They came, stepping from the chancel.  Holly looked first in young Mont’s face.  His lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting from his feet to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if to face a firing party.  He gave Holly the feeling that he was spiritually intoxicated.  But Fleur!  Ah!  That was different.  The girl was perfectly composed, prettier than ever, in her white robes and veil over her banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered demure over her dark hazel eyes.  Outwardly, she seemed all there.  But inwardly, where was she?  As those two passed, Fleur raised her eyelids—­the restless glint of those clear whites remained on Holly’s vision as might the flutter of caged bird’s wings.

In Green Street Winifred stood to receive, just a little less composed than usual.  Soames’ request for the use of her house had come on her at a deeply psychological moment.  Under the influence of a remark of Prosper Profond, she had begun to exchange her Empire for Expressionistic furniture.  There were the most amusing arrangements, with violet, green, and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at Mealard’s.  Another month and the change would have been complete.  Just now, the very “intriguing” recruits she had enlisted, did not march too well with the old guard.  It was as if her regiment were half in khaki, half in scarlet and bearskins.  But her strong and comfortable character made the best of it in a drawing-room which typified, perhaps, more perfectly than she imagined, the semi-bolshevized imperialism of her country.  After all, this was a day of merger, and you couldn’t have too much of it!  Her eyes travelled indulgently among her guests.  Soames had gripped the back of a buhl chair; young Mont was behind that “awfully amusing” screen, which no one as yet had been able to explain to her.  The ninth baronet had shied violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid under glass with blue Australian butteries’ wings, and was clinging to her Louis-Quinze cabinet; Francie Forsyte had seized the new mantel-board, finely carved with little purple grotesques on an ebony ground; George, over by the old spinet, was holding a little sky-blue book as if about to enter bets; Prosper Profond was twiddling the knob of the open door, black with peacock-blue panels; and Annette’s hands, close by, were grasping her own waist; two Muskhams clung to the balcony among the plants, as if feeling ill; Lady Mont, thin and brave-looking, had taken up her long-handled glasses and was gazing at the central light shade, of ivory and orange dashed with deep magenta, as if the heavens had opened.  Everybody, in fact, seemed holding on to something.  Only Fleur, still in her bridal dress, was detached from all support, flinging her words and glances to left and right.