“But better to meet a young man who’s got it in the plural.”

Young Mont raised a hand to tear his hair.

“Look out!” cried Fleur.  “Your scull!”

“All right!  It’s thick enough to bear a scratch.”

“Do you mind sculling?” said Fleur severely.  “I want to get in.”

“Ah!” said Mont; “but when you get in, you see, I shan’t see you any more to-day.  Fini, as the French girl said when she jumped on her bed after saying her prayers.  Don’t you bless the day that gave you a French mother, and a name like yours?”

“I like my name, but Father gave it me.  Mother wanted me called Marguerite.”

“Which is absurd.  Do you mind calling me M. M. and letting me call you F. F.?  It’s in the spirit of the age.”

“I don’t mind anything, so long as I get in.”

Mont caught a little crab, and answered:  “That was a nasty one!”

“Please row.”

“I am.”  And he did for several strokes, looking at her with rueful eagerness.  “Of course, you know,” he ejaculated, pausing, “that I came to see you, not your father’s pictures.”

Fleur rose.

“If you don’t row, I shall get out and swim.”

“Really and truly?  Then I could come in after you.”

“Mr. Mont, I’m late and tired; please put me on shore at once.”

When she stepped out on to the garden landing-stage he rose, and grasping his hair with both hands, looked at her.

Fleur smiled.

“Don’t!” cried the irrepressible Mont.  “I know you’re going to say:  ‘Out, damned hair!’”

Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand.  “Good-bye, Mr. M.M.!” she called, and was gone among the rose-trees.  She looked at her wrist-watch and the windows of the house.  It struck her as curiously uninhabited.  Past six!  The pigeons were just gathering to roost, and sunlight slanted on the dovecot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond in a shower on the top boughs of the woods.  The click of billiard-balls came from the ingle-nook—­Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling, too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English garden.  She reached the verandah and was passing in, but stopped at the sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left.  Mother!  Monsieur Profond!  From behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she heard these words: 

“I don’t, Annette.”

Did Father know that he called her mother “Annette”?  Always on the side of her Father—­as children are ever on one side or the other in houses where relations are a little strained—­she stood, uncertain.  Her mother was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice—­one word she caught:  “Demain.”  And Profond’s answer:  “All right.”  Fleur frowned.  A little sound came out into the stillness.  Then Profond’s voice:  “I’m takin’ a small stroll.”