fell the thick shade from those fruit-trees planted
by her father five-and-twenty, years ago. Birds were almost silent, the
cuckoos had ceased to sing, but wood-pigeons were cooing. The breath and
drone and cooing of high summer were not for long a sedative to her
excited nerves. Crouched over her knees she began to scheme. Her father
must be made to back her up. Why should he mind so long as she was
happy? She had not lived for nearly nineteen years without knowing that
her future was all he really cared about. She had, then, only to
convince him that her future could not be happy without Jon. He thought
it a mad fancy. How foolish the old were, thinking they could tell what
the young felt! Had not he confessed that he--when young--had loved with
a grand passion? He ought to understand! 'He piles up his money for
me,' she thought; 'but what's the use, if I'm not going to be happy?'
Money, and all it bought, did not bring happiness. Love only brought
that. The ox-eyed daisies in this orchard, which gave it such a moony
look sometimes, grew wild and happy, and had their hour. 'They oughtn't
to have called me Fleur,' she mused, 'if they didn't mean me to have my
hour, and be happy while it lasts.' Nothing real stood in the way, like
poverty, or disease--sentiment only, a ghost from the unhappy past! Jon
was right. They wouldn't let you live, these old people! They made
mistakes, committed crimes, and wanted their children to go on paying!
The breeze died away; midges began to bite. She got up, plucked a piece
of honeysuckle, and went in.

It was hot that night. Both she and her mother had put on thin, pale low
frocks. The dinner flowers were pale. Fleur was struck with the pale
look of everything; her father's face, her mother's shoulders; the pale
panelled walls, the pale grey velvety carpet, the lamp-shade, even the
soup was pale. There was not one spot of colour in the room, not even
wine in the pale glasses, for no one drank it. What was not pale was
black--her father's clothes, the butler's clothes, her retriever
stretched out exhausted in the window, the curtains black with a cream
pattern. A moth came in, and that was pale. And silent was that
half-mourning dinner in the heat.

Her father called her back as she was following her mother out.

She sat down beside him at the table, and, unpinning the pale
honeysuckle, put it to her nose.

"I've been thinking," he said.

"Yes, dear?"

"