Where could he watch, without her seeing him?  And he stole down through the fruit garden to the boat-house.  He was between her and the river now, and his heart felt lighter.  She was his daughter, and Annette’s—­she wouldn’t do anything foolish; but there it was—­he didn’t know!  From the boat house window he could see the last acacia and the spin of her skirt when she turned in her restless march.  That tune had run down at last—­thank goodness!  He crossed the floor and looked through the farther window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies.  It made little bubbles against them, bright where a moon-streak fell.  He remembered suddenly that early morning when he had slept on the house-boat after his father died, and she had just been born—­nearly nineteen years ago!  Even now he recalled the unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it had given him.  That day the second passion of his life began—­for this girl of his, roaming under the acacias.  What a comfort she had been to him!  And all the soreness and sense of outrage left him.  If he could make her happy again, he didn’t care!  An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a bat flitted by; the moonlight brightened and broadened on the water.  How long was she going to roam about like this!  He went back to the window, and suddenly saw her coming down to the bank.  She stood quite close, on the landing-stage.  And Soames watched, clenching his hands.  Should he speak to her?  His excitement was intense.  The stillness of her figure, its youth, its absorption in despair, in longing, in—­itself.  He would always remember it, moonlit like that; and the faint sweet reek of the river and the shivering of the willow leaves.  She had everything in the world that he could give her, except the one thing that she could not have because of him!  The perversity of things hurt him at that moment, as might a fish-bone in his throat.

Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the house.  What could he give her to make amends?  Pearls, travel, horses, other young men—­anything she wanted—­that he might lose the memory of her young figure lonely by the water!  There!  She had set that tune going again!  Why—­it was a mania!  Dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the house.  It was as though she had said:  “If I can’t have something to keep me going, I shall die of this!” Soames dimly understood.  Well, if it helped her, let her keep it thrumming on all night!  And, mousing back through the fruit garden, he regained the verandah.  Though he meant to go in and speak to her now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying hard to recall how it felt to be thwarted in love.  He ought to know, ought to remember—­and he could not!  Gone—­all real recollection; except that it had hurt him horribly.  In this blankness he stood passing his handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry.  By craning his head he could just see Fleur, standing with her back