“You seemed to take no interest in the opera, and you usually enjoy Puccini, don’t you? Or was it Wagner you enjoy so much?”
“I think summer in London is always tiring,” he said.
She was in that rosy mist of clothes with which his earliest pictures of her were vivid. Suddenly he began to cry.
“Dear child, what is it?” she whispered, with fluttering arms outstretched to comfort him.
“Oh, I’ve finished with all that! I’ve finished with all that! You’ll be delighted—you mustn’t be worried because I seem upset for the moment. I found out that Lily did not care anything about me. I’m not going to marry her or even see her again.”
“Michael! My dearest boy! What is it?”
“Finished! Finished! Finished!” he sobbed.
“Nothing is finished at twenty-three,” she murmured, leaning over to pet him.
“I do hate myself for having hurt your feelings the other day.”
It was as if he seized upon a justification for grief so manifest. It seemed to him exquisitely sad that he should have wounded his mother on account of that broken toy of a girl. Soon he could control himself again; and he went off to bed.