“Oh, Fleur!  I thought you’d have forgotten me.”

“When I told you that I shouldn’t!”

Jon seized her arm.

“It’s too much luck!  Let’s get away from this side.”  He almost dragged her on through that too thoughtfully regulated Park, to find some cover where they could sit and hold each other’s hands.

“Hasn’t anybody cut in?” he said, gazing round at her lashes, in suspense above her cheeks.

“There is a young idiot, but he doesn’t count.”

Jon felt a twitch of compassion for the-young idiot.

“You know I’ve had sunstroke; I didn’t tell you.”

“Really!  Was it interesting?”

“No.  Mother was an angel.  Has anything happened to you?”

“Nothing.  Except that I think I’ve found out what’s wrong between our families, Jon.”

His heart began beating very fast.

“I believe my father wanted to marry your mother, and your father got her instead.”

“Oh!”

“I came on a photo of her; it was in a frame behind a photo of me.  Of course, if he was very fond of her, that would have made him pretty mad, wouldn’t it?”

Jon thought for a minute.  “Not if she loved my father best.”

“But suppose they were engaged?”

“If we were engaged, and you found you loved somebody better, I might go cracked, but I shouldn’t grudge it you.”

“I should.  You mustn’t ever do that with me, Jon.

“My God!  Not much!”

“I don’t believe that he’s ever really cared for my mother.”

Jon was silent.  Val’s words—­the two past masters in the Club!

“You see, we don’t know,” went on Fleur; “it may have been a great shock.  She may have behaved badly to him.  People do.”

“My mother wouldn’t.”

Fleur shrugged her shoulders.  “I don’t think we know much about our fathers and mothers.  We just see them in the light of the way they treat us; but they’ve treated other people, you know, before we were born-plenty, I expect.  You see, they’re both old.  Look at your father, with three separate families!”

“Isn’t there any place,” cried Jon, “in all this beastly London where we can be alone?”

“Only a taxi.”

“Let’s get one, then.”

When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly:  “Are you going back to Robin Hill?  I should like to see where you live, Jon.  I’m staying with my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time for dinner.  I wouldn’t come to the house, of course.”

Jon gazed at her enraptured.

“Splendid!  I can show it you from the copse, we shan’t meet anybody.  There’s a train at four.”

The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, leisured, official, commercial, or professional, like the working classes, still worked their seven hours a day, so that those two of the fourth generation travelled down to Robin Hill in an empty first-class carriage, dusty and sun-warmed, of that too early train.  They travelled in blissful silence, holding each other’s hands.