Part 35 (1/2)

Michael was silent for a moment. Then he turned a quiet, radiant face to her.

”I can't talk about it,” he said. ”I can't get accustomed to the wonder of it.”

”That will do. That's a completely satisfactory account. But go on.”

Michael laughed.

”How can I?” he asked. ”There's no end and no beginning. I can't 'go on'

as you order me about a thing like that. There is Sylvia; there is me.”

”I must be content with that, then,” she said, smiling.

”We are,” said Michael.

Lady Barbara waited a moment without speaking.

”And your mother?” she asked.

He shook his head.

”She still refuses to see me,” he said. ”She still thinks it was I who made the plot to take her away and shut her up. She is often angry with me, poor darling, but--but you see it isn't she who is angry: it's just her malady.”

”Yes, my dear,” said Lady Barbara. ”I am so glad you see it like that.”

”How else could I see it? It was my real mother whom I began to know last Christmas, and whom I was with in town for the three months that followed. That's how I think of her: I can't think of her as anything else.”

”And how is she otherwise?”

Again he shook his head.

”She is wretched, though they say that all she feels is dim and veiled, that we mustn't think of her as actually unhappy. Sometimes there are good days, when she takes a certain pleasure in her walks and in looking after a little plot of ground where she gardens. And, thank G.o.d, that sudden outburst when she tried to kill me seems to have entirely pa.s.sed from her mind. They don't think she remembers it at all. But then the good days are rare, and are growing rarer, and often now she sits doing nothing at all but crying.”

Aunt Barbara laid her hand on him.

”Oh, my dear,” she said.

Michael paused for a moment, his brown eyes s.h.i.+ning.

”If only she could come back just for a little to what she was in January,” he said. ”She was happier then, I think, than she ever was before. I can't help wondering if anyhow I could have prolonged those days, by giving myself up to her more completely.”

”My dear, you needn't wonder about that,” said Aunt Barbara. ”Sir James told me that it was your love and nothing else at all that gave her those days.”

Michael's lips quivered.

”I can't tell you what they were to me,” he said, ”for she and I found each other then, and we both felt we had missed each other so much and so long. She was happy then, and I, too. And now everything has been taken from her, and still, in spite of that, my cup is full to overflowing.”

”That's how she would have it, Michael,” said Barbara.

”Yes, I know that. I remind myself of that.”