He was stabbed by the ease of her invitation.
“Do you ask all these friends of yours to come in and have a drink after midnight?”
“I told you that Sylvia doesn’t like me to,” she said.
“But you would, if she didn’t mind?” Michael went on, torturing himself.
“How fond you are of ‘ifs,’” she answered. “I can’t bother to think about ‘ifs’ myself.”
If only he had the pluck to avoid allusions and come at once to grips with truth. Sharply he advised himself to let the truth alone. Already he was feeling the influence of Lily’s attitude. He wondered if, when he married her, all his activity would swoon upon Calypso like this. It was as easy to dream life away in the contemplation of a beautiful woman as in the meditation of the Oxford landscape.
“Happiness makes me inactive,” said Michael to himself. “So of course I shall never really be happy. What a paradox.”
He would not take off his overcoat. He was feeling afraid of a surrender to-night.
“I’m glad I didn’t suggest staying late,” he thought, as he walked away down the dripping garden path. “I should have been mad with unreasonable suspicions, if she had said ‘yes.’”
Sylvia came back next day, and though Michael still liked her very much, he was certain now of her hostility to him. He was conscious of malice in the air, when she said to Lily that Jack wanted them to have dinner with him to-night and go afterward to some dance at Richmond. Michael was furious that Lily should be invited to Richmond, and yet until she had promised to marry him how could he combat Sylvia’s influence? And who was Jack? And with whom had Sylvia been to Brighton?