that
Val had spoken of? The smoke was blue when he had not puffed, grey when
he had; he liked the sensation in his nose, and the sense of equality
it gave him. He was glad no one said: "So you've begun!" He felt less
young.

Fleur looked at her watch, and rose. His mother went with her into the
house. Jon stayed with his father, puffing at the cigarette.

"See her into the car, old man," said Jolyon; "and when she's gone, ask
your mother to come back to me."

Jon went. He waited in the hall. He saw her into the car. There was no
chance for any word; hardly for a pressure of the hand. He waited all
that evening for something to be said to him. Nothing was said. Nothing
might have happened. He went up to bed; and in the mirror on his
dressing-table met himself. He did not speak, nor did the image; but
both looked as if they thought the more.

IV

IN GREEN STREET

Uncertain, whether the impression that Prosper Profond was dangerous
should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly filly; to the
remark of Fleur's: "Isn't he a great cat? Prowling!" to his
preposterous inquiry of Jack Cardigan: "What's the use of keepin' fit?"
or, more simply, to the fact that he was a foreigner, or alien as it
was now called. Certain that Annette was looking particularly handsome,
and that Soames had sold him a Gauguin and then torn up the cheque, so
that Monsieur Profond himself had said: "I didn't get that small
picture I bought from Mr. Forsyde."

However suspiciously regarded, he still frequented Winifred's evergreen
little house in Green Street, with a good-natured obtuseness which no
one mistook for naivete; a word hardly applicable to Monsieur Prosper
Profond. Winifred still found him "amusing," and would write him little
notes saying: "Come and have a 'jolly' with us"--it was breath of life
to her to keep up with the phrases of the day.

The mystery, with which all felt him to be surrounded, was due to his
having done, seen, heard, and known everything, and found nothing in
it--which was unnatural. The English type of disillusionment was
familiar enough to Winifred, who had always moved in fashionable
circles. It gave a certain cachet or distinction, so that one got
something out of it. But to see nothing in anything, not as a pose, but
because there WAS nothing in anything, was not English; and that which
was not English one could not help secretly feeling dangerous, if not
precisely bad form. It was like ha