Jon’s chin went up as if he had been struck.

“Oh!  I didn’t mean it, Jon.  What a horrible thing to say!” Swiftly she came close to him.  “Jon, dear; I didn’t mean it.”

“All right.”

She had put her two hands on his shoulder, and her forehead down on them; the brim of her hat touched his neck, and he felt it quivering.  But, in a sort of paralysis, he made no response.  She let go of his shoulder and drew away.

“Well, I’ll go, if you don’t want me.  But I never thought you’d have given me up.”

“I haven’t,” cried Jon, coming suddenly to life.  “I can’t.  I’ll try again.”

Her eyes gleamed, she swayed toward him.  “Jon—­I love you!  Don’t give me up!  If you do, I don’t know what—­I feel so desperate.  What does it matter—­all that past-compared with this?”

She clung to him.  He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.  But while he kissed her he saw, the sheets of that letter fallen down on the floor of his bedroom—­his father’s white dead face—­his mother kneeling before it.  Fleur’s whispered, “Make her!  Promise!  Oh!  Jon, try!” seemed childish in his ear.  He felt curiously old.

“I promise!” he muttered.  “Only, you don’t understand.”

“She wants to spoil our lives, just because—­”

“Yes, of what?”

Again that challenge in his voice, and she did not answer.  Her arms tightened round him, and he returned her kisses; but even while he yielded, the poison worked in him, the poison of the letter.  Fleur did not know, she did not understand—­she misjudged his mother; she came from the enemy’s camp!  So lovely, and he loved her so—­yet, even in her embrace, he could not help the memory of Holly’s words:  “I think she has a ‘having’ nature,” and his mother’s “My darling boy, don’t think of me—­think of yourself!”

When she was gone like a passionate dream, leaving her image on his eyes, her kisses on his lips, such an ache in his heart, Jon leaned in the window, listening to the car bearing her away.  Still the scent as of warm strawberries, still the little summer sounds that should make his song; still all the promise of youth and happiness in sighing, floating, fluttering July—­and his heart torn; yearning strong in him; hope high in him yet with its eyes cast down, as if ashamed.  The miserable task before him!  If Fleur was desperate, so was he—­watching the poplars swaying, the white clouds passing, the sunlight on the grass.

He waited till evening, till after their almost silent dinner, till his mother had played to him and still he waited, feeling that she knew what he was waiting to say.  She kissed him and went up-stairs, and still he lingered, watching the moonlight and the moths, and that unreality of colouring which steals along and stains a summer night.  And he would have given anything to be back again in the past—­barely three months back; or away forward, years, in the