“Jack,” cried Imogen, enchanted, “what do you keep fit for?”

Jack Cardigan stared with all his health.  The questions were like the buzz of a mosquito, and he put up his hand to wipe them away.  During the War, of course, he had kept fit to kill Germans; now that it was over he either did not know, or shrank in delicacy from explanation of his moving principle.

“But he’s right,” said Monsieur Profond unexpectedly, “there’s nothin’ left but keepin’ fit.”

The saying, too deep for Sunday afternoon, would have passed unanswered, but for the mercurial nature of young Mont.

“Good!” he cried.  “That’s the great discovery of the War.  We all thought we were progressing—­now we know we’re only changing.”

“For the worse,” said Monsieur Profond genially.

“How you are cheerful, Prosper!” murmured Annette.

“You come and play tennis!” said Jack Cardigan; “you’ve got the hump.  We’ll soon take that down.  D’you play, Mr. Mont?”

“I hit the ball about, sir.”

At this juncture Soames rose, ruffled in that deep instinct of preparation for the future which guided his existence.

“When Fleur comes—­” he heard Jack Cardigan say.

Ah! and why didn’t she come?  He passed through drawing-room, hall, and porch out on to the drive, and stood there listening for the car.  All was still and Sundayfied; the lilacs in full flower scented the air.  There were white clouds, like the feathers of ducks gilded by the sunlight.  Memory of the day when Fleur was born, and he had waited in such agony with her life and her mother’s balanced in his hands, came to him sharply.  He had saved her then, to be the flower of his life.  And now! was she going to give him trouble—­pain—­give him trouble?  He did not like the look of things!  A blackbird broke in on his reverie with an evening song—­a great big fellow up in that acacia-tree.  Soames had taken quite an interest in his birds of late years; he and Fleur would walk round and watch them; her eyes were sharp as needles, and she knew every nest.  He saw her dog, a retriever, lying on the drive in a patch of sunlight, and called to him.  “Hallo, old fellow-waiting for her too!” The dog came slowly with a grudging tail, and Soames mechanically laid a pat on his head.  The dog, the bird, the lilac, all were part of Fleur for him; no more, no less.  ‘Too fond of her!’ he thought, ‘too fond!’ He was like a man uninsured, with his ships at sea.  Uninsured again—­as in that other time, so long ago, when he would wander dumb and jealous in the wilderness of London, longing for that woman—­his first wife—­the mother of this infernal boy.  Ah!  There was the car at last!  It drew up, it had luggage, but no Fleur.

“Miss Fleur is walking up, sir, by the towing-path.”