She longed as with thirst for Michael to come, and as her solitude became more and more intolerable, a hundred hideous fancies obsessed her.  What if some accident had happened to Michael, or what, if in this tremendous breaking of ties that the war entailed, he felt that he could not see her?  She knew that was an impossibility; but the whole world had become impossible.  And there was no escape.  Somehow she had to adjust herself to the unthinkable; somehow her relations both with Hermann and Michael had to remain absolutely unshaken.  Even that was not enough:  they had to be strengthened, made impregnable.

Then came a knock on the side door of the studio that led into the street:  Michael often came that way without passing through the house, and with a sense of relief she ran to it and unlocked it.  And even as he stepped in, before any word of greeting had been exchanged, she flung herself on him, with fingers eager for the touch of his solidity. . . .

“Oh, my dear,” she said.  “I have longed for you, just longed for you.  I never wanted you so much.  I have been sitting in the dark desolate—­desolate.  And oh! my darling, what a beast I am to think of nothing but myself.  I am ashamed.  What of your mother, Michael?”

She turned on the light as they walked back across the studio, and Michael saw that her eyes, which were a little dazzled by the change from the dark into the light, were dim with unshed tears, and her hands clung to him as never before had they clung.  She needed him now with that imperative need which in trouble can only turn to love for comfort.  She wanted that only; the fact of him with her, in this land in which she had suddenly become an alien, an enemy, though all her friends except Hermann were here.  And instantaneously, as a baby at the breast, she found that all his strength and serenity were hers.

They sat down on the sofa by the piano, side by side, with hands intertwined before Michael answered.  He looked up at her as he spoke, and in his eyes was the quiet of love and death.

“My mother died an hour ago,” he said.  “I was with her, and as I had longed might happen, she came back to me before she died.  For two or three minutes she was herself.  And then she said to me, ‘My son,’ and soon she ceased breathing.”

“Oh, Michael,” she said, and for a little while there was silence, and in turn it was her presence that he clung to.  Presently he spoke again.

“Sylvia, I’m so frightfully hungry,” he said.  “I don’t think I’ve eaten anything since breakfast.  May we go and forage?”

“Oh, you poor thing!” she cried.  “Yes, let’s go and see what there is.”

Instantly she busied herself.

“Hermann left the cellar key on the chimney-piece, Michael,” she said.  “Get some wine out, dear.  Mother and I don’t drink any.  And there’s some ham, I know.  While you are getting wine, I’ll broil some.  And there were some strawberries.  I shall have some supper with you.  What a good thought!  And you must be famished.”