Next day he waited three hours and a half for Lily, but she did not come. All the time he spent in a second-hand bookshop with one eye on the street. When he got home, he found a note from Sylvia:
Come to-morrow at twelve.
S. S.
Michael crumpled up the note and flung it triumphantly into the waste-paper basket.
“I thought I should sting you into giving way,” he exclaimed.
Mrs. Gainsborough opened the door to him, when he arrived.
“They’ve gone away, the demons!” was what she said.
Michael was conscious of the garden rimmed with hoar-frost stretching behind her in a vista; and as he stared at this silver sparkling desert he realized that Sylvia had inflicted upon him a crushing humiliation.
“Where have they gone?” he asked blankly.
“Oh, they never tell me where they get to. But they took their luggage. There’s a note for you from Sylvia. Come in, and I’ll give it to you.”