“Here we are, Anne.”

An English voice, and two young people at the far end—going to chatter, he supposed! He was preparing to rise when he heard the girl say, in a voice American, indeed, but soft and curiously private:

“John, it’s terribly great. It makes me sink here.” From the gesture of her hand, Soames saw that it was where the thing had made HIM sink, too.

“Everlasting stillness. It makes me sad, John.”

As the young man’s arm slid under hers his face came into view. Quick as thought, half of Soames’s face disappeared again into his hand. “John?” “Jon” was what she had meant to say. Young Jon Forsyte—not a doubt of it! And this girl, his wife, sister—as he had heard—of that young American Francis Wilmot! What a mischance! He remembered the boy’s face perfectly, though he had only seen it in that Gallery off Cork Street, and the pastrycook’s after, and once on that grim afternoon when he had gone down to Robin Hill to beg his own divorced first wife to let HER son marry HIS daughter! Never had he been more pleased to be refused! Never had the fitness of things been better confirmed; and yet, the pain of telling Fleur of that refusal remained in his memory like a still-live ember, red and prickly under the ashes of time. Behind his shadowing hat and screening hand Soames made sure. The young man was standing bare-headed, as if in reverence to the statue. A Forsyte look about him, in spite of too much hair. A poet—he had heard! The face wasn’t a bad one; it had what they called charm; the eyes were deep-set, like his grandfather’s, old Jolyon’s, and the same colour, dark grey; the touch of brightness on his head came from his mother, no doubt; but the chin was a Forsyte’s chin. Soames looked at the girl. A fair height, brownish pale, brown hair, dark eyes; pretty trick of the neck, nice way of standing too; very straight, an attractive figure! But how could the young man have taken to her after Fleur? Still, for an American, she looked very natural; a little bit like a nymph, with a kind of privacy about her.