nineteen years ago! Even now he recalled 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 toward 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 s