as it might be, the unlocated centre of a cyclone.  And, staring at his uncle’s face, he had a quite unaccountable vision of a woman with dark eyes, gold hair, and a white neck, who smelt nice, and had pretty silken clothes which he had liked feeling when he was quite small.  By Jove, yes!  Aunt Irene!  She used to kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once, playfully, because he liked it—­so soft.  His grandfather was speaking: 

“What’s his father doing?”

“He’s away in Paris,” Val said, staring at the very queer expression on his uncle’s face, like—­like that of a snarling dog.

“Artists!” said James.  The word coming from the very bottom of his soul, broke up the dinner.

Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-fruits of heroism, like medlars over-ripe.

She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor’s at once and have his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they gave him.  But he could feel that she was very much upset.  It was on his lips to console her with the spoken thought that he would be out of the way of that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen, and the knowledge that his mother would not be out of the way, restrained him.  He felt aggrieved that she did not seem more proud of him.  When Imogen had gone to bed, he risked the emotional.

“I’m awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother.”

“Well, I must make the best of it.  We must try and get you a commission as soon as we can; then you won’t have to rough it so.  Do you know any drill, Val?”

“Not a scrap.”

“I hope they won’t worry you much.  I must take you about to get the things to-morrow.  Good-night; kiss me.”

With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, ’I hope they won’t worry you much,’ in his ears, he sat down to a cigarette, before a dying fire.  The heat was out of him—­the glow of cutting a dash.  It was all a damned heart-aching bore.  ’I’ll be even with that chap Jolly,’ he thought, trailing up the stairs, past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob.

And soon only one of the diners at James’ was awake—­Soames, in his bedroom above his father’s.

So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris—­what was he doing there?  Hanging round Irene!  The last report from Polteed had hinted that there might be something soon.  Could it be this?  That fellow, with his beard and his cursed amused way of speaking—­son of the old man who had given him the nickname ‘Man of Property,’ and bought the fatal house from him.  Soames had ever resented having had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never forgiven his uncle for having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.

Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across the Park.  Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of traffic; a frost coming; bare trees; a star or two.  ‘I’ll see Polteed to-morrow,’ he thought.  ’By God!  I’m mad, I think, to want her still.  That fellow!  If...?  Um!  No!’