ld swing! And, suddenly, he felt horribly--deadly ill.
'I've overdone it!' he thought: 'by Jove. I've overdone it--after all!'
He staggered up towards the terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and
fell against the wall of the house. He leaned there gasping, his face
buried in the honeysuckle that he and she had taken such trouble with
that it might sweeten the air which drifted in. Its fragrance mingled
with awful pain. 'My Love!' he thought; 'the boy!' And with a great
effort he tottered in through the long window, and sank into old
Jolyon's chair. The book was there, a pencil in it; he caught it up,
scribbled a word on the open page.... His hand dropped.... So it was
like this--was it?...

There was a great wrench; and darkness....

III

IRENE!

When Jon rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along the
terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and confusion.
Leaning against the creepered wall he tore open the letter. It was
long--very long! This added to his fear, and he began reading. When he
came to the underlined words: "It was Fleur's father that she married,"
everything swam before him. He was close to a window, and entering by
it, he passed, through music-room and hall, up to his bedroom. Dipping
his face in cold water, he sat on his bed, and went on reading,
dropping each finished page on the bed beside him. His father's writing
was easy to read--he knew it so well, though he had never had a letter
from him one quarter so long. He read with a dull feeling--imagination
only half at work. He best grasped, on that first reading, the pain his
father must have had in writing such a letter. He let the last sheet
fall, and in a sort of mental, moral helplessness he began to read the
first again. It all seemed to him disgusting--dead and disgusting.
Then, suddenly, a hot wave of horrified emotion tingled through him. He
buried his face in his hands. His mother! Fleur's father! He took up
the letter again, and read on mechanically. And again came the feeling
that it was all dead and disgusting; his own love so different! This
letter said his mother--and her father! An awful letter!

Property! Could there be men who looked on women as their property?
Faces seen in street and countryside came thronging up before him--red,
stock-fish faces; hard, dull faces; prim, dry faces; violent faces;
hundreds, thousands of them! How could he know what men who had such
faces thought and did? He held hi