as
Nemesis. Do you believe in it?"

"Yes."

"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, 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
toward 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 faring
on the elms, hazels, hollies of the lane and those unexploited fields,
Soames felt dread. She would be ter