influence and desire could only faintly trickle.  He knew that the other life was there, he knew that in his heart he longed for Sylvia as much as ever; but, in his present detachment, his desire for her was a drowsy ache, a remote emptiness, and the veil that lay over his mother seemed to lie over him also.  Once, indeed, during the evening, when he had played for her, the veil had lifted and for the drowsy ache he had the sunlit, stabbing pang; but, as he left, the veil dropped again, and he let himself into the big, mute house, sorry that he had left it.  In the same way, too, his music was in abeyance:  he could not concentrate himself or find it worth while to make the effort to absorb himself in it, and he knew that short of that, there was neither profit nor pleasure for him in his piano.  Everything seemed remote compared with the immediate foreground:  there was a gap, a gulf between it and all the rest of the world.

His father wrote to him from time to time, laying stress on the extreme importance of all he was doing in the country, and giving no hint of his coming up to town at present.  But he faintly adumbrated the time when in the natural course of events he would have to attend to his national duties in the House of Lords, and wondered whether it would not (about then) be good for his wife to have a change, and enjoy the country when the weather became more propitious.  Michael, with an excusable unfilialness, did not answer these amazing epistles; but, having basked in their unconscious humour, sent them on to Aunt Barbara.  Weekly reports were sent by Lady Ashbridge’s nurse to his father, and Michael had nothing whatever to add to these.  His fear of him had given place to a quiet contempt, which he did not care to think about, and certainly did not care to express.

Every now and then Lady Ashbridge had what Michael thought of as a good hour or two, when she went back to her content and childlike joy in his presence, and it was clear, when presently she came downstairs as he still lingered in the garden, reading the daily paper in the sun, that one of these better intervals had visited her.  She, too, it appeared, felt the waving of the magic wand of spring, and she noted the signs of it with a joy that was infinitely pathetic.

“My dear,” she said, “what a beautiful morning!  Is it wise to sit out of doors without your hat, Michael?  Shall not I go and fetch it for you?  No?  Then let us sit here and talk.  It is spring, is it not?  Look how the birds are collecting twigs for their nests!  I wonder how they know that the time has come round again.  Sweet little birds!  How bold and merry they are.”

She edged her way a little nearer him, so that her shoulder leaned on his arm.

“My dear, I wish you were going to nest, too,” she said.  “I wonder—­do you think I have been ill-natured and unkind to your Sylvia, and that makes her not come to see me now?  I do remember being vexed at her for not wanting to marry you, and perhaps I talked unkindly about her.  I am sorry, for my being cross to her will do no good; it will only make her more unwilling than ever to marry a man who has such an unpleasant mamma.  Will she come to see me again, do you think, if I ask her?”