What had happened to Stella during this last year? She had lost nearly all her old air of detachment. Formerly a radiance of gloriously unpassionate energy had shielded her from any close contact with the vulgar or hectic or merely ordinary life round her. Michael had doubted once or twice the wisdom of smoking cigars and had feared that artistic license of speech and action might be carried too far, but, looking back on his earlier opinion of Stella, he realized he had only been doubtful on his own account. He had never really thought she ran the least danger of doing anything more serious in its consequence than would have been enough to involve him or his mother in a brief embarrassment. Now, though he was at a loss to explain how he was aware of the change, she had become vulnerable. With this new aspect of her suddenly presented, he began to watch Stella with a trace of anxiety. He was worried that she seemed so restless, so steadily bored in London. He mistrusted the brightening of her eyes, when she spoke of soon going back to Vienna. Then came a week when Stella was much occupied with speculations about the Austrian post, and another week when she was perturbed by what she seemed anxious to suppose its vagaries. A hint from Michael that there was something more attractive in Vienna than a new technique of the piano made her very angry; and since she had always taken him into her confidence before, he tried to persuade himself that his suspicion was absurd and to feel tremendously at ease when Stella packed up in a hurry and went back with scarcely two days’ warning of her departure to Vienna.
It was a sign of the new intimacy of relation between himself and his mother that Michael was able to approach naturally the subject of Stella’s inquietude.
“My dear boy, I’m just as much worried as you are,” Mrs. Fane assured him. “I suppose I ought to have been much more unpleasant than I can ever bear to make myself. No doubt I ought to have forbidden her quite definitely to go back—or perhaps I should have insisted on going back with her. Though I don’t know what I would have done in Vienna. They make pastry there, don’t they? I daresay there are very good tea-shops.”
“I think it would have been better,” said Michael firmly. Mrs. Fane turned to him with a shrug of helplessness.
“My dear boy, you know how very unpleasant Stella can be when she is crossed. Really very unpleasant indeed. Girls are so much more difficult to manage than boys. And they begin by being so easy. But after eighteen every month brings a new problem. Their clothes, you know. And of course their behavior.”
“It’s quite obvious what’s the matter,” said Michael. “Funny thing. I’ve never concerned myself very much with Stella’s love-affairs before, but this time she seemed less capable of looking after herself.”
“Would you like to go out to Vienna?” she suggested.
“Oh, no, really, I must go away and work. Besides I shouldn’t do any good. Nor would you,” Michael added abruptly.
“I wish Dick Prescott were alive,” his mother sighed. “Really, you know, Michael, I was shocked at Stella’s callousness over that business.”
“Well, my dear mother, be fair. It wasn’t anything to do with Stella, and she has no conventional affections. That’s one comfort—you do know where you are with her. Now, let’s leave Stella alone and talk about your plans. You’re sure you don’t mind my burying myself in the country? I must work. I’m going down into Oxfordshire with Guy Hazlewood.”