grant of larches. Still
no Jon! He called. No answer! On the log seat he sat down, nervous,
anxious, forgetting his own physical sensations. He had been wrong to
let the boy get away with that letter; he ought to have kept him under
his eye from the start! Greatly troubled, he got up to retrace his
steps. At the farm-buildings he called again, and looked into the dark
cow-house. There in the cool, and the scent of vanilla and ammonia, away
from flies, the three Alderneys were chewing the quiet cud; just milked,
waiting for evening, to be turned out again into the lower field. One
turned a lazy head, a lustrous eye; Jolyon could see the slobber on
its grey lower lip. He saw everything with passionate clearness, in the
agitation of his nerves--all that in his time he had adored and tried
to paint--wonder of light and shade and colour. No wonder the legend put
Christ into a manger--what more devotional than the eyes and moon-white
horns of a chewing cow in the warm dusk! He called again. No answer! And
he hurried away out of the coppice, past the pond, up the hill. Oddly
ironical--now he came to think of it--if Jon had taken the gruel of his
discovery down in the coppice where his mother and Bosinney in those old
days had made the plunge of acknowledging their love. Where he himself,
on the log seat the Sunday morning he came back from Paris, had realised
to the full that Irene had become the world to him. That would have been
the place for Irony to tear the veil from before the eyes of Irene's
boy! But he was not here! Where had he got to? One must find the poor
chap!

A gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all the
beauty of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening shadows, of
the blue, and the white clouds, the scent of the hay, and the cooing of
the pigeons; and the flower shapes standing tall. He came to the rosery,
and the beauty of the roses in that sudden sunlight seemed to him
unearthly. "Rose, you Spaniard!" Wonderful three words! There she had
stood by that bush of dark red roses; had stood to read and decide that
Jon must know it all! He knew all now! Had she chosen wrong? He bent and
sniffed a rose, its petals brushed his nose and trembling lips; nothing
so soft as a rose-leaf's velvet, except her neck--Irene! On across
the lawn he went, up the slope, to the oak-tree. Its top alone was
glistening, for the sudden sun was away over the house; the lower shade
was thick, blessedly cool--