“I don’t know—really—they’ve left Trelawny Road,” he said, feeling vaguely an unfair flank attack was being delivered.
“And you never think of her, I suppose?” demanded Stella.
“Yet I can remember,” said Stella, “when you were absolutely miserable because she had been flirting with somebody else.”
“Yes, I was very miserable,” Michael admitted. “And you were rather contemptuous about it, I remember. You told me I ought to be more proud.”
“And don’t you realize,” Stella said, “that just because I did remember what I told you, I made my effort and began to play the piano again?”
Michael waited. He supposed that she would now take him into her confidence, but she swung round to the keyboard, and when she had finished playing she had become herself again, detached and cool and masterful. It was incredible that the wet ball of a handkerchief half hidden by a cushion could be her handkerchief.
Michael made up his mind that Stella’s unhappiness was due to a love-affair which had been wrecked either by circumstance or temperament, and he tried to persuade himself of his indignation against the unknown man. He was sensible of a desire to punch the fellow’s head. With the easy exaggerations of the night-time he could picture himself fighting duels with punctilious Austrian noblemen. He went so far as mentally to indite a letter to Alan and Lonsdale requesting their secondary assistance. Then the memory of Lily began to dance before him. He forgot about Stella in speculations about Lily. Time had softened the trivial and shallow infidelity of which she had been guilty. Time with night for ally gave her slim form an ethereal charm. He had been reading this week of the great imaginative loves of the Middle Ages, and of that supple and golden-haired girl he began to weave an abstraction of passion like the Princess of Trebizond. He slept upon the evocation of her beauty just as he was setting forth upon a delicate and intangible pursuit. Next morning Michael suggested to Stella they should revisit Carlington Road.
“My god, to think we once lived here!” exclaimed Stella, as they stood outside Number 64. “To me it seems absolutely impossible, but then of course I was much more away from it than you ever were.”