Suddenly Stella caught hold of his arm.
“Look here,” she said. “You absurd old Quixote, listen. I’m going to do all in my power to stop your marrying Lily. But meanwhile go up to town and leave her here. I promise to declare a truce of a fortnight, if you’ll promise me not to marry her until the middle of April. By a truce I mean that I’ll be charming to her and take no steps to influence her to give you up. But after the fortnight it must be war, even if you win in the end and marry her.”
“Does that mean we should cease to be on speaking terms?”
“Oh, no, of course; as a matter of fact, if you marry her, I suppose we shall all settle down together and be great friends, until she lands you in the divorce court with half a dozen co-respondents. Then you’ll come and live with us at Hardingham, a confirmed cynic and the despair of all the eligible young women in the neighborhood.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that about Lily,” said Michael, frowning.
“The truce has begun,” Stella declared. “For a fortnight I’ll be an angel.”
Just before dusk was falling, the gale died away, and Michael persuaded Lily to come for a walk with him. Almost unconsciously he took her to the wood where he and Stella had talked so angrily in the morning. Chaffinches flashed their silver wings about them in the fading light.
“Lily, you look adorable in this glade,” he told her. “I believe, if you were a little way off from me, I should think you were a birch tree.”
The wood was rosy brown and purple. Every object had taken on rich deeps of quality and color reflected from the March twilight. The body of the missel-thrush flinging his song from the bare oak-bough into the ragged sky, flickered with a magical sublucency. Michael found some primroses and brought them to Lily.
“These are for you, you tall tall primrose of a girl. Listen, will you let me leave you for a very few days so that I can find the house you’re going to live in? Will you not be lonely?”