Aunt Barbara rose in violent incredulity. “Pish and bosh!” she remarked. “If he had alluded to him as an incendiary bomb, there would have been more sense in his simile.” “Anyhow, he and Sylvia are planning a musical tour in Germany in the autumn,” said Michael. “‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,’” remarked Aunt Barbara enigmatically. “Why Tipperary?” asked Michael. “Oh, it’s just a song I heard at a music-hall the other night. There’s a jolly catchy tune to it, which has rung in my head ever since. That’s the sort of music I like, something you can carry away with you. And your music, Michael?” “Rather in abeyance. There are--other things to think about.” Aunt Barbara got up. “Ah, tell me more about them,” she said. “I want to get this nightmare out of my head. Sylvia, now. Sylvia is a good cure for the nightmare. Is she kind as she is fair, Michael?” Michael was silent for a moment. Then he turned a quiet, radiant face to her. “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “I can’t get accustomed to the wonder of it.” “That will do. That’s a completely satisfactory account. But go on.” Michael laughed. “How can I?” he asked. “There’s no end and no beginning. I can’t ‘go on’ as you order me about a thing like that. There is Sylvia; there is me.” “I must be content with that, then,” she said, smiling. “We are,” said Michael. Lady Barbara waited a moment without speaking. “And your mother?” she asked. He shook his head. “She still refuses to see me,” he said. “She still thinks it was I who made the plot to take her away and shut her up. She is often angry with me, poor darling, but--but you see it isn’t she who is angry: it’s just her malady.” “Yes, my dear,” said Lady Barbara. “I am so glad you see it like that.” “How else could I see it? It was my real mother whom I began to know last Christmas, and whom I was with in town for the three months that followed. That’s how I think of her: I can’t think of her as anything else.” “And how is she otherwise?” Again he shook his head. “She is wretched, though they say that all she feels is dim and veiled, that we mustn’t think of her as actually unhappy. Sometimes there are good days, when she takes a certain pleasure in her walks and in looking after a little plot of ground where she gardens. And, thank God, that sudden outburst when she tried to kill me seems to have entirely passed from her mind. They don’t think she remembers it at all. But then the good days are rare, and are growing rarer, and often now she sits doing nothing at all but crying.” Aunt Barbara laid her hand on him. “Oh, my dear,” she said. Michael paused for a moment, his brown eyes shining. “If only she could come back just for a little to what she was in January,” he said. “She was happier then, I think, than she ever was before. I can’t help wondering if anyhow I could have prolonged those days, by giving myself up to her more completely.”