en Annette look like that--the face was too
vivid, too naked, not HIS daughter's at that moment. And he dared not
go in, realising the futility of any attempt at consolation. He sat
down in the shadow of the ingle-nook. Monstrous trick, that Fate had
played him! Nemesis! That old unhappy marriage! And in God's name--why?
How was he to know, when he wanted Irene so violently, and she
consented to be his, that she would never love him? The tune died and
was renewed, and died again, and still Soames sat in the shadow,
waiting for he knew not what. The fag of Fleur's cigarette, flung
through the window, fell on the grass; he watched it glowing, burning
itself out. The moon had freed herself above the poplars, and poured
her unreality on the garden. Comfortless light, mysterious,
withdrawn--like the beauty of that woman who had never loved
him--dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of earth.
Flowers! And his flower so unhappy! Ah, why could one not put happiness
into Local Loans, gild its edges, insure it against going down? Light
had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window. All was silent
and dark in there. Had she gone up? He rose, and, tiptoeing, peered in.
It seemed so! He entered. The verandah kept the moonlight out; and at
first he could see nothing but the outlines of furniture blacker than
the darkness. He groped towards the farther window to shut it. His foot
struck a chair, and he heard a gasp. There she was, curled and crushed
into the corner of the sofa! His hand hovered. Did she want his
consolation? He stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and hair
and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. How leave
her there? At last he touched her hair, and said: "Come, darling,
better go to bed. I'll make it up to you, somehow." How fatuous! But
what could he have said?

IX

UNDER THE OAK-TREE

When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without
speaking, till he said suddenly: "I ought to have seen him out." But
Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went up-stairs to
his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back. The expression on
his mother's face confronting the man she had once been married to, had
sealed a resolution growing within him ever since she left him the
night before. It had put the finishing touch of reality. To marry Fleur
would be to hit his mother in the face; to betray his dead father! It
was no good! Jon