Not for a moment did he tell himself that he had been awakened from a dream, or abandon his conviction that his dream was to be made real.

The rare, quiet determination that had made him give up his stereotyped mode of life in the summer and take to music was still completely his, and, if anything, it had been reinforced by Sylvia's emphatic statement that "she wanted to care." Only her imagining that their old relations could go on showed him how far she was from knowing what "to care" meant.

At first without knowing it, but with a gradually increasing keenness of consciousness, he had become aware that this sisterly attitude of hers towards him had meant so infinitely much, because he had taken it to be the prelude to something more.

Now he saw that it was, so to speak, a piece complete in itself.

It bore no relation to what he had imagined it would lead into.