Next morning when Michael woke, his resolve purified by sleep of feverish and hysterical promptings was fresh upon his pillow. In the fatigue and strain of the preceding night the adventure had caught a hectic glow of exaltation. Now, with the sparrows twittering and the milkman clanking and yodeling down Cheyne Walk and the young air puffing the curtains, his course acquired a simplicity in this lucid hour of deliberation, which made the future normal and even obvious. There was a great relief in this fresh following breeze after the becalmed inaction of Oxford: it seemed an augury of life’s importance that so immediately on top of the Oxford dream he should find such a complete dispersion of mist and so urgent a fairway before him. The task of finding Lily might easily occupy him for some time, for a life like hers would be made up of mutable appearances and sudden strange eclipses. It might well be a year before she was seen again on the Orient Promenade. Yet it was just as likely that he would find her at once. For a moment he caught his breath in thinking of the sudden plunge which that meeting would involve. He thought of all the arguments and all the dismay that the revelation of his purpose would set in motion. However, the marriage had to be. He had threshed it all out last night. But he might reasonably hope for a brief delay. Such a hope was no disloyalty to his determination. Stella was already at breakfast when he came downstairs. Michael raised his eyebrows in demand for news of her and Alan. “Mother was the sweetest thing imaginable,” she said. “And so we’re engaged. I wanted to come and talk to you last night, but I thought you would rather be left alone.” “I’m glad you’re happy,” he said gravely. “And I’m glad you’re safe.” Stella looked at him in surprise. “I’ve never been anything but safe,” she assured him. “Haven’t you?” he asked, looking at her and reproving himself for the thought that this gray-eyed sister of his could ever have exposed herself to the least likelihood of falling into Lily’s case. Yet there had been times when he had felt alarmed for her security and happiness. There had been that fellow Ayliffe, and more serious still there had been that unknown influence in Vienna. Invulnerable she might seem now in this cool dining-room on a summer morning, but there had been times when he had doubted. “What are you looking at?” she asked, flaunting her imperious boyishness in his solemn countenance. “You. Thinking you ought to be damned grateful.” “What for?” “Everything.” “You included, I suppose,” she laughed.