By the time the dance was over and the other two had rejoined her, Sylvia was laughing at herself; but they thought she was laughing at them. Fane and Lily danced several more dances together, and gradually Sylvia made up her mind that she disapproved of this new intimacy, this sudden invasion of Lily's life from the past from which she should have cut herself off as completely as Sylvia had done from her own. What right had Lily to complicate their existence in this fashion? How unutterably dull this masquerade was! She whispered to Lily in the next interval that she was tired and wanted to go home. The fog outside was very dense. Fane took their arms to cross the road, and Sylvia, though he caught her arm close to him, felt drearily how mechanical its gesture was toward her, how vital toward Lily. Neither of her companions spoke to each other, and she asked them questions about their former friendship, which Lily did not answer because she was evidently afraid of her annoyance, and which he did not answer because he did not hear. Sylvia had made up her mind that Fane should not enter Mulberry Cottage, when Lily whispered to her that she should ask him, but at the last moment she remembered his smile and invited him to supper. A strange shyness took possession of her, which she tried to cover by exaggeration, almost, she thought, hysterical fooling with Mrs. Gainsborough that lasted until two o'clock in the morning of New-Year's day, when Michael Fane went home after exacting a promise from the two girls to lunch with him at Kettner's that afternoon. Lily was so sleepy that she did not rise to see him out. Sylvia was glad of the indifference. Next morning Sylvia found out that Michael was a "nice boy" whom Lily had known in West Kensington when she was seventeen. He had been awfully in love with her, and her mother had been annoyed because he wanted to marry her. He had only been seventeen himself, and like many other school-boy loves of those days this one had just ended somehow, but exactly how Lily could not recall. She wished that Sylvia would not go on asking so many questions; she really could not remember anything more about it. They had gone once for a long drive in a cab, and there had been a row about that at home. "Are you in love with him now?" Sylvia demanded. "No, of course not. How could I be?" Sylvia was determined that she never should be, either: there should be no more Claude Raglans to interfere with their well-devised existence.