ence necessary to the
success of spoken untruth. He listened therefore to Fleur's swift and
rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied her with scones and
jam, and got away as soon as might be. They say that in delirium tremens
you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which suddenly changes shape and
position. Jon saw the fixed object; it had dark eyes and passably dark
hair, and changed its position, but never its shape. The knowledge that
between him and that object there was already a secret understanding
(however impossible to understand) thrilled him so that he waited
feverishly, and began to copy out his poem--which of course he would
never dare to--show her--till the sound of horses' hoofs roused him,
and, leaning from his window, he saw her riding forth with Val. It was
clear that she wasted no time, but the sight filled him with grief. He
wasted his. If he had not bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might have
been asked to go too. And from his window he sat and watched them
disappear, appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge once
more for a minute clear on the outline of the Down. 'Silly brute!' he
thought; 'I always miss my chances.'

Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And, leaning his chin on
his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with her. A week-end
was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours of it. Did he know any
one except himself who would have been such a flat? He did not.

He dressed for dinner early, and was first down. He would miss no more.
But he missed Fleur, who came down last. He sat opposite her at dinner,
and it was terrible--impossible to say anything for fear of saying the
wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed on her in the only natural
way; in sum, impossible to treat normally one with whom in fancy he had
already been over the hills and far away; conscious, too, all the time,
that he must seem to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk. Yes, it was
terrible! And she was talking so well--swooping with swift wing this way
and that. Wonderful how she had learned an art which he found so
disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed!

His sister's eyes, fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged him
at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes, very wide and eager,
seeming to say, "Oh! for goodness' sake!" obliged him to look at Val,
where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet--that, at least,