They were sitting in Guy’s green library. The windows wide open let in across the sound of the burbling stream the warm air of the lucid May night, where bats and owls and evejars flew across the face of the decrescent moon.
“It’s this dreamy country in which you live,” said Michael.
“What about you? You’ve let people put off your marriage.”
“Only for another two months,” Michael explained.
“You see I’m down to one hundred and fifty pounds a year now,” Guy muttered. “I can’t marry on that, and I can’t leave this place, and her people can’t afford to make her an allowance. They think I ought to go away and work at journalism. However, I’m not going to worry you with my troubles.”
Guy was a good deal with Pauline every day: Michael wrote long letters to Lily and read poetry.
“Browning?” asked Guy one afternoon, looking over Michael’s shoulder.
“Yes; The Statue and The Bust.”
“Oh, don’t remind me of that poem. It haunts me,” Guy declared.
A week passed. There was no moon now, and the nights grew warmer. It was weather to make lovers happy, but Guy seemed worried. He would not come for walks with Michael through the dark and scented water-meadows, and Michael used to think that often at night he was meeting Pauline. It made him jealous to imagine them lost in this amaranthine profundity. They were happy now, if through all their lives they should never be happy again. Yet Guy was obviously fretted: he was getting spoiled by good fortune. “And I have had about a fortnight of incomplete happiness,” Michael said to himself. Supposing that a calamity fell upon him during this delay. He would never cease to regret his weakness in granting his mother’s request: he would hate Stella for having interfered: his life would be miserable forever. Yet what calamity did he fear? In a sudden apprehension, he struck a match and read her last letter: