“Better the day, better the deed, Mam’zelle.  It’s all my doing.  Trot along, chicks, and have your tea.”

And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took every meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said: 

“Well, there we are!  Aren’t they sweet?  Have you any little ones among your pupils?”

“Yes, three—­two of them darlings.”

“Pretty?”

“Lovely!”

Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very young.  “My little sweet,” he said, “is devoted to music; she’ll be a musician some day.  You wouldn’t give me your opinion of her playing, I suppose?”

“Of course I will.”

“You wouldn’t like—­” but he stifled the words “to give her lessons.”  The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him; yet it would mean that he would see her regularly.  She left the piano and came over to his chair.

“I would like, very much; but there is—­June.  When are they coming back?”

Old Jolyon frowned.  “Not till the middle of next month.  What does that matter?”

“You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle Jolyon.”

Forget!  She must forget, if he wanted her to.

But as if answering, Irene shook her head.  “You know she couldn’t; one doesn’t forget.”

Always that wretched past!  And he said with a sort of vexed finality: 

“Well, we shall see.”

He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred little things, till the carriage came round to take her home.  And when she had gone he went back to his chair, and sat there smoothing his face and chin, dreaming over the day.

That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of paper.  He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and stood under the masterpiece ‘Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.’  He was not thinking of that picture, but of his life.  He was going to leave her something in his Will; nothing could so have stirred the stilly deeps of thought and memory.  He was going to leave her a portion of his wealth, of his aspirations, deeds, qualities, work—­all that had made that wealth; going to leave her, too, a part of all he had missed in life, by his sane and steady pursuit of wealth.  All!  What had he missed?  ’Dutch Fishing Boats’ responded blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing the curtain aside, opened it.  A wind had got up, and one of last year’s oak leaves which had somehow survived the gardener’s brooms, was dragging itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace in the twilight.  Except for that it was very quiet out there, and he could smell the heliotrope watered not long since.  A bat went by.  A bird uttered its last ‘cheep.’  And right above the oak tree the first star shone.  Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of youth.  Morbid notion!  No