“Like mother, in fact,” Stella pointed out. “Do you know, Michael, I believe by this time she is entirely oblivious of the fact that in her past there has been anything which was not perfectly ordinary, almost dull. Really by the way she worries me about the simplest little things, you’d think—however, as I know you have rather a dread of perfect frankness in your only sister, I’ll shut up and say no more.” “What things?” asked Michael sharply. Stella’s theories about the freedom of the artist had already worried him a good deal, and though he had laughed them aside as the extravagant affectations of a gifted child, now that, however grudgingly he must admit the fact, she was really grown up, it would never do for her without a protest from him to turn theories into practice. “Oh, Michael!” Stella laughed reprovingly. “Don’t put on that professorial or priestly air or whatever you call it, because if you ever want confidences from me you’ll have just to be humbly sympathetic.” Michael sternly demanded if she had been keeping up her music, which made Stella dance about the studio in tempestuous mirth. “I don’t see anything to giggle at in such a question,” Michael grumbled, and simultaneously reproached himself for a method of obloquy so cheap. “Anyway, you never talk about your music now, and whatever you may say, you don’t practice as much as you used. Why?” For answer Stella sat down at the piano, and played over and over again the latest popular song until Michael walked out of the studio in a rage. A few days later at breakfast he broached the subject of going away into the country. “My dear boy, I’m much too busy with the Bazaar,” said Mrs. Fane. Michael sighed. “I don’t think I can possibly get away until August, and then I’ve half promised to go to Dinard with Mrs. Carruthers. She has just taken up Mental Science—so interesting and quite different from Christian Science.” “I hate these mock-turtle religions,” said Michael savagely. Mrs. Fane replied that Michael must learn a little toleration in very much the same tone as she might have suggested a little Italian. “But why don’t you and Stella go away somewhere together? Stella has been quite long enough in London for the present.” “I’ve got to practice hard for my next concert,” said Stella, looking coldly at her brother. “You and Michael are so funny, mother. You grumble at me when I don’t practice all day, and yet when it’s really necessary for me to work, you always suggest going away.” “I never suggested your coming away,” Michael contradicted. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been asked to join a reading-party in Cornwall, and I think I’ll go.”