he had the sense of “patience’s perfect work” natural to him; he did not seem to have to remind himself that his mother was ill, and thus he must be gentle with her.  He was gentle with her because he was in himself gentle.  And yet, though his behaviour was no effort to him, she guessed how wearying must be the continual strain of the situation itself.  She felt that she would get cross from mere fatigue, however excellent her intentions might be, however willing the spirit.  And no one, so she had understood from Barbara, could take Michael’s place.  In his occasional absences his mother was fretful and miserable, and day by day Michael left her less.  She would sit close to him when he was practising—­a thing that to her or to Hermann would have rendered practice impossible—­and if he wrestled with one hand over a difficult bar, she would take the other into hers, would ask him if he was not getting tired, would recommend him to rest for a little; and yet Michael, who last summer had so stubbornly insisted on leading his own life, and had put his determination into effect in the teeth of all domestic opposition, now with more than cheerfulness laid his own life aside in order to look after his mother.  Sylvia felt that the real heroisms of life were not so much the fine heady deeds which are so obviously admirable, as such serene steadfastness, such unvarying patience as that which she had just seen.

Her whole soul applauded Michael, and yet below her applause was this heartache for him, the desire to be able to help him to bear the burden which must be so heavy, though he bore it so blithely.  But in the very nature of things there was but one way in which she could help him, and in that she was powerless.  She could not give him what he wanted.  But she longed to be able to.

CHAPTER XI

It was a morning of early March, and Michael, looking out from the dining-room window at the house in Curzon Street, where he had just breakfasted alone, was smitten with wonder and a secret ecstasy, for he suddenly saw and felt that it was winter no longer, but that spring had come.  For the last week the skies had screamed with outrageous winds and had been populous with flocks of sullen clouds that discharged themselves in sleet and snowy rain, and half last night, for he had slept very badly, he had heard the dashing of showers, as of wind-driven spray, against the window-panes, and had listened to the fierce rattling of the frames.  Towards morning he had slept, and during those hours it seemed that a new heaven and a new earth had come into being; vitally and essentially the world was a different affair altogether.