led
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 towards 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, let her keep it
thrumming on all night! And, mousing back through the fruit garden, he
regained the verandah. Though he meant to go in and speak to her now,
he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying hard to recall how
it felt to be thwarted in love. He ought to know, ought to
remember--and he could not! Gone--all real recollection; except that it
had hurt him horribly. In this blankness he stood passing his
handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry. By craning his
head he could just see Fleur, standing with her back to that piano
still grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her breast, a
lighted cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face.
The expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared,
and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger.
Once or twice he had se