“For my daughter’s sake I’ve brought myself to come,” said Soames.  “What am I to say to her when I go back?”

Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly: 

“Tell Fleur that it’s no good, please; I must do as my father wished before he died.”

“Jon!”

“It’s all right, Mother.”

In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other; then, taking up hat and umbrella which he had put down on a chair, he walked toward the curtains.  The boy stood aside for him to go by.  He passed through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains were drawn behind him.  The sound liberated something in his chest.

‘So that’s that!’ he thought, and passed out of the front door.

VIII

THE DARK TUNE

As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance.  So absorbed in landscape painting that he seldom looked seriously for effects of Nature out of doors—­he was struck by that moody effulgence—­it mourned with a triumph suited to his own feeling.  Victory in defeat.  His embassy had come to naught.  But he was rid of those people, had regained his daughter at the expense of—­her happiness.  What would Fleur say to him?  Would she believe he had done his best?  And under that sunlight faring on the elms, hazels, hollies of the lane and those unexploited fields, Soames felt dread.  She would be terribly upset!  He must appeal to her pride.  That boy had given her up, declared part and lot with the woman who so long ago had given her father up!  Soames clenched his hands.  Given him up, and why?  What had been wrong with him?  And once more he felt the malaise of one who contemplates himself as seen by another—­like a dog who chances on his refection in a mirror and is intrigued and anxious at the unseizable thing.

Not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the Connoisseurs.  While eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had not gone down to Robin Hill, the boy might not have so decided.  He remembered the expression on his face while his mother was refusing the hand he had held out.  A strange, an awkward thought!  Had Fleur cooked her own goose by trying to make too sure?

He reached home at half-past nine.  While the car was passing in at one drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle passing out by the other.  Young Mont, no doubt, so Fleur had not been lonely.  But he went in with a sinking heart.  In the cream-panelled drawing-room she was sitting with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her clasped hands, in front of a white camellia plant which filled the fireplace.  That glance at her before she saw him renewed his dread.  What was she seeing among those white camellias?

“Well, Father!”

Soames shook his head.  His tongue failed him.  This was murderous work!  He saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering.