to that piano still grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her breast, a lighted cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face.  The expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared, and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger.  Once or twice he had seen Annette look like that—­the face was too vivid, too naked, not his daughter’s at that moment.  And he dared not go in, realising the futility of any attempt at consolation.  He sat down in the shadow of the ingle-nook.

Monstrous trick, that Fate had played him!  Nemesis!  That old unhappy marriage!  And in God’s name-why?  How was he to know, when he wanted Irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that she would never love him?  The tune died and was renewed, and died again, and still Soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew not what.  The fag of Fleur’s cigarette, flung through the window, fell on the grass; he watched it glowing, burning itself out.  The moon had freed herself above the poplars, and poured her unreality on the garden.  Comfortless light, mysterious, withdrawn—­like the beauty of that woman who had never loved him—­dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of earth.  Flowers!  And his flower so unhappy!  Ah!  Why could one not put happiness into Local Loans, gild its edges, insure it against going down?

Light had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window.  All was silent and dark in there.  Had she gone up?  He rose, and, tiptoeing, peered in.  It seemed so!  He entered.  The verandah kept the moonlight out; and at first he could see nothing but the outlines of furniture blacker than the darkness.  He groped toward the farther window to shut it.  His foot struck a chair, and he heard a gasp.  There she was, curled and crushed into the corner of the sofa!  His hand hovered.  Did she want his consolation?  He stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and hair and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow.  How leave her there?  At last he touched her hair, and said: 

“Come, darling, better go to bed.  I’ll make it up to you, somehow.”  How fatuous!  But what could he have said?

IX

UNDER THE OAK-TREE

When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without speaking, till he said suddenly: 

“I ought to have seen him out.”

But Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went upstairs to his father’s studio, not trusting himself to go back.