annihilation of sex, which allowed her to be to him no more than her brother was—­less, in fact, but on the same plane—­she had come to the end of her song, patted him on the back, as she would have patted anybody else, with a word of thanks, and, for him, suddenly leaped into significance.  It was not only a singer who had sung, but an individual one called Sylvia Falbe.  She took her place, at present a most inconspicuous one, on the back-cloth before which Michael’s life was acted, towards which, when no action, so to speak, was taking place, his eyes naturally turned themselves.  His father and mother were there, Francis also and Aunt Barbara, and of course, larger than the rest, Hermann.  Now Sylvia was discernible, and, as the days went by and their meetings multiplied, she became bigger, walked into a nearer perspective.  It did not occur to Michael, rightly, to imagine himself at all in love with her, for he was not.  Only she had asserted herself on his consciousness.

Not yet had she begun to trouble him, and there was no sign, either external or intimate, in his mind that he was sickening with the splendid malady.  Indeed, the significance she held for him was rather that, though she was a girl, she presented none of the embarrassments which that sex had always held for him.  She grew in comradeship; he found himself as much at ease with her as with her brother, and her charm was just that which had so quickly and strongly attracted Michael to Hermann.  She was vivid in the same way as he was; she had the same warm, welcoming kindliness—­the same complete absence of pose.  You knew where you were with her, and hitherto, when Michael was with one of the young ladies brought down to Ashbridge to be looked at, he only wished that wherever he was he was somewhere else.  But with Sylvia he had none of this self-consciousness; she was bonne camarade for him in exactly the same way as she was bonne camarade to the rest of the multitude which thronged the Sunday evenings, perfectly at ease with them, as they with her, in relationship entirely unsentimental.

But through these weeks, up to this foggy November afternoon, Michael’s most conscious preoccupation was his music.  Falbe’s principles in teaching were entirely heretical according to the traditional school; he gave Michael no scale to play, no dismal finger-exercise to fill the hours.

“What is the good of them?” he asked.  “They can only give you nimbleness and strength.  Well, you shall acquire your nimbleness and strength by playing what is worth playing.  Take good music, take Chopin or Bach or Beethoven, and practise one particular etude or fugue or sonata; you may choose anything you like, and learn your nimbleness and strength that way.  Read, too; read for a couple of hours every day.  The written language of music must become so familiar to you that it is to you precisely what a book or a newspaper is, so that whether you read it aloud—­which is playing—­or