nowadays; but any one who, like himself, could remember London sixty years ago, and see it now, realised the fecundity and elasticity of wealth.  They had only to keep their heads, and go at it steadily.  Why! he remembered cobblestones, and stinking straw on the floor of your cab.  And old Timothy—­what could he not have told them, if he had kept his memory!  Things were unsettled, people in a funk or in a hurry, but here were London and the Thames, and out there the British Empire, and the ends of the earth.  “Consols are goin’ up!” He should n’t be a bit surprised.  It was the breed that counted.  And all that was bull-dogged in Soames stared for a moment out of his grey eyes, till diverted by the print of a Victorian picture on the walls.  The hotel had bought three dozen of that little lot!  The old hunting or “Rake’s Progress” prints in the old inns were worth looking at—­but this sentimental stuff—­well, Victorianism had gone!  “Tell them to hold on!” old Timothy had said.  But to what were they to hold on in this modern welter of the “democratic principle”?  Why, even privacy was threatened!  And at the thought that privacy might perish, Soames pushed back his teacup and went to the window.  Fancy owning no more of Nature than the crowd out there owned of the flowers and trees and waters of Hyde Park!  No, no!  Private possession underlay everything worth having.  The world had slipped its sanity a bit, as dogs now and again at full moon slipped theirs and went off for a night’s rabbiting; but the world, like the dog, knew where its bread was buttered and its bed warm, and would come back sure enough to the only home worth having—­to private ownership.  The world was in its second childhood for the moment, like old Timothy—­eating its titbit first!

He heard a sound behind him, and saw that his wife and daughter had come in.

“So you’re back!” he said.

Fleur did not answer; she stood for a moment looking at him and her mother, then passed into her bedroom.  Annette poured herself out a cup of tea.

“I am going to Paris, to my mother, Soames.”  “Oh!  To your mother?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“I do not know.”

“And when are you going?”

“On Monday.”

Was she really going to her mother?  Odd, how indifferent he felt!  Odd, how clearly she had perceived the indifference he would feel so long as there was no scandal.  And suddenly between her and himself he saw distinctly the face he had seen that afternoon—­Irene’s.

“Will you want money?”

“Thank you; I have enough.”

“Very well.  Let us know when you are coming back.”

Annette put down the cake she was fingering, and, looking up through darkened lashes, said: 

“Shall I give Maman any message?”

“My regards.”

Annette stretched herself, her hands on her waist, and said in French: