ep it off.

"Good-bye, Jon." For a second they stood with hands hard clasped. Then
their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur broke away
and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood where she had left him, with
his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone! For an eternity--for
seven weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting the last sight of
her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the
straggling children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little
flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family blotted her
out from his view.

The words of a comic song--

"Paddington groan-worst ever known
He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan--"

came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading station.
All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with "The Heart of
the Trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of
feeling that it would not rhyme.

XII

CAPRICE

Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and wanted
all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the islands, the
station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry, when she saw a skiff
with a young man standing up in it, and holding to the bushes.

"Miss Forsyte," he said; "let me put you across. I've come on purpose."

She looked at him in blank amazement.

"It's all right, I've been having tea with your people. I thought I'd
save you the last bit. It's on my way, I'm just off back to Pangbourne.
My name's Mont. I saw you at the picture-gallery--you remember--when
your father invited me to see his pictures."

"Oh!" said Fleur; "yes--the handkerchief."

To this young man she owed Jon; and, taking his hand, she stepped down
into the skiff. Still emotional, and a little out of breath, she sat
silent; not so the young man. She had never heard any one say so much in
so short a time. He told her his age, twenty-four; his weight, ten stone
eleven; his place of residence, not far away; described his sensations
under fire, and what it felt like to be gassed; criticized the Juno,
mentioned his own conception of that goddess; commented on the Goya copy,
said Fleur was not too awfully like it; sketched in rapidly the condition
of England; spoke of Monsieur Profond--or whatever his name was--as "an
awful sport"; thought her father had some "ripping" pictures and some
rather "dug-up"; hoped he might ro