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.” Stella was so ferocious in her mockery of their childish haunts and habitations that Michael began to perceive her old serene contempt was become tinged with bitterness. This morning she was too straightly in possession of herself. It was illogical after last night. “Well, thank heaven, everything does change,” she murmured. “And that ugly things become even more ugly.” “Only for a time,” objected Michael. “In twenty years if we visit Carlington Road we shall think how innocent and intimate and pretty it all is.” “I wasn’t thinking so much of Carlington Road,” said Stella. “I was really thinking of people.” “Even they become beautiful again after a time,” argued Michael. “It would take a very long time for some,” said Stella coldly. Michael had rather dreaded his mother’s return, with Stella in this mood, and he was pleased when he found that his fears had been unjustifiable. Stella in fact was very gentle with her mother, as if she and not herself had suffered lately. “I’m so glad you’re back, darling Stella, and so delighted to think you aren’t going to Petersburg to-morrow, because the man at Vienna whose name begins with that extraordinary letter....” “Oh, mother,” Stella laughed, “the letter was quite ordinary. It was only L.” “But the name was dreadful, dear child. It always reminded one of furs. A most oppressive name. So that really you’ll be in London all this winter?” “Yes, only I shan’t play much,” said Stella.