Monday.  There was between them that bond which can scarcely exist between husband and wife, since it almost necessarily implies the close consanguinity of brother and sister, and postulates a certain sort of essential community of nature, founded not on tastes, nor even on affection, but on the fact that the same blood beats in the two.  Here an intense affection, too strong to be ever demonstrative, fortified it, and both brother and sister talked to each other, as if they were speaking to some physically independent piece of themselves.

Sylvia had nothing apparently to add on the subject of Michael’s maturity.  Instead she just raised her head, which was not quite high enough.

“Stuff another cushion under my head, Hermann,” she said.  “Thanks; now I’m completely comfortable, you will be relieved to hear.”

Hermann gazed at the fire in silence.

“That’s a weight off my mind,” he said.  “About Michael now.  He’s been suppressed all his life, you know, and instead of being dwarfed he has just gone on growing inside.  Good Lord!  I wish somebody would suppress me for a year or two.  What a lot there would be when I took the cork out again.  We dissipate too much, Sylvia, both you and I.”

She gave a little grunt, which, from his knowledge of her inarticulate expressions, he took to mean dissent.

“I suppose you mean we don’t,” he remarked.

“Yes.  How much one dissipates is determined for one just as is the shape of your nose or the colour of your eyes.  By the way, I fell madly in love with that cousin of Michael’s who came with him to-night.  He’s the most attractive creature I ever saw in my life.  Of course, he’s too beautiful:  no boy ought to be as beautiful as that.”

“You flirted with him,” remarked Hermann.  “Mike will probably murder him on the way home.”

Sylvia moved her feet a little farther from the blaze.

“Funny?” she asked.

Instantly Falbe knew that her mind was occupied with exactly the same question as his.

“No, not funny at all,” he said.  “Quite serious.  Do you want to talk about it or not?”

She gave a little groan.

“No, I don’t want to, but I’ve got to,” she said.  “Aunt Barbara—­we became Sylvia and Aunt Barbara an hour or two ago, and she’s a dear—­Aunt Barbara has been talking to me about it already.”

“And what did Aunt Barbara say?”

“Just what you are going to,” said Sylvia; “namely, that I had better make up my mind what I mean to say when Michael says what he means to say.”

She shifted round so as to face her brother as he stood in front of the fire, and pulled his trouser-leg more neatly over the top of his shoe.

“But what’s to happen if I can’t make up my mind?” she said.  “I needn’t tell you how much I like Michael; I believe I like him as much as I possibly can.  But I don’t know if that is enough.  Hermann, is it enough?  You ought to know.  There’s no use in you unless you know about me.”