and showing their legs! The worst of them bad dreams, the best of them
powdered angels! Fleur was not a flapper, not one of those slangy,
ill-bred young females. And yet she was frighteningly self-willed, and
full of life, and determined to enjoy it. Enjoy! The word brought
no puritan terror to Soames; but it brought the terror suited to his
temperament. He had always been afraid to enjoy to-day for fear he
might not enjoy tomorrow so much. And it was terrifying to feel that his
daughter was divested of that safeguard. The very way she sat in that
chair showed it--lost in her dream. He had never been lost in a dream
himself--there was nothing to be had out of it; and where she got it
from he did not know! Certainly not from Annette! And yet Annette, as a
young girl, when he was hanging about her, had once had a flowery look.
Well, she had lost it now!

Fleur rose from her chair-swiftly, restlessly; and flung herself down at
a writing-table. Seizing ink and writing paper, she began to write as
if she had not time to breathe before she got her letter written. And
suddenly she saw him. The air of desperate absorption vanished, she
smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face as if she were a little puzzled
and a little bored.

Ah! She was "fine"--"fine!"




III.--AT ROBIN HILL

Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin Hill,
quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly now, because