a
row. If it weren't for my boy going to the war....' The war! A gust of
his old doubt swept over him. A precious war! Domination of peoples or
of women! Attempts to master and possess those who did not want you! The
negation of gentle decency! Possession, vested rights; and anyone 'agin'
'em--outcast! 'Thank Heaven!' he thought, 'I always felt "agin" 'em,
anyway!' Yes! Even before his first disastrous marriage he could
remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial
suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed. Parsons would have
it that freedom of soul and body were quite different things! Pernicious
doctrine! Body and soul could not thus be separated. Free will was
the strength of any tie, and not its weakness. 'I ought to have told
Soames,' he thought, 'that I think him comic. Ah! but he's tragic, too!'
Was there anything, indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved
by his own possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even
enter fully into what another person felt! 'I must write and warn her,'
he thought; 'he's going to have another try.' And all the way home to
Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son which
prevented him from posting back to Paris....

But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing ache--a
jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this fellow held
precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of resistance to his
way out. 'Does that mean that you're against me?' he had got nothing out
of that disingenuous question. Feminist! Phrasey fellow! 'I mustn't rush
things,' he thought. 'I have some breathing space; he's not going back
to Paris, unless he was lying. I'll let the spring come!' Though how the
spring could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell.
And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from pool
to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: 'Nothing seems any
good--nothing seems worth while. I'm loney--that's the trouble.'

He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark street
below a church--passing, turning her neck so that he caught the gleam of
her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark hat, which had gold
spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind. He opened his eyes--so
vividly he had seen her! A woman was passing below, but not she! Oh no,
there was nothing there!

CHAPTER XIII--'HERE WE ARE AGAIN!'