ething turned over within Jon; he could not bear this subterfuge about
a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so sweet.

On Friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was leaning out
of his window, half miserable, and half lost in a dream of Paddington
station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a finger-nail tapping on his
door. He rushed to it and listened. Again the sound. It was a nail. He
opened. Oh! What a lovely thing came in!

"I wanted to show you my fancy dress," it said, and struck an attitude at
the foot of his bed.

Jon drew a long breath and leaned against the door. The apparition wore
white muslin on its head, a fichu round its bare neck over a
wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender waist.

It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised, right-angled, holding a fan
which touched its head.

"This ought to be a basket of grapes," it whispered, "but I haven't got
it here. It's my Goya dress. And this is the attitude in the picture.
Do you like it?"

"It's a dream."

The apparition pirouetted. "Touch it, and see."

Jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently.

"Grape colour," came the whisper, "all grapes--La Vendimia--the vintage."

Jon's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked up, with
adoring eyes.

"Oh! Jon," it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted again,
and, gliding out, was gone.

Jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the bed. How
long he stayed like that he did not know. The little noises--of the
tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling--as in a dream--went on about
him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and
whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. And his
forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place between the
brows, like the imprint of a flower. Love filled his soul, that love of
boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the
down off for the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory--a
searing passion--a humdrum mateship--or, once in many times, vintage full
and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes.

Enough has been said about Jon Forsyte here and in another place to show
what long marches lay between him and his great-great-grandfather, the
first Jolyon, in Dorset down by the sea. Jon was sensitive as a girl,
more sensitive than nine out of ten girls of the day; imaginative as one
of his half-sister June's