resumed their progress, Fleur said:

"Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of her
age you've ever seen?"

Soames shivered. Uncanny, the way she stuck to it!

"I don't know that I noticed her."

"Dear, I saw the corner of your eye."

"You see everything--and a great deal more, it seems to me!"

"What's her husband like? He must be your first cousin, if your fathers
were brothers."

"Dead, for all I know," said Soames, with sudden vehemence. "I haven't
seen him for twenty years."

"What was he?"

"A painter."

"That's quite jolly."

The words: "If you want to please me you'll put those people out of your
head," sprang to Soames' lips, but he choked them back--he must not let
her see his feelings.

"He once insulted me," he said.

Her quick eyes rested on his face.

"I see! You didn't avenge it, and it rankles. Poor Father! You let me
have a go!"

It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering above his
face. Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as they reached the
hotel, he said grimly:

"I did my best. And that's enough about these people. I'm going up till
dinner."

"I shall sit here."

With a parting look at her extended in a chair--a look half-resentful,
half-adoring--Soames moved into the lift and was transported to their
suite on the fourth floor. He stood by the window of the sitting-room
which gave view over Hyde Park, and drummed a finger on its pane. His
feelings were confused, tetchy, troubled. The throb of that old wound,
scarred over by Time and new interests, was mingled with displeasure
and anxiety, and a slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had
disagreed. Had Annette come in? Not that she was any good to him in such
a difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first marriage,
he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that it had
been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with herself
but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the grudge of that up her
sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially. He listened. A sound--the
vague murmur of a woman's movements--was coming through the door. She
was in. He tapped.

"Who?"

"I," said Soames.

She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly clothed; a
striking figure before her glass. There was a certain magnificence about
her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened since he first knew
her, about the turn of her neck, the