Sinister Street

All the way home the raindrops were flas.h.i.+ng in the road like bayonets, and her cheeks were dabbled with the wet.

"Shall I come in?" Michael asked, as he waited by the door in the wall.

"Yes, come in and have something to drink, of course."

He was stabbed by the ease of her invitation.

"Do you ask all these friends of yours to come in and have a drink after midnight?"

"I told you that Sylvia doesn't like me to," she said.

"But you would, if she didn't mind?" Michael went on, torturing himself.

"How fond you are of 'ifs,'" she answered. "I can't bother to think about 'ifs' myself."

If only he had the pluck to avoid allusions and come at once to grips with truth. Sharply he advised himself to let the truth alone. Already he was feeling the influence of Lily's att.i.tude. He wondered if, when he married her, all his activity would swoon upon Calypso like this. It was as easy to dream life away in the contemplation of a beautiful woman as in the meditation of the Oxford landscape.

"Happiness makes me inactive," said Michael to himself. "So of course I shall never really be happy. What a paradox."

He would not take off his overcoat. He was feeling afraid of a surrender to-night.

"I'm glad I didn't suggest staying late," he thought, as he walked away down the dripping garden path. "I should have been mad with unreasonable suspicions, if she had said 'yes.'"

Sylvia came back next day, and though Michael still liked her very much, he was certain now of her hostility to him. He was conscious of malice in the air, when she said to Lily that Jack wanted them to have dinner with him to-night and go afterward to some dance at Richmond. Michael was furious that Lily should be invited to Richmond, and yet until she had promised to marry him how could he combat Sylvia's influence? And who was Jack? And with whom had Sylvia been to Brighton?

The day after the dance, Michael came round about twelve o'clock as usual, but when he reached the sitting-room only Sylvia was before the fire.

"Lily isn't down yet," she told him.

He was aware of a breathlessness in the atmosphere, and he knew that he and Sylvia were shortly going to clash.

"Jolly dance?" he

She shrugged her shoulders, and there was a long pause.

"Will Lily be dressed soon? I rather want to take her out." Michael flung down his challenge.

"She's been talking to me about what you said yesterday," Sylvia began.

Michael could not help liking her more and more, although her countenance was set against him. He could not help admiring that out-thrust underlip and those wide-set, deep and bitter brown eyes.

"When do you propose to marry her?" Sylvia went on.

"As soon as possible," he said coolly.

"Which of us do you think has the greater influence over her?" she demanded.

"I really don't know. You have rather an advantage over me in that respect."

"I'm glad you admit that," interrupted Sylvia, with sarcastic chill.

"You have personality. You've probably been very kind to Lily. You're cleverer than she is. You're with her all the time. I've only quite suddenly come into her life again."

"I'm glad you think you've managed to do that," she said, glowering.

More and more, Michael thought, with her wide-set eyes was she like a cat crouching by the fire.

"Just because I had to go away for three days and you had an opportunity to be alone with Lily, you now think you've come into her life. My G.o.d, you're like some d.a.m.ned fool in a novel!"

"A novel by whom?" Michael asked. Partly he was trying to score off Sylvia, but at the same time he was sincerely curious to know, for he never could resist the amplification of a comparison.

"Oh, any ink-slinger with a brain of pulp," she answered savagely.

He bowed.

"I suppose you're suffering from the virus of sentimental redemption?"

she sneered.

Michael was rather startled by her divination.

"What should I redeem her from?"

"I thought you boasted of knowing Lily six years ago?"

"I don't know that I boasted of it," he replied, in rather an injured tone. "But I did know her--very well."

"Couldn't you foresee what she was bound to become? Personally I should have said that Lily's future must have been obvious from the time she was five years old. Certainly at seventeen it must have been. You got out of her life then: what the h.e.l.l's your object in coming into it again now, as you call it, unless you're a sentimentalist? People don't let pa.s.sion lapse for six years and pick up the broken thread without the help of sentiment."

Michael in the middle of the increasing tension of the conversation was able to stop for a moment and ask himself if this by chance were true.

He was standing by the mantelpiece and tinkling the l.u.s.ters. Sylvia looked up at him irritably, and he silenced them at once.

"Sentiment about what?" he asked, taking the chair opposite hers.

"You think Lily's a tart, don't you? And you think I am, don't you?"

He frowned at the brutality of the expression.

"I did think so," he said. "But of course I've changed my mind since I've seen something of you."

"Oh, of course you've changed your mind, have you?" she laughed contemptuously. "And what made you do that? My visit to Brighton?"

"Even if _you_ are," said Michael hotly, "I needn't believe that Lily is. And even if she is, it makes no difference to my wanting to marry her."

"Sentimentalist," she jeered. "d.a.m.ned sugar-and-water sentimentalist."

"Your sneers don't particularly affect me, you know," he said politely.

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, be less the well-brought-up little gentleman. Cut out the undergraduate. You fool, I was married to an Oxford man. And I'm sitting here now with the glorious knowledge that I'm a perpetual bugbear to his good form."