“I’m all right again, now. It was liver, I expect.”

“You ought to have some brandy, Dad. We can get some on a doctor’s prescription.”

“Doctor? Nonsense. We’ll dine up-stairs and I’ll get over the waiter; they must have something in the house.”

Dine up-stairs! That was a happy thought!

In their sitting-room he lay down on the sofa, touched and gratified, for Fleur was plopping up his cushions, shading the light, looking over the top of her book to see how he was. He did not remember when he had felt so definitely that she really did care about him. He even thought: ‘I ought to be ill a little, every now and then!’ And yet, if he ever complained of feeling ill at home, Annette at once complained of feeling worse!

Close by, in the little salon opposite the stairs, a piano was being played.

“Does that music worry you, dear?”

Into Soames’ mind flashed the thought ‘Irene!’ If it were, and Fleur were to go out to stop it, then, indeed, would fat be in the fire!

“No; I rather like it,” he said, hastily.

“It’s a very good touch.”

Irene’s touch! He remembered how June used to praise her touch; remembered how he had caught that fellow Bosinney listening to her, in the little drawing-room in Montpellier Square, with the wild-cat look on his face, the fellow had; remembered how she used to stop playing when he himself came in-from consideration, or the feeling that it was wasted on him—which? He had never known. He had never known anything! Well—another life! He closed his eyes, and instantly saw Irene in her emerald-green dinner-gown, standing in the Park Lane hall, first feast after their honeymoon, waiting to be cloaked!