“Of course I’m not,” Michael contradicted. But he was very glad they wanted him; and then he thought with a pang how little they would want him with Lily in that well-proportioned library. How little Lily would enjoy the fat and placid Huntingdon meadows. How little, too, she would care to see the blackbird swagger with twinkling rump by the shrubbery’s edge or hear him scatter the leaves in shrill affright. In the quick vision that came to him of a sleek lawn possessed by birds, Michael experienced his first qualm about the wisdom of what he intended to do. “And how about Michael’s wife?” Alan asked. Michael looked quite startled by a query so coincident with his own. “Oh, of course we shall find someone quite perfect for him,” Stella confidently prophesied. “No, really,” said Michael to hide his embarrassment. “I object. Matchmaking ought not to begin during an engagement.” Stella paid no heed to the protest, and she began to describe a lady-love who should well become the surroundings in which she intended to place him. “I think rather a Quakerish person, don’t you, Alan? Rather neat and tiny with a great sense of humor and....” “In fact, an admirable sick nurse,” Michael interposed, laughing. Soon he left them in the studio and went for a walk by the side of the river, thinking, as he strolled in the shade of the plane-trees, how naturally Stella would enter the sphere of English country life now that by fortune the opportunity had been given to her of following in the long line of her ancestors. That she would be able to do so seemed to Michael an additional reason why he should consider less the security of his own future, and he was vexed with himself for that fleeting disloyalty to his task. Michael stayed at 202 High for his Viva. He occupied Wedderburn’s old white-paneled room, which he noted with relief was still sacred to the tradition of a carefully chosen decorousness. The Viva was short and irrelevant. He supposed he had obtained a comfortable third, and really it seemed of the utmost unimportance in view of what a gulf now lay between him and Oxford. However, he mustered enough interest to stay in Cheyne Walk until the lists were out, and during those ten days he made no attempt to find Lily.