assed through on to the verandah.

Where could he watch, without her seeing him? And he stole down through
the fruit garden to the boat-house. He was between her and the river
now, and his heart felt lighter. She was his daughter, and
Annette's--she wouldn't do anything foolish; but there it was--he didn't
know! From the boat house window he could see the last acacia and the
spin of her skirt when she turned in her restless march. That tune had
run down at last--thank goodness! He crossed the floor and looked
through the farther window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies. It
made little bubbles against them, bright where a moon-streak fell. He
remembered suddenly that early morning when he had slept on the
house-boat after his father died, and she had just been born--nearly
nineteen years ago! Even now he recalled the unaccustomed world when he
woke up, the strange feeling it had given him. That day the second
passion of his life began--for this girl of his, roaming under the
acacias. What a comfort she had been to him! And all the soreness and
sense of outrage left him. If he could make her happy again, he didn't
care! An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a bat flitted by; the moonlight
brightened and broadened on the water. How long was she going to roam
about like this! He went back to the window, and suddenly saw her coming
down to the bank. She stood quite close, on the landing-stage. And
Soames watched, clenching his hands. Should he speak to her? His
excitement was intense. The stillness of her figure, its youth, its
absorption in despair, in longing, in--itself. He would always remember
it, moonlit like that; and the faint sweet reek of the river and the
shivering of the willow leaves. She had everything in the world that he
could give her, except the one thing that she could not have because of
him! The perversity of things hurt him at that moment, as might a
fish-bone in his throat.

Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the house.
What could he give her to make amends? Pearls, travel, horses, other
young men--anything she wanted--that he might lose the memory of her
young figure lonely by the water! There! She had set that tune going
again! Why--it was a mania! Dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the
house. It was as though she had said: "If I can't have something to keep
me going, I shall die of this!" Soames dimly understood. Well, if it
helped her, l