had been a gap fixed by something old-fashioned within him which abhorred emotional extravagance.  He had, for instance, strongly objected to Annette, so attractive, and in 1914 only thirty-four, going to her native France, her “chere patrie” as, under the stimulus of war, she had begun to call it, to nurse her “braves poilus,” forsooth!  Ruining her health and her looks!  As if she were really a nurse!  He had put a stopper on it.  Let her do needlework for them at home, or knit!  She had not gone, therefore, and had never been quite the same woman since.  A bad tendency of hers to mock at him, not openly, but in continual little ways, had grown.  As for Fleur, the War had resolved the vexed problem whether or not she should go to school.  She was better away from her mother in her war mood, from the chance of air-raids, and the impetus to do extravagant things; so he had placed her in a seminary as far West as had seemed to him compatible with excellence, and had missed her horribly.  Fleur!  He had never regretted the somewhat outlandish name by which at her birth he had decided so suddenly to call her—­marked concession though it had been to the French.  Fleur!  A pretty name—­a pretty child!  But restless—­too restless; and wilful!  Knowing her power too over her father!  Soames often reflected on the mistake it was to dote on his daughter.  To get old and dote!  Sixty-five!  He was getting on; but he didn’t feel it, for, fortunately perhaps, considering Annette’s youth and good looks, his second marriage had turned out a cool affair.  He had known but one real passion in his life—­for that first wife of his—­Irene.  Yes, and that fellow, his cousin Jolyon, who had gone off with her, was looking very shaky, they said.  No wonder, at seventy-two, after twenty years of a third marriage!

Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the Row.  A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house in Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents’ deaths, and the little house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he had enjoyed his first edition of matrimony.  Now, after twenty years of his second edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous existence—­which had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he had hoped for.  For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely, the son who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart.  After all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to the time when she would change it.  Indeed, if he ever thought of such a calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow who married her—­why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men nowadays?  And Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his curved hand over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his chin.  Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and gabby;