s."

"Oh! You do!" He had come back from the window, and was standing close
to her, who, in the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed.

"I'm not likely to see you again," he said slowly: "Will you shake
hands," his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily, "and let the past
die?" He held out his hand. Her pale face grew paler, her eyes so dark,
rested immovably on his, but her hands remained clasped in front of
her. He heard a sound and turned. That boy was standing in the opening
of the curtains. Very queer he looked, hardly recognisable as the young
fellow he had seen in the Gallery off Cork Street--very queer; much
older, no youth in the face at all--haggard, rigid, his hair ruffled,
his eyes deep in his head. Soames made an effort, and said with a lift
of his lip, not quite a smile nor quite a sneer:

"Well, young man! I'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it
seems--this matter. Your mother leaves it in your hands."

The boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no answer.

"For my daughter's sake I've brought myself to come," said Soames.
"What am I to say to her when I go back?"

Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly:

"Tell Fleur that it's no good, please; I must do as my father wished
before he died."

"Jon!"

"It's all right, Mother."

In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other; then,
taking up hat and umbrella, which he had put down on a chair, he walked
towards the curtains. The boy stood aside for him to go by. He passed
through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains were drawn
behind him. The sound liberated something in his chest.

'So that's that!' he thought, and passed out of the front door.

VIII

THE DARK TUNE

As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke
through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. So
absorbed in landscape-painting that he seldom looked seriously for
effects of Nature out-of-doors, he was struck by that moody
effulgence--it mourned with a triumph suited to his own feeling.
Victory in defeat! His embassy had come to naught. But he was rid of
those people, had regained his daughter at the expense of--her
happiness. What would Fleur say to him? Would she believe he had done
his best? And under that sunlight flaring on the elms, hazels, hollies
of the lane and those unexploited fields, Soames felt dread. She would
be terribly upset! He must appeal to her