“Don’t be angry with me, Michael, because I have wanted so dreadfully to be great friends with you and tell you all my secrets. I want to tell you what I think about when I’m playing; and, Michael, you oughtn’t to be angry with me, because you were simply just made to be told secrets. That’s why I played so well last night. I was telling you a secret all the time.” “Do you know what it is, Stella?” said Michael, with a certain awe in his voice. “I believe our father is in an asylum, and I believe you and I are both mad—not raving mad, of course—but slightly mad.” “All geniuses are,” said Stella earnestly. “But we aren’t geniuses.” “I am,” murmured Stella in a strangely quiet little voice that sounded in Michael’s ears like the song of a furtive melodious bird. “Are you?” he whispered, half frightened by this assertion, delivered under huge overarching trees in the burning silence of the forest. “Who told you so?” “I told myself so. And when I tell myself something very solemnly, I can’t be anything but myself, and I must be speaking the truth.” “But even if you’re a genius—and I suppose you might be—I’m not a genius. I’m clever, but I’m not a genius.” “No, but you’re the nearest person to being me, and if you’re not a genius, I think you can understand. Oh, Michael,” Stella cried, clasping his arm to her heart, “you do understand, because you never laughed when I told you I was a genius. I’ve told lots of girl-friends, and they laugh and say I’m conceited.” “Well, you are,” said Michael, feeling bound not to lose the opportunity of impressing Stella with disapproval as well as comprehension. “I know I am. But I must be to go on being myself. Oh, you darling brother, you do understand me. I’ve longed for someone to understand me. Mother’s only proud of me.” “I’m not at all proud of you,” said Michael crushingly. “I don’t want you to be. If you were proud of me, you’d think I belonged to you, and I don’t ever want to belong to anybody.” “I shouldn’t think you ever would,” said Michael encouragingly, as they paced the sensuous mossy path in a rapture of avowals. “I should think you’d frighten anybody except me. But why do you fall in love, then?” “Oh, because I want to make people die with despair.” “Great Scott, you are an unearthly kid.” “Oh, I’m glad I’m unearthly,” said Stella. “I’d like to be a sort of Undine. I think I am. I don’t think I’ve got a soul, because when I play I go rushing out into the darkness to look for my soul, and the better I play the nearer I get.” Michael stopped beneath an oak-tree and surveyed this extraordinary sister of his. “Well, I always thought I was a mystic, but, good Lord, you’re fifty times as much of a mystic as I am,” he exclaimed with depressed conviction. Suddenly Stella gave a loud scream. “What on earth are you yelling at?” said Michael.