Jon shook his head.
"I hate the way people keep things from one," he muttered, "and then sneer at one for being green."
"Well, you can ask Holly. If SHE won't tell you, you'll believe it's for your own good, I suppose."
Jon got up. "I must go now; thanks awfully for the lunch."
Val smiled up at him, half-sorry and yet amused. The boy looked so upset.
"All right! See you on Friday."
"I don't know," murmured Jon.
And he did not. This conspiracy of silence made him desperate. It was humiliating to be treated like a child. He retraced his moody steps to Stratton Street. But he would go to her Club now, and find out the worst. To his inquiry the reply was that Miss Forsyte was not in the Club. She might be in perhaps later. She was often in on Monday—they could not say. Jon said he would call again, and, crossing into the Green Park, flung himself down under a tree. The sun was bright, and a breeze fluttered the leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he lay; but his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness. He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above the traffic. The sound moved something in him, and taking out a piece of paper, he began to scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his shoulder—a green parasol. There above him stood Fleur!
"They told me you'd been, and were coming back. So I thought you might be out here; and you are—it's rather wonderful!"
"Oh, Fleur! I thought you'd have forgotten me."