particular to him.  She realised that if she had loved him the touch of his hand, the proximity of his face would have had significance for her, a significance that would have been intolerable unless there was something mutual and secret between them.  It had seemed so easy, in anticipation, to tell him that he must wait, so simple for him just—­well, just to wait until she could make up her mind.  She believed, as she had told her brother, that she cared for Michael, or as she had told him that she wanted to—­the two were to the girl’s mind identical, though expressed to each in the only terms that were possible—­but until she came face to face with the picture of the future, that to her wore the same outline and colour as the past, she had not known the impossibility of such a presentment.  The desire of the lover on Michael’s part rendered unthinkable the sisterly attitude on hers.  That her instinct told her, but her reason revolted against it.

“Can’t we go on as we were, Michael?” she said.

He looked at her incredulously.

“Oh, no, of course not that,” he said.

She moved a step towards him.

“I can’t think of you in any other way,” she said, as if making an appeal.

He stood absolutely unresponsive.  Something within him longed that she should advance a step more, that he should again have the touch of her hands on his shoulders, but another instinct stronger than that made him revoke his desire, and if she had moved again he would certainly have fallen back before her.

“It may seem ridiculous to you,” he said, “since you do not care.  But I can’t do that.  Does that seem absurd to you I?  I am afraid it does; but that is because you don’t understand.  By all means let us be what they call excellent friends.  But there are certain little things which seem nothing to you, and they mean so much to me.  I can’t explain; it’s just the brotherly relation which I can’t stand.  It’s no use suggesting that we should be as we were before—­”

She understood well enough for his purposes.

“I see,” she said.

Michael paused for a moment.

“I think I’ll be going now,” he said.  “I am off to Ashbridge in two days.  Give Hermann my love, and a jolly Christmas to you both.  I’ll let you know when I am back in town.”

She had no reply to this; she saw its justice, and acquiesced.

“Good-bye, then,” said Michael.

He walked home from Chelsea in that utterly blank and unfeeling consciousness which almost invariably is the sequel of any event that brings with it a change of attitude towards life generally.  Not for a moment did he tell himself that he had been awakened from a dream, or abandon his conviction that his dream was to be made real.  The rare, quiet determination that had made him give up his stereotyped mode of life in the summer and take to music was still completely his, and, if anything, it had been reinforced by Sylvia’s