He answered gently:  “Yes—­yes; of course, why not?”

“And have you?”

“I?  I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay.”  And perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the beautiful.

She drew a deep breath.  “I never regretted—­I couldn’t.  Did you ever love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?”

At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him.  Had he?  He did not seem to remember that he ever had.  But he did not like to say this to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.  And he thought:  ’If I had met you when I was young I—­I might have made a fool of myself, perhaps.’  And a longing to escape in generalities beset him.

“Love’s a queer thing,” he said, “fatal thing often.  It was the Greeks—­wasn’t it?—­made love into a goddess; they were right, I dare say, but then they lived in the Golden Age.”

“Phil adored them.”

Phil!  The word jarred him, for suddenly—­with his power to see all round a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like this.  She wanted to talk about her lover!  Well!  If it was any pleasure to her!  And he said:  “Ah!  There was a bit of the sculptor in him, I fancy.”

“Yes.  He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted way the Greeks gave themselves to art.”

Balance!  The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for symmetry—­clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes of his, and high cheek-bones—­Symmetry?

“You’re of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon.”

Old Jolyon looked round at her.  Was she chaffing him?  No, her eyes were soft as velvet.  Was she flattering him?  But if so, why?  There was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.

“Phil thought so.  He used to say:  ’But I can never tell him that I admire him.’”

Ah!  There it was again.  Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him!  And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between herself and him.

“He was a very talented young fellow,” he murmured.  “It’s hot; I feel the heat nowadays.  Let’s sit down.”

They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon.  A pleasure to sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him.  And the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him go on: 

“I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw.  He’d be at his best with you.  His ideas of art were a little new—­to me “—­he had stiffed the word ‘fangled.’

“Yes:  but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty.”  Old Jolyon thought:  ‘The devil he did!’ but answered with a twinkle:  “Well, I have, or I shouldn’t be sitting here with you.”  She was fascinating when she smiled with her eyes, like that!