  “I am afraid I took your silence to mean that my letters didn’t interest you.”

He paused a moment, and his rebellion against the whole of his father’s attitude flared up.

“Besides, I had nothing particular to say,” he said.  “My life is passed in the pursuit of which you entirely disapprove.”

He felt himself back in boyhood again with this stifling and leaden atmosphere of authority and disapproval to breathe.  He knew that Francis in his place would have done somehow differently; he could almost hear Aunt Barbara laughing at the pomposity of the situation that had suddenly erected itself monstrously in front of him.  The fact that he was Michael Comber vexed his father—­there was no statement of the case so succinctly true.

Lord Ashbridge moved away towards the window, turning his back on Michael.  Even his back, his homespun Norfolk jacket, his loose knickerbockers, his stalwart calves expressed disapproval; but when his father spoke again he realised that he had moved away like that, and obscured his face for a different reason.