blossom; and to-morrow morning, before anybody’s awake, we’re going to walk off into Down fairyland.  There’s a feud between our families, which makes it really exciting.  Yes! and I may have to use subterfuge and come on you for invitations—­if so, you’ll know why!  My father doesn’t want us to know each other, but I can’t help that.  Life’s too short.  He’s got the most beautiful mother, with lovely silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes.  I’m staying with his sister—­who married my cousin; it’s all mixed up, but I mean to pump her to-morrow.  We’ve often talked about love being a spoil-sport; well, that’s all tosh, it’s the beginning of sport, and the sooner you feel it, my dear, the better for you.

“Jon (not simplified spelling, but short for Jolyon, which is a name in my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes out; about five feet ten, still growing, and I believe he’s going to be a poet.  If you laugh at me I’ve done with you forever.  I perceive all sorts of difficulties, but you know when I really want a thing I get it.  One of the chief effects of love is that you see the air sort of inhabited, like seeing a face in the moon; and you feel—­you feel dancey and soft at the same time, with a funny sensation—­like a continual first sniff of orange—­blossom—­Just above your stays.  This is my first, and I feel as if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of course, by all the laws of Nature and morality.  If you mock me I will smite you, and if you tell anybody I will never forgive you.  So much so, that I almost don’t think I’ll send this letter.  Anyway, I’ll sleep over it.  So good-night, my Cherry—­oh!  “Your, “Fleur.”  VIII idyll on grass

When those two young Forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and set their faces east toward the sun, there was not a cloud in heaven, and the Downs were dewy.  They had come at a good bat up the slope and were a little out of breath; if they had anything to say they did not say it, but marched in the early awkwardness of unbreakfasted morning under the songs of the larks.  The stealing out had been fun, but with the freedom of the tops the sense of conspiracy ceased, and gave place to dumbness.

“We’ve made one blooming error,” said Fleur, when they had gone half a mile.  “I’m hungry.”

Jon produced a stick of chocolate.  They shared it and their tongues were loosened.  They discussed the nature of their homes and previous existences, which had a kind of fascinating unreality up on that lonely height.  There remained but one thing solid in Jon’s past—­his mother; but one thing solid in Fleur’s—­her father; and of these figures, as though seen in the distance with disapproving faces, they spoke little.