f
the afternoon seduced for a little one not much given to the vague and
poetic. In the field beyond the bank where her skiff lay up, a machine
drawn by a grey horse was turning an early field of hay. She watched
the grass cascading over and behind the light wheels with
fascination--it looked so green and fresh. The click and swish blended
with the rustle of the willows and the poplars, and the cooing of a
wood-pigeon, in a true river song. Alongside, in the grey-green water,
weeds like yellow snakes were writhing and nosing with the current;
pied cattle on the farther side stood in the shade lazily swishing
their tails. It was an afternoon to dream. And she took out Jon's
letters--not flowery effusions, but haunted in their recital of things
seen and done by a longing very agreeable to her, and all ending "Your
devoted J." Fleur was not sentimental, her desires were ever concrete
and concentrated, but what poetry there was in the daughter of Soames
and Annette had certainly in those weeks of waiting gathered round her
memories of Jon. They all belonged to grass and blossom, flowers and
running water. She enjoyed him in the scents absorbed by her crinkling
nose. The stars could persuade her that she was standing beside him in
the centre of the map of Spain; and of an early morning the dewy
cobwebs, the hazy sparkle and promise of the day down in the garden,
were Jon personified to her.

Two white swans came majestically by, while she was reading his
letters, followed by their brood of six young swans in a line, with
just so much space between each tail and head, a flotilla of grey
destroyers. Fleur thrust her letters back, got out her sculls, and
pulled up to the landing-stage. Crossing the lawn, she wondered whether
she should tell her father of June's visit. If he learned of it from
the butler, he might think it odd if she did not. It gave her, too,
another chance to startle out of him the reason of the feud. She went,
therefore, up the road to meet him.

Soames had gone to look at a patch of ground on which the Local
Authorities were proposing to erect a Sanatorium for people with weak
lungs. Faithful to his native individualism, he took no part in local
affairs, content to pay the rates which were always going up. He could
not, however, remain indifferent to this new and dangerous scheme. The
site was not half a mile from his own house. He was quite of opinion
that the country should stamp out tuberculosis; but th