“It’s pretty obvious,” Michael said. “And curiously enough I can quite understand it. Generally, of course, a brother finds it difficult to understand what other people can see in his sister, but I’m never surprised when they fall in love with Stella.” “A good many have?” asked Alan, and his blue eyes were sharpened by a pain deeper than that of seeing a catch in the slips missed off his bowling. Michael nodded. “Oh, I’ve realized for a long time how utterly hopeless it was for me,” Alan sighed. “I’m evidently going to be a failure.” “Would you care for some advice?” inquired Michael very tentatively. “What sort of advice?” Alan asked. Michael took this for assent, and plunged in. “Let her alone,” he adjured his friend. “Let her absolutely alone. She’s very young, you know, and you’re not very old. Let her alone for at least a year. I suggest two years. Don’t see much of her, and don’t let her think you care. That would interest her for a week, and really, Alan, it’s not good for Stella to think that everybody falls in love with her. I don’t mind about Maurice. It would do him good to be turned down.” “Would he be?” demanded Alan gloomily. “Of course, of course ... it seems funny to be talking to you about love ... you used to be so very scornful about it.... I expect you know you’ll fall in love pretty deeply now.... Alan, I’m frightfully keen you should marry Stella. But let her alone. Don’t let her interfere with your cricket. Don’t take up golf on account of her.” Michael was so much in earnest with his exhortation to Alan that he picked up a meringue and was involved in the difficulties of eating it before he was aware he was doing so. Alan began to laugh, and the heavy airs of disappointment and hopelessness were lightened. “It’s funny,” said Michael, “that I should have an opportunity now of talking to you about love and cricket.” “Funny?” Alan repeated. “Don’t you remember three years ago on the river one night how I wished you would fall in love, and you said something about it being bad for cricket?” “I believe I do remember vaguely,” said Alan. Michael saw that after the explanation of his depression he wanted to let the subject drop, and since that was the very advice he had conferred upon Alan, he felt it would be unfair to tempt him to elaborate this depression merely to gratify his own pleasure in the retrospect of emotion. So Stella was not discussed again for a long while, and as she did after all go to Vienna to study a new technique, the abstention was not difficult. Michael was glad, since he had foreseen the possibility of a complication raveled by Maurice. Her departure straightened this out, for Maurice was not inclined to gather strength from absence. Other problems more delicate of adjustment even than Stella began to arise, problems connected with the social aspects of next term.