"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."

She put out her arm, and clasped his two legs in the crook of her elbow. That expressed their att.i.tude, what they were to each other, as absolutely as any physical demonstration allowed. Had there not been the difference of s.e.x which severed them she could never have got the sense of support that this physical contact gave her; had there not been her sisterhood to chaperon her, so to speak, she could never have been so at ease with a man. The two were lover-like, without the physical apexes and limitations that physical love must always bring with it.

The complement of s.e.x that brought them so close annihilated the very existence of s.e.x. They loved as only brother and sister can love, without trouble.

The closer contact of his fire-warmed trousers to the calf of his leg made Hermann step out of her encircling arm without any question of hurting her feelings.

"I won't be burned," he said. "Sorry, but I won't be burned. It seems to me, Sylvia, that you ought to like Michael a little more and a little less."

"It's no use saying what I ought to do," she said. "The idea of what I 'ought' doesn't come in. I like him just as much as I like him, neither more nor less."

He clawed some more cushions together, and sat down on the floor by her. She raised herself a little and rested her body against his folded knees.

"What's the trouble, Sylvia?" he said.

"Just what I've been trying to tell you."

"Be more concrete, then. You're definite enough when you sing."

She sighed and gave a little melancholy laugh.

"That's just it," she said. "People like you and me, and Michael, too, for that matter, are most entirely ourselves when we are at our music.

When Michael plays for me I can sing my soul at him. While he and I are in music, if you understand--and of course you do--we belong to each other. Do you know, Hermann, he finds me when I'm singing, without the slightest effort, and even you, as you have so often told me, have to search and be on the lookout. And then the song is over, and, as somebody says, 'When the feast is finished and the lamps expire,'

then--well, the lamps expire, and he isn't me any longer, but Michael, with the--the ugly face, and--oh, isn't it horrible of me--the long arms and the little stumpy legs--if only he was rather different in things that don't matter, that CAN'T matter! But--but, Hermann, if only Michael was rather like you, and you like Michael, I should love you exactly as much as ever, and I should love Michael, too."

She was leaning forward, and with both hands was very carefully tying and untying one of Hermann's shoelaces.

"Oh, thank goodness there is somebody in the world to whom I can say just whatever I feel, and know he understands," she said. "And I know this, too--and follow me here, Hermann--I know that all that doesn't really matter; I am sure it doesn't. I like Michael far too well to let it matter. But there are other things which I don't see my way through, and they are much more real--"

She was silent again, so long that Hermann reached out for a cigarette, lit it, and threw away the match before she spoke.

"There is Michael's position," she said. "When Michael asks me if I will have him, as we both know he is going to do, I shall have to make conditions. I won't give up my career. I must go on working--in other words, singing--whether I marry him or not. I don't call it singing, in my sense of the word, to sing 'The Banks of Allan Water' to Michael and his father and mother at Ashbridge, any more than it is being a politician to read the morning papers and argue about the Irish question with you. To have a career in politics means that you must be a member of Parliament--I daresay the House of Lords would do--and make speeches and stand the racket. In the same way, to be a singer doesn't mean to sing after dinner or to go squawking anyhow in a workhouse, but it means to get up on a platform before critical people, and if you don't do your very best be d.a.m.ned by them. If I marry Michael I must go on singing as a professional singer, and not become an amateur--the Viscountess Comber, who sings so charmingly. I refuse to sing charmingly; I will either sing properly or not at all. And I couldn't not sing. I shall have to continue being Miss Falbe, so to speak."

"You say you insist on it," said Hermann; "but whether you did or not, there is nothing more certain than that Michael would."

"I am sure he would. But by so doing he would certainly quarrel irrevocably with his people. Even Aunt Barbara, who, after all, is very liberally minded, sees that. They can none of them, not even she, who are born to a certain tradition imagine that there are other traditions quite as stiff-necked. Michael, it is true, was born to one tradition, but he has got the other, as he has shown very clearly by refusing to disobey it. He will certainly, as you say, insist on my endorsing the resolution he has made for himself. What it comes to is this, that I can't marry him without his father's complete consent to all that I have told you. I can't have my career disregarded, covered up with awkward silences, alluded to as a painful subject; and, as I say, even Aunt Barbara seemed to take it for granted that if I became Lady Comber I should cease to be Miss Falbe. Well, there she's wrong, my dear; I shall continue to be Miss Falbe whether I'm Lady Comber, or Lady Ashbridge, or the d.u.c.h.ess of anything you please. And--here the difficulty really comes in--they must all see how right I am. Difficulty, did I say? It's more like an impossibility."

Hermann threw the end of his cigarette into the ashes of the dying fire.

"It's clear, then," he said, "you have made up your mind not to marry him."

She shook her head.

"Oh, Hermann, you fail me," she said. "If I had made up my mind not to I shouldn't have kept you up an hour talking about it."

He stretched his hands out towards the embers already coated with grey ash.

"Then it's like that with you," he said, pointing. "If there is the fire in you, it is covered up with ashes."

She did not reply for a moment.

"I think you've hit it there," she said. "I believe there is the fire; when, as I said, he plays for me I know there is. But the ashes? What are they? And who shall disperse them for me?"

She stood up swiftly, drawing herself to her full height and stretching her arms out.

"There's something bigger than we know coming," she said. "Whether it's storm or sunshine I have no idea. But there will be something that shall utterly sever Michael and me or utterly unite us."

"Do you care which it is?" he asked.

"Yes, I care," said she.

He held out his hands to her, and she pulled him up to his feet.

"What are you going to say, then, when he asks you?" he said.

"Tell him he must wait."

He went round the room putting out the electric lamps and opening the big skylight in the roof. There was a curtain in front of this, which he pulled aside, and from the frosty cloudless heavens the starshine of a thousand constellations filtered down.

"That's a lot to ask of any man," he said. "If you care, you care."

"And if you were a girl you would know exactly what I mean," she said.

"They may know they care, but, unless they are marrying for perfectly different reasons, they have to feel to the end of their fingers that they care before they can say 'Yes.'"

He opened the door for her to pa.s.s out, and they walked up the pa.s.sage together arm-in-arm.

"Well, perhaps Michael won't ask you," he said, "in which case all bother will be saved, and we shall have sat up talking till--Sylvia, did you know it is nearly three--sat up talking for nothing!"

Sylvia considered this.

"Fiddlesticks!" she said.

And Hermann was inclined to agree with her.

This view of the case found confirmation next day, for Michael, after his music lesson, lingered so firmly and determinedly when the three chatted together over the fire that in the end Hermann found nothing to do but to leave them together. Sylvia had given him no sign as to whether she wished him to absent himself or not, and he concluded, since she did not put an end to things by going away herself, that she intended Michael to have his say.